Monthly Archives: September 2013

Climate change, politics, Research

IPCC 2013 and Creative Self Destruction Redux

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Image: Christopher Wright
Image: Christopher Wright

Well the IPCC‘s latest scientific report has come out confirming what many of us have suspected – that anthropogenic climate change is on track with previous worst-case scenarios and the future prognosis is bleak. Given the IPCC is by its nature a conservative organisation, it seems likely that as before, the current report may well underestimate some climate impacts. Be that as it may, this is startling and confronting  to read given the import of its conclusions.

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Climate change, politics

The market versus the environment has to be a fairer fight

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A commitment to sustainability has become an essential component of any modern-day corporation’s public face. Visit the homepages of major organisations in any sector, from building to banking, from cola-making to coal-mining, and you’ll find their ‘green’ credentials front and centre.

This might be viewed as a predictable and entirely well-intentioned response to mounting concerns over climate change, deforestation, declining biodiversity and other environmental issues. Yet it is vital to note that an innate component of that response has been to further incorporate the environment within market capitalism.

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Climate change, Events, Research

Launch of the Sydney Environment Institute

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ScreenHunter_50 Sep. 21 22.09

Last Tuesday evening I attended the launch of the new Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of Sydney. SEI is a cross-Faculty research institute which aims to address two of the key questions of our time:

  • how do we understand and redesign the fundamental relationship between human communities and the natural world that supports them; and
  • how can people and societies adapt positively to environmental change?

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Climate change, Research

Imagining Our Climate Changed Future

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Climate change has rapidly emerged as a major threat to our future. Indeed the increasingly dire projections of increasing global temperatures and escalating extreme weather events highlight the existential challenge that climate change presents for humanity.

In popular and political discourse, climate change is depicted as an environmental or ‘natural’ problem that requires ‘rational’ responses based on scientific evidence. However, there is also a need to view climate change as a social and politically embedded phenomenon, linked to patterns of production and consumption and the ideological assumptions that underpin the economic system and our collective sensemaking processes.

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Climate change, Events, Research

New research network focuses on sustainability and business

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In the decade ahead, Australia and the world will face environmental, social and financial challenges of an unprecedented scale. These include tensions between economic growth and environmental degradation, a need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in response to climate change, and pressure to improve social inclusion and equity in a world of significant poverty and inequity. Businesses are clearly key players when it comes to responding to these challenges, but can businesses look beyond their short-term bottom line and better balance their economic needs with social and environmental priorities?

In focusing on these issues, recently the University of Sydney Business School launched its Balanced Enterprise Research Network (BERN) which explores how business in particular, can better balance economic, environmental and social concerns and improve the well-being of a wide range of stakeholders, including employees, communities and society more generally.

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Climate change, extreme weather

What Climate Change Looks Like

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One of the faces of a warming planet - The Rim Fire, California, August, 2013 (Image: U.S. Forest Service)
One of the faces of a warming planet – The Rim Fire, California, August, 2013 (Image: U.S. Forest Service)

The last few weeks has been full of news of extreme weather events from across the world. One of the best sources for keeping up to speed on the Anthropocene’s new climate ‘normals’ is Faun Kime’s great blog site, which includes weekly pictorial updates on weather disasters unfolding around the world.

Last week the extreme weather news hit our family in a way that really resonated. No, not one of our increasingly regular Australian extreme weather events, but something happening on the other side of the world, in a place we had visited a few months ago and fallen in love with: Yosemite National Park in California, USA.

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