LIMINAL

COVID-19 is doing a lot of the work environmentalists could only dream of. Major cities and their birds are breathing easier. Across China, smog has given way to the colour blue. Even the snow-capped Himalayas are visible from parts of Northern India for the first time in local’s memories. Here in Australia, bike sales are up and with fewer cars on the road fewer wild birds and animals are being injured. Seismologists are reporting that the upper crust of the Earth is quieter . Less transport means much less pollution. Global emissions are now predicted will fall by 2.6 billion metric tons in 2020, the largest fall in history. At home, many of us are returning to our gardens. There’s a shortage of seedlings at Bunnings. Even apartment dwellers are starting balcony gardens and “grow your own” food clubs. Might some of the changes wrought by coronavirus last? There are reasons to feel some optimism: 1. In this instance the prime minister has acted on the science. Rather t...

Vested interests have always sought to influence politicians but the problem of buying influence has in recent time developed into a cancer undermining the health of Australia’s democracy. Mining industry influence is a key example. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has analysed a dump of 2018-19 donations data on the Australian Electoral Commission’s (AEC) website. It found that the fossil-fuel industry doubled its donations to the major parties the past four years. The Coalition gets the lion’s share, but the amount Labor is ‘gifted’ is not far behind, certainly not insignificant. Drawing on four years of data from 2015-2016 to last financial year, the ACF confirms that the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) gave money to both Liberal and Nationals-aligned entities as well as Labor entities. MCA donated to the Hunter Federal Campaign Account of the Australian Labor Party, an electorate in coal country that was retained last year by Labor’s pro-coal MP Joel Fitzgibbo...

In the wake of the South Coast fires that ravaged Mogo and Cobargo and other towns, are stories about the lamentable loss of Aboriginal heritage sites. When sympathetically raised with an Aboriginal leader, I was reminded that all Australians lost sites that mattered to them. Whether it's pilgrim huts in the Alpine region, shell middens on the coast, or species brought to the brink of extinction, the bushfire carnage represents a shared loss, and one that can never fully be measured in dollars. Across cultures, there is a deep sadness that children will not enjoy places of historic and natural beauty in the same way that their parents and elders did, recognising that all of us have spiritual connections to place. The bushfire disaster and this coming weekend's Australia Day both happen to fall in the Christian season of "epiphany", a word which for Christians refers to the revelation or appearance of Christ, and in more common usage refers to a sudden and stri...

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I've been glued to the news for days, restless, easily distracted, feeling helpless. I want to stay informed but at times, it's too much. A bloke on the south coast of New South Wales said, ‘It was like world war three’. With rising anxiety, the threat of losing the lot, blackened daytime skies and scared small children wearing masks and adults holding their breath, it was. The enemy, fire, has been acting for months but the last few days have been truly frightening. These are difficult times, hours that have challenged and tested the very rhythm of everyday life - at a time of year when most of us are on holiday, usually snatching time for rest and play. These days have demanded leaders with empathy, respect and wisdom. Monday this week, exactly twelve days after Christmas is known as the Epiphany. It remembers the journey of the Magi - the three wise men - to Bethlehem. Many of us have had our own very personal epiphanies this season; searing experiences that have...

It's frightening not being able to breathe. Having had asthma since birth, managing it is part of the rhythm of my life. Preventative medications have kept me alive, but, like millions of Australians, I occasionally get a small dose of terror when my chest tightens and my blue inhaler is empty or nowhere to be seen. Bushfires have pushed up pollution levels to many times above safe levels in many parts of the country this past week, including in Sydney and Brisbane, which for a few days had air worse than in Beijing’s. Canberra too has been blanketed in dust. We are inadequately prepared for what will become the new norm. People living with asthma (more than one in ten of us) and others sensitive to smoke will have to stay indoors for longer. Prolonged poor air quality will hurt us all. The latest edition of the MJA–Lancet Countdown on health and climate change came out this month, offering a global and an Australian national assessment. The report examined 41 indicators ac...

