All articles
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Environmental movement needs the human touch
Greenpeace CEO David Ritter considers whether environmental activists have talked too much about targets and quotas instead of real people’s lives. Originally posted on ABC Environment Earlier this week I swapped Facebook messages with an old mate with whom I used to go fishing, in the days when we were both teenagers at school in…
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Macken Sense: When Communities Say No To Miners
Big mining projects need community approval as well as government licences. It’s a sign of a healthy democracy when politicians respect a community’s social licence, writes Julie Macken Blogpost by Julie Macken, originally posted on newmatilda.com For the last decade the mining industry has successfully argued that the damage done to the environment, to farmland…
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Macken Sense: And the winner is….
Last week produced two powerful stories that define the perimeters surrounding the increasingly contested space in Australia’s economic and energy future. Just as history is written by the victors, there’s little doubt the future is in part created by the stories that prevail today – but which one will win the day? The first…
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Groups want action not closed-door negotiations on Super Trawler
Press release – 23 July, 2012Environment groups have today rejected an offer from Federal Fisheries Minister Joe Ludwig to enter into negotiations with Tasmanian company Seafish as the closed-door negotiations are an attempt to avoid rather than promote public debate on an issue of state and national importance.The rejection of this process by conservation groups,…
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Macken Sense: How change happens…..
Everyone from the fossil fuel industry to Greenpeace’s own Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo, has conceded Rio + 20 was a total waste of space. Naidoo’s take on it was pretty simple: ”Rio has turned into an epic failure. It has failed on equity, failed on ecology and failed on economy.” Apart from that it was…
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Standing up in a crowd
2012 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. The book, perhaps for the first time, put a very public spotlight on the devastating impact of chemical pesticides on the environment, particularly the aerial spraying of DDT in agriculture. Blogpost by Ben Pearson, orginally posted on ABC Environment Carson’s book…
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Macken Sense: Jobs
When I was a kid in primary school we had a teacher who used to give every week a theme, like Book Week, or Family Week, Animal Week and of course Religious Martyr Week – it was a Catholic thing. If she were still around today she would have to have made this week Job…
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Macken sense: It’s time for Martin
If the Prime Minister is fair dinkum about creating a clean economy future and developing a diverse and robust economy that will carry us through the gloom following the boom she needs to move the Minister for Resources, Energy & Tourism, Martin Ferguson, out of his portfolio and separate the Energy and Tourism portfolios. Of…
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Macken sense: I got it totally wrong…
Let me be the first one to admit that I got it wrong – seriously wrong. In last week’s post I said that I was willing to bet my house on this prediction, “… over the next six months the State and Federal governments are going to be working hand-in-glove to eradicate as much environmental…