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Breeding obvious: Population moratorium…

…civilisation’s best shot at saving itself and what survives of the natural world.
ipcc-understates-threat understatement

ipcc-understates-threat understatement

Bulletins proclaiming that the ipcc 1.5° report understates climate threat are literally understatements of epochal proportions. Self-reinforcing climate feedbacks already irreversibly underway signal civilization’s ever-growing greenhouse gas…

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On the unspeakable ephemerality of beaches

On the unspeakable ephemerality of beaches

Relying on economics to salvage a survivable climate is the 21st century equivalent of a standing down an army and leaving defence of the realm to wizardry. With the United States Senate summarily scuttling the Green New Deal, it might seem…

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Odds against tomorrow without ultimate sacrifice

Odds against tomorrow without ultimate sacrifice

As if its bureaucrats needed any encouragement. Trump’s America now has its Environmental Protection Authority peddling the equivalent of Lisa Simpson’s Ignorital©. The agency requires its officials to lace their public utterances with phrases contrived to…

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Paris climate accord not the half of it

Paris climate accord not the half of it

Not all agree it’s a bad thing Trump’s made good on his campaign promise to pull the United States out of Paris. One climate researcher argues that the Trump circus could do less damage outside of the tent, than in it. But regardless, a bad-tempered…

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Loose affiliation of billionaires and moratorium babies

Loose affiliation of billionaires and moratorium babies

Bill and Melinda Gates are getting a lot of unwelcome attention. They are bearing the brunt of the Guardian’s otherwise well-meaning fossil-fuels divestment campaign. To paint Bill and Melinda Gates the face of divestment reluctance is a bit rich. For starters…

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Survival in the hands of generation 10‍ ‍001

Survival in the hands of generation 10‍ ‍001

Sustainability could be the death of us. Bursting beyond the seven billion milestone, and with two billion poor and one billion poor and hungry, the global population is projected to swell to between 10 and 16 billion by the end of the century. In 2011, human…

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Much-needed storms of our granddaughters

Much-needed storms of our granddaughters

Dick Smith writes entirely eloquently. Which should mean that Dick Smith’s Population Crisis gets to be read by a usefully broad audience. It also helps that his just-published book, at 198 pages, is not too dauntingly lengthy, given the inherently daunting…

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Dick Smith to Murdoch: Be a Beaverbrook

Dick Smith to Murdoch: Be a Beaverbrook

In a recent book, Terri Irwin makes this perceptive comment: “In a hundred years, what difference is it going to make worrying about two acres of land. We need to focus on the real change that will make the world a better place for our children and…”

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Storm sidestepped over fewer grandchildren

Storm sidestepped over fewer grandchildren

In one notable respect, he was not preaching to the converted. With the possible exception of the odd journalist, the 350 people who packed the 250-seat Auckland University lecture theatre on Thursday evening had been ready to hear everything…

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New Year’s resolution breeding obvious

New Year’s resolution breeding obvious

By next New Year’s Day, the population will have just reached seven billion, yet propaganda abounds claiming that it’s not the approaching-seven-billion souls currently inhabiting Planet Earth, but the unsustainable lifestyles of a small proportion of the world’s...

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