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US moral authority & soft power in the era of climate change
Robert D. McCallum, Jr., Ambassador of the USA to Australia, was asked on ABC Breakfast yesterday how he felt about his country’s declining moral authority.
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Airplot is a runway winner
How do you stop a major airport expanding? Buy the land they want for the runway. That’s what Greenpeace in the UK has done. They bought a plot of land slap bang in the middle of the proposed third runway site at Heathrow Airport, London. Their co-owners are TV impressionist Alastair McGowan, actress Emma Thompson…
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Sydney Uni Summer School Asks: Is Coal Like War?
Today was a blast from the past, when I presented a session of the University of Sydney summer school’s program on peace and the environment. They were a mixed bunch of post-grads from various continents and walks of life, including a Canadian Greenpeace activist who had tried to stop the berthing of a US nuclear…
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Looking forward to 2009
It’s been a lovely summer. I was camping for a couple of days near the beach at Meroo National Park on the NSW south coast. Long afternoon sleeps under shady eucalpyts… morning swims in the crystal clear ocean… slow cooked damper on the campfire. It was a great rest after a hectic year. The turbulance…
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Japanese heed tales from Australian whaler
Australians love their whales. They might be surprised to know that this is not just the season when Japan’s whaling fleet goes to the Southern Ocean, it is also the whale watching season around Japan. Australia’s last whaling Captain, Paddy Hart, went to Tokyo a few weeks ago, to try to convince Japanese people that…
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Rudd’s climate placebo: a 5% target
On Friday, Kevin Rudd announced over half a billion dollars in funding for the NSW coal industry. Today, he announced an emissions reduction target and an emissions trading scheme that will have virtually no impact on reducing emissions and will give billions in handouts to the big polluters. This is a climate action plan that…
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Rudd's climate emissions shock and awe hits Greenpeace
People in the Greenpeace office in Sydney are still in shock that Australian PM Kevin Rudd has just announced an atrocious emissions target of 5% by 2020. Staff and volunteers put their heads up over the partitions, mouths agape, when the news went around. This is one of those moments that puts a very powerful…
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The Coal Industry’s Christmas Joke
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…
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An Ill Wind Blows For Aussie Workers
As Australian government delegates do nothing in Poznan, our unsupported renewables industry starts to close down back home. Last night, ABC-TV’s 7.30 Report program revealed that hundreds of Australian wind industry employees are about to be sacked, thanks to government inaction on renewables target promises. And there’s a bitter irony. In the same town as…
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Poznan day 8: Forests Are More Than Just Carbon Sticks
Paul Winn, our climate and forests campaigner, is in Poznan to talk about the Greenpeace Forests for Climate proposal. The world’s forests are more than just carbon sticks and a market offset approach won’t do much to ensure real emissions reductions to help avert catastrophic climate change. Greenpeace proposes a solution that addresses the need…
