climate change

The Guardian • climate change

Issue #2004

Fighter jets or green electricity

On 28th March, the government came clean on one of its’ worst kept secrets of the decade when it announced its decision (again) to purchase...

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Issue #1986

Xi calls for stronger global actions on climate change

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday called on all parties to take stronger actions to jointly tackle the climate challenge ...

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Issue #1981

World on the edge of an abyss: UN Secretary-General

“I am here to sound the alarm: the world must wake up. We are on the edge of an abyss – and moving in the wrong direction.”

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Issue #1952

We need a working class climate plan, not capitalist greenwashing

Based on his government’s shiny new climate plan, it doesn’t seem like Justin Trudeau gets irony.

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Issue #1959

Xi calls for “unprecedented ambition, action” to build community of life

We should protect nature and preserve the environment like we protect our eyes.

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African drought. Issue #2069

Activists gather as African Climate Summit opens

Hundreds of people gathered for a people’s march on climate in Nairobi on Monday, 4th September, as the first African Climate Summit opened its doors...

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Issue #1975

Tackling the slow death of Mother Earth

Over the period 2010 - 19 the expansion in the dairy industry in the 26-Country state, thanks to the quota restrictions being lifted by the business organisation known as the EU, has resulted in an increase in the land area allocated to dairy farming.

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Weasel Words heading Issue #2061

WEASEL WORDS

Vicious No, not the old Lou Reed song. “Vicious” is how how 9 Newspapers describe Paul Keating’s description of Jens Stoltenberg the secretary general of...

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Issue #1991

China is a responsible major country in addressing climate change

Human beings share a common future in the face of the challenges presented by global climate change, and no country can make itself immune from the impact.

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Issue #1948

Will we follow our allies this time?

It might be a good idea to return – in January 2022 – to the promises that Joe Biden made on his first day as President of the United States of America on the 20th of January 2021.

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Issue #1957

A Cohesive Society After Capitalism

It seems that the capitalist way of living has been with us forever, but it has only come about since early global trading developed around the sixteenth century.

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Fires Issue #2054

Wildfires hit Canada

Nearly a million acres have been destroyed in wildfires across the western Canadian province of Alberta, with more than 30,000 people forced to evacuate, and...

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Issue #1954

The legacy hanging over Fukushima ten years on from disaster

Japan entered into a state of emergency when the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami swept across the country in 2011.

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Issue #1990

Australian-UK-US nuclear submarine deal exposes civilian-military links

Andy Stirling and Phil Johnstone, writing for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, highlighted several salient points in their paper, telling us a lot about the thinking of those pushing nuclear energy.

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Issue #1954

Rallies in Perth push for climate action

The WA Forest Alliance had a busy week, holding their Grand Postcard Delivery Rally in West Perth on Wednesday 10th March.

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Issue #1980

Nauru invokes the Law of the Sea to begin deep seabed mining by 2022

At the 76th meeting of the UN General Assembly last week, a controversial move by the states of Micronesia was on the agenda.

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Issue #2014

Flood, fire and famine

The 2022 Eastern Australian floods were one of the nation’s worst recorded flood disasters, destroying large parts of Southeastern Queensland and Northeastern NSW. The flooding...

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Issue #1983

Conservation, climate and communities

The Conservation Council of Western Australia (CCWA) held its Annual Conference.

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The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. Issue #2064

What is to be done, and how not to do it

I have been inspired to write this by reading Amitav Ghosh’s brilliant novel The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, which ends: “Much,...

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Issue #1979

Coalition presses the UK to remove climate targets from trade deal

Scott Morrison has confirmed that the Coalition government pressed the UK to remove climate targets from the post-Brexit Australia-United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement

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Issue #1952

“Fighting for the future – class and climate”

On Thursday the 25th of February 2021, Politics in the Pub (Perth) discussed Climate Change and the environment – the pressing issue of our times, and how we deal with it will determine humankind’s future.

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Rice farmer. Issue #2066

Capitalism’s Global Food Crisis

The world is suffering from a dire food crisis. On 20 July India, the world’s leading rice exporter, supplying 40 per cent of the global...

