Australia

By Michael McGreevy and Fran Baum | – Less than two decades ago, South Australia generated all its electricity from fossil fuels. Last year, renewables provided a whopping 60% of the state’s electricity supply. The remarkable progress came as national climate policy was gripped by paralysis – so how did it happen? Our research set […]

Australia

Australia’s Massive Solar Energy Hub in Outback to produce coal-killer Green Ammonia

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Asian Renewable Energy Hub is planning a $16 billion solar and wind project in the part of the Australian outback known as Pilbara, that is, in the north of the West Australian desert. The panels work by converting photons or ordinary light rays to electricity. The Australian Bureau of […]

Australia

South Australia first to be 100% Solar-Powered, as Solar becomes Cheapest form of Energy

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The state of South Australia is the future. For one hour, on October 11, all of its electricity was generated by solar power, the first time this feat was achieved by any major jurisdiction in the world. So reports Richard Davies of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. October is a spring […]

Australia

Climate Emergency: Australia’s Wildfires showed we’re One Step from System Collapse, with no Food, Fuel, Phones

The Conversation

By Anthony Richardson | – This summer’s bushfires were not just devastating events in themselves. More broadly, they highlighted the immense vulnerability of the systems which make our contemporary lives possible. The fires cut road access, which meant towns ran out of fuel and fell low on food. Power to towns was cut and mobile […]

Australia

We’re All Australians Now: The Climate Conflagration is Coming for Us, too

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Let me betray my age for a moment. Some of you, I know, will be shocked, but I still read an actual newspaper. Words on real paper every day. I’m talking about the New York Times, and something stuck with me from the January 9th edition of that “paper” paper. Of […]

Australia

Some Technology is Too Dangerous: Iran’s Accidental Ballistic Launch and Australia’s Climate Inferno are Trying to Tell us Something

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The first month of 2020 has been full of lessons—if we are willing to listen. With over 200 brush fires burning in Australia and an area as big as West Virginia already scorched, Australia’s problems are hardly confined to the subcontinent. In a telling irony the plumes […]

Australia

Climate Catastrophe: With a Billion Animals Dead and the Koala in Danger, Will Australia’s Ecology Ever be the Same?

The Conversation

By Darren Evans | – The sheer scale and intensity of the Australian bushfire crisis have led to apocalyptic scenes making the front pages of newspapers the world over. An estimated 10 million hectares (100,000 sq km) of land have burned since 1 July 2019. At least 28 people have died. And over a billion […]