Our Climate and Energy Dilemma; The Case for Emergency Action

Ian Dunlop - he says we need
emergency climate action.

Ian Dunlop explains the wicked problem that is climate change and illustrates unequivocally the need for emergency action.

The former oil, gas and coal executive, chair of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a member of the Club of Rome, was the guest speaker at the recent Big Conversation staged by Engineers Australia.

The Big Conversation, staged at the University of Technology Sydney, was entitled “Our Climate and Energy Dilemma; The Case for Emergency Action.”

Watching it will consume two-hours of your life, but it is loaded with information that each of us simply must hear, understand, and do something about.

Science 'book burning' continues in Australia: Ian Dunlop

(Just two years ago a former international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chair of the Australian Coal Association and chief executive of the Australian Institute of Company Directors who is now a member of the Club of Rome, Ian Dunlop, wrote about the disembowelling of Australia’s science ideals and although we now have a different Prime Minister, the same values still apply and so he continues to be concerned enough to remind people via Twitter of what he said in 2014 and how his concerns have changed little for we continue to plunder our science institutions – Robert McLean)

Ian Dunlop was worried about our "burning of
our science books" in 2014 and two years
later nothing has changed to ease his mind.

Australia has an enviable reputation for Ian Dunlop extending long before the heyday of the CSIRO in the 1950s under the visionary leadership of Sir Robert Menzies and Sir Ian Clunies-Ross. On the hottest and driest continent on Earth, our prosperity would be non-existent had it not been for the enlightened application of science. So it has been of mounting concern over recent years to see governments of all persuasions adopt increasingly anti-science agendas.

The federal government is taking anti-science to new heights. Its scorched earth approach discards virtually everything not in line with narrow, free-market ideology, centred on sustaining Australia’s 20th century dig-it-up and ship-it-out economic growth model. 

Read what Ian Dunlop wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald in 2014 - “Tony Abbott is gutting science just when we need it most.”

Ian Dunlop calls out Australia's elites on climate change

I

an Dunlop calls it as it is.

Ian Dunlop - calls out the elites.

A director of Australia21 and a Member of the Club of Rome has directly levelled Australia’s inadequate response to climate change at the country’s elites.

Mr Dunlop, formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chairman of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, has written the Melbourne Age calling out Australia’s elites for their inaction.

In his is piece in The Age - “The Australian elites have fundamentally failed us on climate change” – he writes “This is reinforced by the fact that not a single board chairman or CEO of a major company, bank or investment manager has spoken out against the federal government's blatant climate denialism, and in particular, the government's undermining of the new low-carbon industries on which Australia's future depends.”

It's time for our stateswomen to step forward - Ian Dunlop

M

argaret Thatcher helped ignite a market system that worsened climate change, but at least she was aware of the dilemma.

Ian Dunlop.

The fact that the late British Prime Minister was conscious of climate change three decades ago, has prompted Ian Dunlop to suggest in today’s Age that is is time for our “stateswomen to step forward”.

The former international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chair of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, who is also a Member of the Club of Rome, says, “Time for stateswomen to step forward on climate change”.

Consumption and inordinate demand on resources explored in Shepparton

C

onsumption and the inordinate demand it puts on the world’s resources will be explored in Shepparton later this month.

Writer, teacher, editor and environmentalist, Kerryn Higgs, will talk about her new book, “Collision Course: Endless Growth on a FinitePlanet” on Wednesday, April 29, at the GoTAFE auditorium at 6:30 for 7:00pm.

Kerryn, who graduated from the University of Melbourne with honours in history and English, also graduated from the University of Tasmania with a Diploma in Environmental Studies.

Meanwhile, the International Society for Local Futures says, in its story headed: “The Global Economy’s ‘Impeccable Logic’” that there will never be enough resources to bring all those billions of people (those people who are becoming expendable every year) up to the levels of income and consumption common in the west.

“This,” the story adds, “is something that even pie-in-the-sky economists who dream of endless “sustainable growth” must realize.”

Kerryn, who is being brought to Shepparton by both the GV Community Fund and Slap Tomorrow, was recently appointed a Fellow of the International Centre of the Club of Rome.

Tickets, which will soon be available at $10 each from Collins Booksellers in Maude St, the GV Community Fund and Slap Tomorrow members, will include a light supper.

Kerry brings the 'collision course' message to Shepparton

I

t was 20 years ago that the world was warned it was on a “collision course”.

Author, environmentalist, Kerry Higgs.

And now that warning has been echoed by writer, teacher, editor and environmentalist, Kerryn Higgs.

