Rubrica

  From the Department of I-Can’t-Believe-We’re-Still-Having-This-Discussion comes Peter Dutton’s plan for Australia’s energy future: nuclear. Forget that nuclear power plants are being decommissioned and phased out all over Europe , with Germany and Italy now fully nuclear-free and other countries in the process of exiting nuclear capacity. Forget that the waste from nuclear power plants is radioactive and must be stored, usually underground, for thousands of years, with the ongoing risk of leaks and contamination. Not to mention the danger of transporting said waste. Forget that nuclear reactors use 35 to 65 million litres of water per day, mostly for cooling so it goes up in steam and can’t be recycled. Forget that CSIRO estimates found that a 1 gigawatt large-scale nuclear plant would cost about $9bn if it were possible to start building in Australia today and a nuclear industry was already well established, but large-scale generators could cost twice ...

Watching the footage of Trump and Vance bullying Ukraine President Zelensky was like watching a couple of schoolyard bullies intimidating the little kid for lunch money. Which was precisely what they were doing, and it wasn't the first time the Trump administration has bullied Zelensky since taking office less than two months ago.*   The background Ukraine has significant deposits of minerals: graphite, lithium, copper, uranium, rare earth metals and titanium. And Trump wants them. Zelensky had originally agreed to terms whereby the US would continue its military aid to Ukraine in return for access to its mineral wealth. The deal was described as “a special agreement for the joint protection of the country’s critical resources, as well as joint investment and use of this economic potential”.  But Trump wanted more (of course). He wanted $US500 billion worth of minerals in return for past aid to the country with no guarantee of future assistance. To this end, US Treasury...

 Shades of non-colour are trendy at the moment. From cigarette-smoke grey to sepulchral black, non-colours appear everywhere. From where I sit now, I can see six parked cars and not one of them is an actual colour. But worse than this profusion of non-descript greys on the roads are the vast swathes of our suburban landscape given over to grey houses with black roofs, and to this I only have one thing to say: stop it! Stop it right now. Enough with the grey and black. And not just for aesthetic considerations, although that's reason enough. Our cities are urban heat sinks. As we cover up the natural landscape with houses, roads, airports, carparks, shopping malls, waste transfer stations, office blocks and so forth, we alter the landscape's natural ability to cool itself down. The built environment absorbs heat quickly and retains it for longer than the natural environment. After a very hot day the road will still be warm to the touch long after sunset, as will the western wall...

In the coming months leading up to this year’s federal election, we’re going to hear a lot about this shady animal called “DEI”. We’re going to hear this because Peter Dutton will be singing from the Trump songsheet, and the Trump songsheet mentions DEI a lot. It casts DEI as something that people should avoid, be scared of and stamp out in their workplaces and society more generally. What is DEI and why is it the new scary monster on the block? DEI stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. These are very positive steps towards a fully functioning society where everyone has the opportunity to reach their potential. By turning it into an acronym, however, the terms are stripped of their meaning, they are no longer words, and words are everything. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is not, as its knee-jerk opponents will have you believe, a sneaky way of employing unqualified people ahead of qualified people simply on the basis of their being in a minority group. It is not favouring...