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Search Results: solar

  • 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

    Will veganism save the planet?

    • Cristy Clark
    • 08 June 2018
    13 Comments

    Researchers from Oxford concluded that consumers have significant power to 'deliver environmental benefits on a scale not achievable by producers' by excluding animal products from their diets. Interestingly, this report comes at a time when the uptake of veganism is growing significantly, both globally and in Australia.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Renters suffer rooftop inequality

    • Greg Foyster
    • 14 May 2018
    9 Comments

    This is Australia's looming inequality issue. Those who can take advantage of the energy revolution will have lower bills and more comfortable living conditions during the frequent extreme weather events we'll experience with climate change. Those who can't will be left reliant on a dirty, aging and increasingly expensive electricity grid.

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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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  • 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

    How artists can rewrite the climate story

    • Greg Foyster
    • 08 November 2017
    8 Comments

    Much artistic response to the environmental crisis is negative , either criticising the excesses of the present, or predicting destruction in the future. Where are the positive stories of a new, sustainable culture? This is the greatest contribution art can make, yet for every vision of a better world there are a hundred bleak dystopias.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Conservatives and conservation

    • Tim Beshara
    • 17 October 2017
    8 Comments

    The most prominent self-described conservative in Australia, former prime minister Tony Abbott, has expressed many views on conservation and on the merits of addressing climate change, but none of these views could be argued as coming from a position of conservatism that Teddy Roosevelt could agree with.

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