Latest Articles
Below is a collection of articles on climate justice.
Matt Canavan says Australia doesn’t subsidise the fossil fuel industry, an expert says it does
Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan on Monday night denied suggestions the government subsidises Australia’s fossil fuel industry. The comments prompted a swift response from some social media users, who cited evidence to the contrary. Canavan was responding to a viewer question on ABC’...
Social Justice and the Future of Fire Insurance in Australia
The Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements (Bushfire Royal Commission) opens its hearings next week. One of the issues that it will need to consider is whether the Australian system of home insurance is still fit for purpose in the face of increased climate-induced bushfire risk. ...
Morrison’s other stimulus
The debt incurred by the Government’s coronavirus stimulus packages will force a rethink of many of its current spending commitments. But what is also crucial is that money not be wasted trying to save the unsavable. Yet, this is exactly what the government is doing via its continuing...
Unions and a Just Transition
Ensuring that a climate transition is successful must involve the most efficient mitigation methods implemented as soon as possible. But as well as making deep cuts to our emissions, a transition also has to ensure that whatever policies are adopted achieve a just outcome, especially for t...
A message to the Climate Change Conference: cutting emissions is not enough
The latest round of UN climate negotiations - COP 25 - will begin in Madrid this week. The Conference will attempt to make progress on ramping measures to meet domestic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But one thing that COP 25 is unlikely to make progress on is the constraint on the supply o...
Carbon majors
The emissions produced from the fossil fuels extracted by Australia’s major gas, coal and oil producing companies – “carbon majors” – such as BHP, Glencore and Yancoal, are now larger than all Australia’s domestic emissions. While these companies, and Australia itself, have no legal r...
Climate Activism, Coalitions and Climate Justice
Climate change and how humanity addresses it, is the defining issue of our age. Put briefly, humanity is on a trajectory to destroy the habitability of our planet and to precipitate the largest mass extinction of species in the last 65 million years, including, perhaps, our own. Notwithstanding t...
Reducing One’s Carbon Footprint
Rising global temperatures threaten an array of alarming consequences, from the eradication of animal and plant species due to habitat loss, through to millions of human deaths due to increasingly frequent natural disasters and the spread of disease (among other things). The ideal solution would alm...
The Relevance of Choice in a Just Transition
In 2015, nearly all countries agreed to limit the global average temperature rise to no more than 2°C compared to preindustrial levels. Attaining this goal will come at a cost to carbon-intensive industries—and this will have flow-on effects for others. To take one example, the closure of the Haz...
A ‘Fair Share’ Approach to Individual Carbon Emissions
A lot has been said about the moral obligations of states, sub-state actors (such as local governments), and industries to curb their carbon emissions. It might seem that this would entail a similar obligation for us, as individuals, to address our own personal emissions. But how might we ar...
