Simon Butler

The rise and rise of the Greens

“Rats are loathsome beasts”, Paul Syvret of the Murdoch-owned Brisbane tabloid, the Courier Mail, remarked in his October 6 column. “Throughout millennia they have carried disease, pestilence, despoiled foodstuffs and caused untold misery.”

Grassroots action needed to stop climate change

Concern about the threat of climate change and environmental destruction has probably never been higher. Opinion polls consistently show that a big majority of Australians support serious action on climate change and a move away from an economy based on the burning of fossil fuels for energy.

Which way to a sustainable future?

“Now Or Never”
By Tim Flannery
Quarterly Essay, Issue 31
Black Inc, 2008
$15.95

ETS modelling ignores climate peril

Treasury modelling on the impacts of the federal Labor government’s proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) was released on October 30.

Bush is gone, now end the 'war on terror'

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 bombings of the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, US President George Bush declared an open-ended, apparently indefinite “war on terror”.

Climate action not hostage to economic crisis

A public statement endorsed by 40 of Australia’s leading environmental scientists warns that the global economic crisis must not be allowed to detract from action to halt global warming. The letter was published on < http://www.A HREF="mailto:crikey.com.au">crikey.com.au on October 21.

Conservation Council declares climate emergency

SYDNEY — A resolution put by Jonathan Doig from the Sutherland Climate Action Network and passed unanimously at the NSW Nature Conservation Council (NCC) annual conference on October 18 states, "The climate crisis has reached the level of a state

Climate emergency: no more business as usual

On October 10, 200 people attended “This is an emergency: an introduction to the real science of global warming”. The public forum was also the official launch of a new environmental organisation in Adelaide, the Climate Emergency Action Network (CLEAN).

Hope, terror and youth rebellion

Looking back on the political movements of the ’60s and ’70s is now a fairly well trodden path in the form of fiction, history and memoirs alike.

Is Venezuela taking the Cuban road?

I was a participant in the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network brigade to Venezuela in December 2006. I was lucky enough to squeeze into the packed presidential palace compound when the official national elections results confirmed an overwhelming victory for socialist President Hugo Chavez.

The climate threat — the people-power solution

Ross Garnaut’s long-anticipated “Targets and Trajectories” report into Australia’s carbon emissions future signals a wholesale surrender to the corporations desperate to change as little as possible and preserve their profits at any cost. It is a refusal to take the steps necessary to avert the very real dangers that climate change poses to life on the planet.

Cuba carries out new land reform

Over the past few months, the Cuban government under President Raul Castro has announced a series of reforms to the island nation’s agriculture and food production policies.