In August last year she wrote the book, “Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet” and late in April she will be in Shepparton to talk about what motivated her to write the book.

Kerryn graduated from the University of Melbourne with first class honours and the Kathleen Fitzpatrick prize for combined History and English Honours.

She also has a Graduate Diploma of Environmental Studies and a PhD from the University of Tasmania.

She said the notion of ever-expanding economic growth has been promoted so relentlessly that the public is now convinced that “growth” is the natural solution to virtually all social problems—poverty, debt, unemployment, and even the environmental degradation caused by growth in the first place.

“Warnings from scientists that we live on a finite planet have been ignored or even scorned as bogus predictions of doom and systematically resisted by economists and the corporate sector,” she said.

Kerryn has taught at the University of Melbourne and the University of New South Wales. She is currently a University Associate with the University of Tasmania and was recently appointed a Fellow of the International Centre of the Club of Rome.

Her visit to Shepparton is being co-ordinated by Slap Tomorrow working with the GV Community Fund and she will speak on Wednesday, April 29, at the Harder Auditorium at 6:30 for 7:00 pm.

Admission to support the GV Community Fund will be $10, including a light supper. Shepparton’s Collins Booksellers will also have copies of Collision Course available for purchase and signing.

Twenty years ago by the Union of Concerned Scientists produced a report entitled “World Scientist’s Warning to Humanity” and that statement from 1,700 senior scientists, including 104 Nobel Prize winners, suggests we are living through something like a slow motion train wreck.

The opening words say:

Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.

Those with any questions about the April 29 session can direct them to Robert McLean at 0400 502 199 or Cheryl Hammer at the GV Community Fund at 1300 651 224.

Burning science books didn't work then and it doesn't work now - Dunlop

Ian Dunlop writes about how the burning of science books didn’t work in the past and is not working today.

A former international oil, gas and coal executive and chair of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Mr Dunlop is critical of the Abbott Government for its taking of “anti-science” stance to new heights.

In an article published by the Centre for Policy Development he said: “Its “scorched earth” approach discards virtually everything not in line with narrow, free-market ideology, centred on sustaining Australia’s 20th Century “dig-it-up and ship-it-out” economic growth model”.

Mr Dunlop is a member of the Club of Rome, a Director of Australia21 and a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development.

His article is headed: “Burning the science books. Didn’ t work then, won’t work now”.

G20 - naive, wilfully ignorant, actually ignorant, irresponsible or simply foolish?

by Robert McLean

Joe Hockey and his G20 counterparts don’t know about, don’t understand or don’t care about the indisputable facts spelt out in the 1970s by the Club of Rome.

Arising from their recent Sydney meeting was a pledge to develop “ambitious but realistic” policies to add more than $US2 trillion to global gross domestic product over five years.

That pledge, if you take note of the realities described by the Club of Rome in its 1974 book “Limits to Growth”, is not only unsustainable, but wholly irresponsible.

The late systems analyst, author, environmental scientist and teacher, Donella Meadows, examined and explained the finitude of earth’s resources, considered present and likely usage, population growth, wrote about her findings and warned the world of difficult times ahead.

Meadows’ work was acclaimed by those aware of the world’s unfolding social and resource difficulties, but subjected to a barrage of criticism from many.

Ms Meadows penned the book in the 70s and although there was then an understanding of the damage caused to our atmosphere by fossil fuels it was not until the eighties the American scientist James Hansen spelt the complications of human activities linking it irrefutably to market-driven growth.

Mr Hockey, his fellow finance ministers and central bankers have, in signing up to boost world growth have simply worsened difficulties the world already faces.

The G20 pledge is populist in that it fits neatly with what has become human nature to have more, but today we know that “more” in its modern sense equates with a damaged climate, manifested as weather foreign to what most are familiar with and upon which humanity depends.

Rather than align themselves with the brutality of unfeeling growth, those who attend such events as the recent G20, need to be considering how nations understand and deal with the certainty of contraction and a world in which resources will become rarer and subsequently more expensive.

Rather than exhorting people to seek solutions to what ails them through growth, they need to work at understanding the “Limits to Growth” and lead a discussion about how people of the world can find contentment through living a more restrained life.

Such a conversation is contrary to the urgings of the market-driven system, but it is a necessary one for if we continue with business as usual and such things as the G20 Pledge, humanity’s grip on this rather slippery slope will be weakened even more.

The courage to address such ideas is in short supply for it demands a break with what exists and a willingness to take society in a fresh and safer direction; a challenge that is beyond most world leaders who do nought but muddy facts through the proselytizing of fallacies.