Simon Butler

  • Conference warns of dangerous climate shifts

    The biggest international scientific conference on climate change since 2007 gave an implicit rebuke to the governments of the biggest polluting nations, including Australia. Its message was that the threat is undeniable and inaction is inexcusable.

  • Carbon trading must die, so the planet can live

    In his 2006 bestseller about climate change, Heat, British writer George Monbiot said his biggest worry was not that people would stop talking about climate change. His fear was that they’d talk us to kingdom come.

  • CPRS politics — cynicism in the face of disaster

    Climate activists in Newcastle, already the world’s biggest coal port, have been campaigning to stop a planned upgrade. The upgrade will double the port’s coal export capacity and worsen climate change, they say.

  • 'Plan B': less climate action than we need

    In May, visiting US ecologist Bill McKibben spoke at a packed forum at the University of Sydney. He put a compelling case for emergency action on climate change. In short, we must act now and act decisively. Otherwise the planet will become uninhabitable.

  • After the climate rallies — taking stock

    We would have loved for them to be bigger, but the June 13 national climate rallies were an unmistakable step forward for the climate action movement. More than 11,000 rallied nationally, making them the largest climate actions yet in the era of PM Kevin Rudd.

  • ACTU disappoints on climate change

    At first glance, the climate change policy decided at the June 2-4 Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) national congress looks serious. Global warming is “the policy challenge of our time”, it declares.