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Sustainability

What We Learned in Copenhagen

By Andrew Charlton
At 10.45 p.m. my phone rang. “The Danes are switching to the back-up plan,” a voice said. “Room 20. 11.30 tonight.” I pulled on my suit jacket, took up my warm coat and ventured downstairs into the night. I followed the now familiar route through Copenhagen’s cobbled laneways and grand boulevards, across the bascule bridge straddling its narrow harbour straits, arriving finally at t
September 2011

September 2011 editor’s note

By Monthly Wire
There’s been remarkably little critical debate on the Left about what Gillard’s carbon price will actually achieve. Environmental groups are uniformly spruiking it, perhaps sensing the package is the last conceivable near-term chance of climate action. According to our writer Guy Pearse, the conservative positions of both sides of politics on environmental issues should make us sceptical
The Coal Industry’s Coal-fed Algae Plan

Coal’s Next Alibi

By Guy Pearse
Imagine a supermarket called Coal’s where everything in your trolley was made with algae fed with carbon dioxide from a large industrial facility, such as a coal-fired power station. On your way in, the smiling coalmining union boss Tony Maher might greet you from a poster, saying, as he does: “Coal … It’s organic.” There’d be meat and fish raised on coal-based algal meal, bread, pasta, cereals, biscuits, dairy products, pet

Greenwash

By Guy Pearse
Next time you fly, grab your in-flight magazine or newspaper, carefully rip out a few pages, jot a few words on each, smile knowingly to those seated next to you and stash them away. Upon arrival, use your phone to photograph some billboards in the terminal with the same care you’d give family portraits. If you spot hybrid taxis or rental cars outside embl
The State of Design Festival

Food for Thought

By Alan Saunders
In discussions about contemporary Australian design, the name of the nineteenth-century American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce is, it’s safe to say, seldom mentioned. It’s a pity, because Peirce invented the form of logical inference known as abductio
National Curriculum

Comment

By Waleed Aly
That’s the thing about meddling with a curriculum: it is an inescapably political, often ideological, exercise. I do not, for instance, need to tell you where South Dakota’s legislature sits on the issue of climate change. Theirs is not a scientific judgem
Revisiting 'Wake in Fright'

Home Truths

By Kate Jennings
The plot of Wake in Fright is as old as an outcropping west of Menindee. As old as Virgil:The way downward is easy from Avernus.Black Dis’s door stands open night and day.But to retrace your steps to heaven’s air,There is the trouble, there is the toil. Aeneas
The Victorian bushfires and the royal commission

Why We Weren’t Warned

By Robert Manne
Shortly after midday we learned that a fire had broken out in Kilmore, some 50 kilometres to the north-west. From now on we were alert, glued to ABC local radio and the Country Fire Authority website. It soon became obvious that this was a serious fire. Wallan

Botanical Curiosities

By Gay Bilson
The most enchanting display in the original and permanent collection of the recently re-opened Museum of Economic Botany in the Botanic Gardens of Adelaide consists of about 350 apples, pears and plums, a few peaches and figs, and one forlorn, damaged pomegranate. These
Carbon Omissions

Comment

By Tim Flannery
Over the past four years, there has been immeasurable progress on climate change - in public awareness, in media interest and in the political response to the problem. In early 2005, one of us was completing The Weather Makers; the other was working at 10 Down
Damien Wright & His Table

The Pursuit of Usable Beauty

By Gideon Haigh

Comment

By Judith Brett
The big lesson of the past few months of financial crises is that government is the ultimate risk manager. When all else fails, be it the weather, our marriage, the banks or even our child-care provider, we turn to the state. Natural-disaster relief is a regular feature
The Same Dirty Old Energy

In the Dark?

By John Birmingham
The Mays own and run Solartec, a boutique renewable-energy company specialising in solar panels. Phil May, a country boy, didn't start out as a "tree-hugging type", according to the company's homey, avuncular website. He more or less blundered into renewable energy as a business after buying a rural property that came with the promise of free electricity fro
What he must do to win

Obama!

By Noel Pearson
According to Steele, white guilt became a potent force in American culture and politics because, following the civil-rights victories of the '60s, whites were forced to confront their long association with racism. White America suffered a crisis of moral authority because the remedying of discrimination in the present did not absolve it of the injustices of the past and the continuing legacy of bl
The CSIRO and the Total Wellbeing Diet

Confounders

By Geoff Russell
In late May 2005, this prestigious scientific organisation launched a diet book, The CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet. Despite attracting criticism from nutritionists, including Rosemary Stanton, for its high protein content and its research basis, the Total Wellbei
Policing Australia’s northern waters

A Death in the Harbour

By Ruth Balint
Three days after its departure, in the early hours of 28 January 2003, the Yamdena was bailed up by the HMAS Fremantle, a Royal Australian Navy vessel on routine patrol. No doubt the fishing boat had already been spotted by one of the Coastwatch surveillance p

Comment

By Judith Brett
"There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." But tides also recede. The big question for observers early in this election year is: Has the tide finally turned?Still running John Howard's way are the economy and the resources

Howard’s Brutopia

By Kevin Rudd