Australasia

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 […]

Australasia

100 days without COVID-19: how New Zealand got rid of a virus that keeps spreading across the world

The Conversation

By Michael Baker, Amanda Kvalsvig, and Nick Wilson | – On Sunday, New Zealand will mark 100 days without community transmission of COVID-19. From the first known case imported into New Zealand on February 26 to the last case of community transmission detected on May 1, elimination took 65 days. New Zealand relied on three […]

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 […]

Climate Change

Fiji to Rich Carbon-Spewing Nations: History will Judge you for Sinking Us!

contributors

By Jon Queally The interim prime minister of Fiji on Thursday condemned the international community for its continued failure to address the crisis of climate change, saying Pacific island nations like his have been left "to sink beneath the waves" as the planet warms and the oceans rise. Fiji’s interim Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama told […]