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Issue #1984

School strike for climate change

The School Strike 4 Climate Change (SS4CC) was called around the world in the lead up to the critical COP 26 climate change conference.

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Issue #1975

UN IPCC Report: Australia’s role

Australia has already warmed by an alarming 1.4°C since 1910.

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Issue #1988

Death knell for fossil fuels

On the 12th of November, the Coalition released its long-awaited plan to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

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Issue #1976

The farce of BHP turning away from fossil fuels

BHP, the world’s second largest mining company, is selling off a lot of its global gas and oil assets to Australian outfit Woodside Petroleum.

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Issue #1991

Climate activist pays the price for government inaction

A climate activist who climbed on top of a coal train, which led to a five-hour delay of fifteen coal trains between Newcastle and Maitland,...

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Issue #1948

Climate change: false promises & false hope

One of Joe Biden’s first actions as President was to return the United States to the Paris Climate Agreement, from which the US withdrew under Donald Trump.

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Issue #2037

The great carbon fraud

Earlier this month Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen released a consultation paper proposing a carbon credit scheme for Australia’s largest greenhouse gas emitters...

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Issue #1983

Morrison’s devious campaigning on climate change (amongst other things)

Most people are bewailing the lack of leadership we’re experiencing at the moment, with many believing our politicians are “thick.” I prefer the word “devious,”...

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Issue #2052

GREEN NOTES

Anna Pha If you think the transition to renewables and following what the climate science dictates means phasing out fossil fuels, that’s not what the...

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Issue #2001

A reflection on climate change in Western Australia and New South Wales

On the 4th of March 2022, West Australian Premier Mark McGowan finally relented on his state’s “hard border” which protected its residents from COVID, and...

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Issue #2003

Sham carbon projects have cost taxpayers $1 billion

The Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) has spent more than one billion dollars of public money on projects which do not have a chance in hell...

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Issue #2044

School strike for action on climate change

On 3rd March, about 100 mostly school children rallied in the Supreme Gardens in Perth directly opposite one of the principal corporate emitters of carbon...

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Issue #2025

Diversity – sustainability – socialism

Cuba is one of the world’s most sustainable economies despite the six decades’ long illegal and economically crippling US blockade. Since the 1960s, the Cuban...

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Issue #1974

UN IPCC Report

“Climate change is already affecting every inhabited region across the globe with human influence contributing to many observed changes in weather and climate extremes.”

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Issue #2033

DINGO

In a massive escalation of the simmering industrial conflict being waged by Svitzer Towage’s Australian management against local tugboat crew, the company gave notice that...

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Issue #2062

Fossil fuels to the bitter end

If the massive amounts of undergrowth resulting from record rainfalls and flooding during La Niña dry out with an El Niño, Australia is set for...

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Issue #1984

Greenwashing dirty investments

Is there a company that doesn’t claim to support the Paris Agreement on climate change? The agreement was signed in 2015 and since then the...

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Issue #2021

Energy transition authority critical to creating secure jobs for a safer climate

The ACTU calls on the Albanese Government to quickly establish a national Energy Transition Authority tasked with ensuring that workers and their communities affected by...

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Issue #2069

GLOBAL BRIEFS

JAPAN: Japanese retailer Seven & i Holdings Co is selling department store chain Sogo & Seibu Co to a US investment fund, even as the...

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Issue #2028

Coal industry workers in Australia are taking their destiny into their own hands

The coal industry is to Australia what the Second Amendment of the US Constitution (granting citizens the right to bear arms) is to the United...

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Issue #1976

Australia fails the Pacific islands

The small, low-lying Pacific islands are often described as “the canary in the coalmine.” The very existence and lives of their people are threatened by climate change.

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Issue #2015

DINGO

Amid attempts to drag Australia into the nuclear cycle, news from France casts yet another pall over the non-future of nuclear fission. France gets about...

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Issue #2000

Climate change: Capitalism killing the earth

“The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health.”