In the lead up to last week’s School Strike 4 Climate, a tweet jumped out at me. “Why are so many young people depressed?” it asked, and then presented two different answers. Teenagers: The adults have f***ed up the planet and our future. Adults: It’s the phones. Of course, both might be true. Depression might be sparked by the fate of the planet, but then fed by incremental updates and outrage delivered to smartphones in our pockets all the time. It isn’t what used to happen. Panic about 1980s' concerns such as nuclear war weren’t amplified and fed back to us through a hyperconnected echo chamber. It most certainly is bad for our health. Studies show that as screen time increases, so too do rates of teenage suicide and depression. Lead researcher Jean M. Twenge of San Diego State University compared US statistics on teenage suicide deaths, suicide-related outcomes and adolescents’ depressive symptoms, with new media use. He found adolescents who spent more time on new ...

What a Reconciliation Week. Not only were we reconciling differences after a bruising election, but a respected Indigenous man was appointed Minister for Indigenous Australians, the first Indigenous Australian to be given that responsibility. Ken Wyatt was subjected to racist taunts during his campaign for the West Australian seat of Hasluck in 2010. After his narrow win for the Liberals, some people who voted for him complained they didn't realise he was Aboriginal. He was born on a mission farm, a former home for young Indigenous children removed from their families. His mother was one of them. In his maiden speech Wyatt thanked Kevin Rudd for the 2008 national apology to stolen generations. When he heard it, in his office in the West Australian department of health where he was director of Aboriginal health, he cried. "My mother and her siblings, along with many others, did not live to hear the words delivered in the apology, which would have meant a great deal to t...

The government’s trying to scare us, which is odd because the one thing that is truly frightening it keeps trying to tell us isn’t a problem - calamitous climate change. There’s Medivac. Scary stuff! Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said our hospital waiting lists will be bumped out by refugees evacuated from offshore detention camps. Then there was the problem of violence by African-Australians in Melbourne, also pointed to by Dutton and ministers including Greg Hunt. Never mind that you are much more likely to be attacked (and killed if you are Melbourne woman) by someone who is not African (In fact, every week in Australia, a woman is killed by a current or former partner). Last week there was talk of recession. That’s what’s coming if Labor is elected. Ignore for the moment that figures released on Wednesday show we are already in a per-capita recession. The Prime Minister says Labor’s extra taxes on negative-gearers and people who receive share dividends without paying t...

After another frigid and dry Canberra winter, I've welcomed the warmer weather with joy. Yet it's increasingly too warm to leave a lasting smile. We are told to brace for punishing summers. In a new book, Plutocene: Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth , the Australian National University's Dr Andrew Glikson says there's no turning back the greenhouse clock. He foresees mass extinctions and a breakdown of civilisation. In his book, Defiant Earth , Clive Hamilton of the Canberra-based Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics foresees something even worse: the possibility of our own extinction by an untameable Earth. Hamilton writes it will probably be hundreds of thousands of years before most of the large reserves of carbon released during the human age can be rendered immobile again. People have rivaled the great forces of nature so much so that we have changed the functions of the planet for an era. The Arctic is vanishing as is the Greenl...

Tony Abbott came into office seeking to be the "infrastructure prime minister". Imagine him pulling down bridges and ripping up roads. Of course not. There would be outrage. He'd be accused of reckless vandalism. The Prime Minister hasn't been blowing up rail lines, but in the past 20 months he has been ripping policy infrastructure. Big time. It's as if none of the work that that has gone before him matters. During the election he claimed to be on a "unity ticket" with Labor on the Gonski school funding reforms. "We will honour the agreements that Labor has entered into," he said. "We will match the offers that Labor has made. We will make sure that no school is worse off." Right after the election Labor's Gonski report disappeared from government websites. It didn't return to public view until a Fairfax journalist put in a freedom of information request which forced its publication under a rule requiring documents rele...