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Keywords: Renewables

  • ENVIRONMENT

    How Abbott still haunts climate policy

    • Greg Foyster
    • 24 April 2019
    10 Comments

    By setting the boundaries of what is considered politically acceptable, Tony Abbott has influenced the level of ambition in every party's climate policy, and has even caused environment groups to shift their positions. How has he manage to wield so much influence for so long? There are three reasons he cut through when Labor didn't.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Economy v environment is no zero-sum game

    • Daniel Nour
    • 15 April 2019

    We've witnessed this confluence of economic opportunity with aid and development in Indonesia, where our support of local eco-tourism has revived communities with self-sustaining employment opportunities while preserving local rainforests from being felled for wood.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Ideology and idiocy in national energy policy

    • Cristy Clark
    • 27 September 2018
    8 Comments

    In light of the evidence, a national energy policy prioritising renewables should be uncontroversial. But is seems ideology is impermeable to evidence. Instead, we have the government continuing to try to pressure AGL into keeping the Liddell coal-fired power plant open despite clear-cut economic and environmental reasons for its closure.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Budget curses climate in name of growth

    • Francine Crimmins
    • 10 May 2018
    7 Comments

    With every passing year the government is siloing its building and expansion funding from the money needed to prevent the environmental consequences. In this budget, we see an environmental agenda hijacked to reinforce ideas of growth, using environmental buzz words which convince constituents it's for the earth.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Abbott spruiking coal is a win for renewables

    • Greg Foyster
    • 13 April 2018
    16 Comments

    Every time the self-appointed Ambassador for the Little Black Rock fronts up to the cameras he reinforces the message that coal power is the technology of a bygone era. The Coalition old guard's thinking hasn't changed since Abbott's 'carbon tax' sloganeering of 2012 and 2013. But the landscape has changed considerably.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate champion SA Labor's dark stain

    • Greg Foyster
    • 16 March 2018
    5 Comments

    The complexity of environmental policy in SA echoes a broader trend in environment issues: climate change has monopolised the debate, squeezing out local conservation concerns. The upshot is a Left-leaning government can be progressive on clean energy, while holding a regressive stance on less prominent topics.

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  • RELIGION

    In dialogue with Francis' eco manifesto

    • Jacqui Remond
    • 23 February 2018
    9 Comments

    Dialogue plays a role in how we create meaning. When we have true dialogue we create a flow of meaning: between us, and between us and everything around us. Laudato Si' invites us to be mindful of the dialogue that's happening at a human level, at a cosmic level, and with the creator God.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    SA's free solar not what it seems

    • Greg Foyster
    • 15 February 2018
    2 Comments

    It sounded like the ultimate election sweetener. Six weeks out from polling day, SA Premier Jay Weatherill announced a plan to install free solar and Tesla batteries on 50,000 homes. Except it's not quite that simple. Seduced by the chance to publish more clickbait about Elon Musk, the media misrepresented the details.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Bitcoin has a massive energy problem

    • Greg Foyster
    • 19 January 2018
    1 Comment

    The digital currency Bitcoin consumes more electricity per year than New Zealand. Yes, the entire country. Escalating energy intensity is actually a security feature of the currency. With the related carbon dioxide emissions from this escalating electricity consumption, Bitcoin is a formula for climate change catastrophe.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Forecast: political storm over energy

    • Greg Foyster
    • 08 December 2017
    4 Comments

    Summer is here, and so is the political spin about blackouts. This year, with a record November heatwave in Victoria and a press gallery hypersensitised to energy politics, the blame game started early - well before anything has actually gone wrong.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The moral relativism of pro-coal conservatives

    • Tim Beshara
    • 20 November 2017
    8 Comments

    The charge of moral relativism has been laid against progressives in debates about everything from marriage to multiculturalism. However when it comes to climate change and coal, it is conservatives who choose to muddy the debate by pointing out that coal can be good depending on the context in which it is used.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The renewables debate is won, but we may still lose the war

    • Greg Foyster
    • 17 August 2017
    9 Comments

    In the last few years, vested interests have changed their strategy for opposing action on climate change. Where they once focused on denying the problem, they’re now putting their efforts into sabotaging the solutions. Instead of funding fake experts to say the ‘science isn’t settled’, fossil fuel companies and their political backers have been running a smear campaign against renewable energy technologies like wind turbines, solar panels and batteries.

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