As I wrote last week, one of the many side meetings at the Copenhagen climate summit was a small gathering of countries that were plotting to undermine the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (designed to promote sustainable development) by including the controversial Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology.
If it goes ahead, it would mean that rather [...]

Slowly but surely, electricity retailers in Australia are moving away from coal.  Just last week, Red Energy, ruled out buying electricity from any new coal power stations.  Their owner, Snowy Hydro, has also committed to not building new coal-fired power stations.

This is great news. It proves again that electricity retailers and generators can rule out [...]

It’s a day on from my initial report back on the budget and I’ve been trying to make sure I’m not getting carried away with the size of the renewable energy funding. After years of budgets being handed down that do the square root of not much for real climate solutions, I’m naturally inclined to [...]

I’ve had quite a lot of time to contemplate tonight’s federal budget, having spent four hours in the Treasury lock-up with papers open to pages numbering into the 300s and a confused look on my face shouting: “WHAT? … HUH? … OK, so it’s $100 coming from this department, but only allocated after the first [...]

Today the big bad news, again, is the failure of the Australian Government to do something decisive on climate change. The Melbourne Age reports that ‘State emission cuts ‘futile’ and would aid polluters’.
Our CEO, Steve Shallhorn writes in the Sydney Morning Herald, where he asks ‘Why is the Federal Government failing to live up to [...]

Multi-lateral efforts to promote renewable energy, and overcome the barriers to deployment, have intensified recently, with the establishment of a new global body. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) aims to become “the main driving force in promoting a rapid transition towards the widespread and sustainable use of renewable energy on a global scale”. Sounds great, unfortunately [...]

One thing I always associate with Christmas is terrible jokes. It might be that and awful gag has just fallen out of a broken cracker or, after a bit too much brandy, Dad decides to update us on how his comedy act is coming along.
But the coal industry have outdone us all this Christmas by [...]

Today the Australian Coal Association launched its $2.5 million advertising campaign to convince the Government and the good people of Australia that a) it cares about climate change and b) that it has a solution that will allow us to keep digging up coal and burning it without killing the planet.
 
But somehow, despite [...]

Our coal ship painting action the other day put both Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett on the spot, forcing them to respond publicly about their plans to expand the coal industry. Both politicians used the development of so-called ‘clean coal’ technology as their defence.
‘Clean coal’, or carbon [...]

Greenpeace activists finished their painting just moments before a police boat turned up this morning, with a final tally of 20 ships painted with messages like “Bligh exporting CO2”, “Coal is killing the Reef” and “Stop coal expansion”.
While 10 activists were taken into custody by police, Premier Bligh was questioned about the protest [...]

Premier Anna Bligh chose to announce plans for the massive expansion of Queensland’s export coal industry at the same time as the Rudd government was releasing its so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme earlier this week. In hindsight, it was easy to see there was no contradiction between the two, because Penny Wong’s policy more closely [...]

Despite the G8 countries’ announcement this morning of their ‘vision’ to halve global emissions by 2050, there is a continuing reluctance on the part of the developed nations to take decisive action to reduce emissions and shift away from the global reliance on fossil fuels to renewable technologies. Kevin Rudd is speaking at the G8+ [...]

Less than two weeks ago, Greenpeace released a damning report on carbon capture and storage (CCS) labelled “False Hope” which outlined the problems associated with the unproven technology. Central to CSS’s flaws is that it’s proponents are asking us to pin our hopes that it may be available by 2030. [...]

From Canberra, Greenpeace head of campaigns Stephen Campbell sends this statement:
“We are in the midst of an extreme climate crisis and the Rudd Government’s first budget was an opportunity to show voters that they truly means business on climate change.
“Instead they have let Australia down by not delivering the climate solutions that are at their [...]

So the political Oscars that was the 2020 summit has come to an end. The issue I had my eye on over the weekend was one close to our hearts here at Greenpeace – climate change. And funnily enough, every time I tuned into the radio over the weekend, all I kept hearing about climate [...]

In case it has slipped anyone’s minds, let me recap why the environment movement campaigns on climate change. We have a few years left to get emissions falling dramatically and in Australia, we need to be looking at at least 40% reductions below 1990 levels by the year 2020. This is if we want to [...]

South Australians could be forgiven for thinking that their Premier is serious about addressing climate change. At the recent Solar Cities Conference, Premier Mike Rann announced that his Government would aim to be carbon neutral by 2020 and went on to document the state’s climate achievements.
 
Yet Premier Rann is on the brink of approving not [...]