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Issue #2018

Listen to the science! State of the environment report

During the 2019-2020 bushfires thirty-three lives were lost, more than seven million hectares were burnt, more than 3,000 home destroyed. In the most recent floods,...

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Issue #2007

Keep money out of politics

Climate action has been at the centre of the 2022 Australian Federal Election. The two major parties are flexing their climate credentials, with the Coalition...

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Issue #1977

Renewable energy to meet 100% consumer demand at certain times of the day by 2025

Renewable energy is proving its reliability in serving Australia’s east coast, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

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Issue #2012

Open letter to the Prime Minister of Australia

The Hon Anthony Albanese MP Prime Minister Parliament House CANBERRA ACT 2600 21 June 2022 Dear Prime Minister Albanese, The Communist Party of Australia wishes...

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Issue #2032

A peace & peoples’ budget

Annual budgets are a mirror held up to the class divide. The income and expenditure sides of the budget come down to priorities. The budget...

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Issue #2016

Climate action looming as first Parliamentary sitting approaches

Parliament is meeting at the end of this month for the first time since the 2022 Federal Election with promises of significant reforms, including climate...

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Issue #1987

COP26: Colonial plunder

As the COP26 climate change meeting entered its second week, the divide between developing and developed countries and their colonial history has been laid bare.

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Issue #1997

Are we really at the forefront on renewable energy?

“Australia is at the forefront of a global experiment on how to shift an electricity grid built on coal to one dominated by renewables.” So...

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Issue #1998

The floods are rising and so are we

While thousands of people across South-East Queensland and northern New South Wales have been left devastated by the unanticipated extreme flooding event, which has destroyed...

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A worker checks the placement of a solar panel. Issue #2052

New Net Zero Authority “a game-changer” for workers

The Communist Party of Australia has long supported a just transition to a sustainable future. The CPA political resolution, adopted at the 14th Congress in...

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Issue #1999

Climate change – ACT NOW!

Prime Minister Scott Morrison described the floods along the east coast of Australia as a “one-in-a-100-year event”; NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet called them a “one-in-1000-year...

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PEACE NOTES Issue #2039

PEACE NOTES

Hannah Middleton We face two crises which could ultimately destroy humanity and our planet – nuclear and climate Armageddon. A report – Climate Collateral –...

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Issue #2017

State of the Environment report

“Overall, the state and trend of the environment of Australia are poor and deteriorating as a result of increasing pressures from climate change, habitat loss,...

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Issue #2040

GREEN NOTES

Anna Pha Welcome to Green Notes, a fortnightly column which will cover climate change, environmental issues and biodiversity and their impact on humanity including indigenous...

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Issue #2044

Bird vagrancy: an indicator of global climatic changes

In October 2022 a young Bar-Tailed Godwit broke a world record by flying non-stop from Alaska to Ansons Bay, Tasmania, 13,560 km in 11 days....

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Issue #2046

GREEN NOTES

Anna Pha Humanity faces two major existential threats: climate change and nuclear war. The doomsday clock is ticking on both these threats. Ironically, the US...

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Issue #2069

WORTH READING

Big Bad Fix: The Case Against Climate Geoengineering A report by ETC Group, BiofuelWatch and Heinrich Böll Foundation Available at etcgroup.org As this report details,...

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Issue #2007

Who rules Australia?

One of the striking features of federal elections is their increasingly undemocratic nature and Americanisation. Much of the electioneering by major parties has been short...

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Issue #2060

GREEN NOTES

Chevron’s website sings the praises of carbon capture and storage: “Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a proven technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)....

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Issue #2050

GREEN NOTES

Anna Pha Australians spend more than $570 and consume around 500 litres per person on bottled water per annum – second only to Singapore. The...

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Issue #1994

Reef policy is all bark no bite

For the past year, the Australian government has been waging a concerted battle against UNESCO to stop the Great Barrier Reef from being added to...

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Issue #2068

GREEN NOTES

Anna Pha Australia is a contracting party to the Convention on the Prevention of Maritime Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and other Matter, or London...

