Guess how many mobile phones are currently in use around the world? Around five billion http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10569081. Yep, that’s a lot of phones. But now guess how many have been sold since 1994? Around ten billion. That means five billion phones are sitting around gathering dust. Of these, Mobile Muster, an industry body that encourages recycling, [...]

The coal industry is feeling very confident about its future. With prices high and global demand booming, it sees nothing but opportunity ahead. But industries often get their forecasts wrong. A former Chairman of IBM forecast the global market for computers was about five (yes, that’s five computers)! The Chairman and Founder of one of [...]

One of the world’s leading investors Jeremy Grantham, with US$100 billion under his management, came out recently saying that climate change “will be the most important investment issue for the foreseeable future”.
This seems like a big call when so little attention is focused on climate and so much on the economy. But is he right?
In [...]

The weekend saw the world’s largest coal loading facility, at Newcastle, closed down by climate change activists. The group behind them Rising Tide <http://risingtide.org.au/>  claiming they “were compelled to take these actions because our political leaders are failing to take any action at all.”
What do you think? Are these brave protestors taking a stand for the [...]

Amongst all the political shenanigans in Australia, it’s good to see the world still powering ahead with solar energy. In the USA, a new plant looks like going ahead, having received a key approval, that will be the world’s largest ever at 1,000 MW – this is the size of a large coal power station. [...]

The climate debate is often framed as a question of belief. The question is asked for example “Do you believe in the climate science?”
This is a strange phenomena and one we don’t apply to many other areas of science. We don’t ask “Do you believe aeroplanes can fly”? Do you believe medicines can work?
Sure, each [...]

What will the election result mean for the environment? It seems to me likely that, given we now have the balance of power in both houses being held by people who support climate change action, we may finally get some progress.
I argue this in my latest blog in Climate Spectator. The rise of the green [...]

These past few weeks have seen some very disturbing extreme weather events around the world. Floods in Pakistan, mudslides in China, droughts and fires in Russia and heat records across Asia have led to tragic deaths and left millions homeless. Of course, no individual event proves anything but the trends here are clear.
Reinsurance companies pay [...]

With Pakistan flooding, Russia burning and temperature records getting smashed around the world in recent months (see here for details) it won’t be long before the world wakes up to climate change and it’s economic impacts.
For me, one of the interesting impacts will then be the race between China and the USA to see who [...]

What do you think of Julia Gillard’s announcement to engage a people’s assembly on climate change and a new expert panel? Do we need more consultation or as argued by some, have we had enough of that already with Garnaut and countless other enquiries.
Meanwhile, as argued by Giles Parkinson in Climate Spectator, China is racing [...]