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Issue #1959

Morrison’s hydrogen scheme another marketing ploy

Yet again, the Morrison government is trying to pull the wool over Australia’s eyes. This time, Prime Minister Scott Morrison is attempting to sell the...

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Issue #1986

Incompetent: Scott Morrison at the COP26 Summit

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was initially hesitant to personally represent Australia at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP26.

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Issue #1988

Limiting global warming to 1.5° “on life support”

The United Nations Climate Change Conference – dubbed COP26 – has recently ended in Glasgow after two busy weeks in which 120 heads of state,...

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Penny Wong. Issue #2050

Wong’s “reality check” ignores reality

When Penny Wong took over as Foreign Minister from Marise Payne last year, she was surfing the wave of approval that brought the Albanese Labor...

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Issue #2044

GREEN NOTES

Anna Pha Last month Labor’s minister for environmental destruction, Tanya Plibersek, quietly granted Santos a licence to open 116 new coal seam gas wells in...

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Issue #1959

Climate Summit: “THE WORLD IS ON RED ALERT”

The growing recognition of the urgency by world leaders was reflected at the virtual climate summit called by US President Joe Biden from 22nd to 23rd April.

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Issue #2054

GREEN NOTES

Anna Pha “If emissions follow the trajectory set by current NDCs, there is a less than five per cent chance of keeping temperatures well below...

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A coal miners hat that has been hung up. Issue #2060

Survivors take on big coal

Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action have praised environmental justice groups for launching a fresh Federal Court challenge, arguing that the Environment Minister can and must...

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Issue #2029

End fossil fuels!

It appears as though climate action has a new, unlikely support from Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher! Speaking to an Australian business community event in London,...

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Issue #2031

Class war budget

The budget, delivered on 25th October, is set in the context of a looming global recession, ongoing wars, rocketing prices, extreme weather events, famine, and...

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Issue #2070

GREEN NOTES

The last thing we need Anna Pha Oceans are increasingly being seen as tools against global warming while offering tremendous business opportunities through the use...

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Issue #2013

Anti-protest laws affect us all

Earlier this month, NSW police bungled a raid on Blockade Australia activists in the Colo Valley, in Sydney’s north-west. Activists at the remote camp noticed...

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Issue #2034

Climate change wreaks havoc

Lives have been lost and thousands of homes have been flooded and destroyed as the floods continue to hit eastern Australia. People have lost their...

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Issue #2002

Budget 2022-23 – CLASS WAR

The budget announced by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is a pre-election, last ditch, vote-buying exercise from the Morrison government. Voters struggling with rising prices and falling...

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Issue #2025

Good planets are hard to find

La Niña event is under way for the third year in a row according to the Bureau of Meteorology. The Pacific, including Australia, can expect...

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Issue #2006

VOTE THEM OUT

The Coalition Morrison government has got to go. On Saturday 21st May vote them out! The Communist Party of Australia rejects the undemocratic electoral system...

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Issue #2027

Landmark UN decision highlights Australia’s climate injustice

In news that will surprise no one, a United Nations Committee has found the former Coalition government to have violated the human rights of Torres...

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Placard Issue #2056

Fight Climate Change Not War speak out and march Fremantle

On Saturday 27th May, several anti-war, anti-nuclear and climate activist groups held a speak-out on the AUKUS Agreement signed in September 2021 between Australia, the...

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Issue #2009

Feet on the ground

After nine years of corrupt, anti-people, climate deniers in office, the newly elected Albanese Labor government faces many challenges. Expectations of real change are high,...

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Issue #2029

Australia: The big polluter

Australia is the world’s largest gas and coal exporter. There are currently 114 new or expanded fossil fuel projects awaiting approval. In 2021-22, governments in...

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Issue #1955

Wollongong joins in Global Climate Strike

Despite the weather, plans went ahead on Friday, 19 March, for a demonstration in Illawarra’s CBD.

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Issue #2062

Climate crisis intensifies

On four consecutive days, the earth has reached its hottest day on record, culminating in a global average temperature of 17.23 degrees Celsius on 4th...

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Issue #1986

“Code red for humanity”: Glasgow Climate Summit

The rich G20 countries, responsible for more than eighty per cent of human-made emissions.

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Issue #2069

DINGO

The Climate Council has labelled the decision to approve an extension to the Gregory Crinum coal mine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin until 2073 as “stunning...

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Issue #2010

Energy prices explode: capitalism in crisis

Consumers face soaring energy costs as Australia’s gas and thermal coal exporters rake in windfall profits. The incoming Labor government has inherited the legacy of...

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Issue #1956

NSW floods not a single story

In late March, floods covered 600 km along the NSW coast with tens of thousands of people evacuated from their homes. This event has been referred to in the media as a once in a 100-year event.

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Stop fracking rally. Issue #2063

Mega-fracker now on site

Water is life. But right now, Tamboran Resources is on the fast track to frack the Northern Territory, and water is at risk of being...

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Issue #2056

DINGO

British PM Rishi Sunak has announced that two further barges will house around 1000 asylum-seekers off Britain’s coast. In a speech in Dover, Kent, Sunak...

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Electric cars charging while parked on street. Issue #2060

Electric vehicles

Individually, Australians hold the dubious distinction of being the world’s biggest polluters, on a per capita basis, among nations of the OECD (Organisation for Economic...

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Issue #2070

DINGO

As temperatures climb, and heatwaves become more common, it’s worth remembering that unions achieve and enforce protection against heat. As a comrade in the Rail...

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Issue #2012

The sun will shine, the wind will blow

Australia is on the brink of a total collapse of its domestic energy market amid a crisis that has been decades in the making. If...

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Issue #2019

“CLIMATE WARS”

As of writing, a bill placing into law Labor’s forty-three per cent emissions reduction target by 2030 has passed the lower house. The bill also...

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Issue #2067

DINGO

The increasing concentration of wealth and power among mega-corporations, facilitated in no small part by rigged rules of the global economy, is undermining democracy, economic...

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Issue #2047

Background to IPCC report

The production of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports by consensus, by scientists and governments means that statements that appear in the report summaries...

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Issue #2063

Resist the anti-China scare campaign

Australians have real problems, problems that can’t be wished away. Climate change is happening now, and our ALP government is making it worse. There is...

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Magela Creek, Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory. Issue #2053

NT: Gas industry gets biggest slice

The Territory and Federal governments appear to have prioritised spending on roads that will benefit the fracking industry at a time when many of the...

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Issue #2046

Illawarra renewable energy zone to deliver long-term work

Maritime workers living and working in the Illawarra are excited by the opportunities and long-term industry development that will come from the declaration by the...

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Issue #2052

In their words: “No fracking”

Amid opposition from Indigenous owners and in the face of a growing environmental crisis, the NT government has given the go-ahead for fracking in the...

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Issue #2049

MAY DAY

The international working class continues to commemorate the struggles and gains achieved over 134 years since the first May Day commemoration in 1889 which remembered...

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Issue #2052

Not a People’s Budget

Budgets involve a redistribution of wealth reflecting government priorities and serving class interests. The 2023-24 federal budget has clear priorities. The big winners are the...

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Wind farm. Issue #2053

“Vastly out of line with the science”

The Climate Council has slammed Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s decision to ignore the climate risk of four polluting coal projects as “reckless” and “out of...

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Issue #2047

“Defuse climate time-bomb”

“This is the earth’s last chance to avoid climate disaster,” warns the Intergovernmental UN Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC in its latest report...

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Issue #2070

Speeding up

Things are speeding up. Climate change has gone from causing the cliched reaction ‘I’m worried about my grandchildren,’ to ‘I worry about my children,’ to...

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Issue #2050

May Day 2023: What do we march for?

1889 is a long way behind us, and the first May Day commemoration honouring the workers killed and wounded in the Haymarket confrontation in Chicago...

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World with thermometer and burn forest in background. Issue #2064

End the rule of fossil fuel

“Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning. The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling...

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Issue #2054

Time for action

“Are we there yet?” This is the perennial question of bored children in the family car on a long trip. For some time now, humanity...

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