25 April 2012 – Two prominent climate change commentators with opposing views, former Liberal senator and climate change sceptic Nick Minchin and founder and chair of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition Anna Rose, go head to head in a special ABC Q&A program at 8.30pm on Thursday, 26 April. In an interactive program of more than two hours a live studio audience follows the journey as the protagonists attempt to change each other’s attitudes. Following the documentary, Tony Jones will host the Q&A with  
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16 April 2012 – This is the coal seam story from GetUp!. The crowd sourced agitators have devised a detailed map that zooms in to show locations of wells, the underlying aquifers and homes in on individual stories from people whose lives are being encroached on by the booming industry. And from the US and the UK, evidence is now emerging that earthquakes  could be caused by the practice of fracking in coal seam gas extraction.In the UK research concluded it was”highly probable” that fracking was the cause of 50 seismic events near Blackpool, an article in Fairfax newspaper reported. Read the whole story See our recent  Bathurst Burr: Last rites for the farmers, towns and Murray-Darling rivers  
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By Tina Perinotto 14 April 2012 – Bob Brown who resigned on Friday as leader of The Australian Greens led the campaign to save the Franklin River nearly 30 years ago. He was a charismatic, galvanizing force then and nothing has changed. Read More  
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26 May 2011 – FAVOURITES: Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy of Curtin University’s Sustainability Policy Institute in Perth, Western Australia, say a new phenomenon is under way –  “peak car use”.* Peak car use suggests that we are witnessing the end of building cities around cars – at least in the developed world. In the 1980s we called this kind of city building automobile dependence (Newman and Kenworthy, 1989). The peak car use phenomenon suggests we may now be witnessing the demise of automobile dependence in cities. The Global Cities Database (Kenworthy and Laube, 2001; Read More  
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By Lynne Blundell 13 October 2011 – We are on the cusp of a wave of progress and innovation that will transform the way we live and the types of dwellings we choose to live in, Jane Nathan, president of the Australian Population Institute told delegates at the Property Council’s Growth Summit 2011, held last week in Melbourne. Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 7 October 2011 – OK, we are going on a bit about density and planning, but wow, it’s a hot topic and should be hotter. Former NSW Government architect Chris Johnson this week stepped into the role of chief executive of the Urban Taskforce in NSW. His promise was to tackle exactly this issue, and to bring a greater understanding of development into the community. He has a big job ahead of him. Read More  
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30 August 2011 – The Victorian Coalition Government has bowed to pressure groups and announced it would scale back wind farms in a move that the clean energy industry said could cost the state $3 billion in lost investment. Planning minister Matthew Guy said the government had approved Amendment VC82, which prohibits a wind turbine being constructed Read More  
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By Michael Mobbs 3 August 2011 – To hear the author of these lines read them aloud is to feel something whisk away in my heart: Read More  
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By Michael Mobbs 8 July 2011 – When he was 45 Rainer Maria Rilke wrote the first sentence below and the rest when he was in his late twenties: Read More  
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5 July 2011 – Harvey Norman chairman Gerry Harvey has threatened to sue GetUP! and Markets for Change after the lobbyists launched a strong attack on his company’s use of old growth native timber in a strongly worded campaign and spoof of its advertising slogan. The lobbyists say the campaign follows “a year-long undercover investigation into the chain of custody tracking old-growth timber to China and back into Australian stores. Read More  
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By Lynne Blundell 10 June 2011 –Australia is leading the world in the accelerating use of carbon and in carbon emissions and is currently about 44 or 45 per cent above the 1990 level, while Europe is moving in the opposite direction. Read More  
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By David Burns 8 June 2011 – The Manly Council’s 2015 master plan is a great initiative but the plan could be improved if the council considered Green Building Council of Australia Green Star ratings and sustainable intensity metric benchmarks. Proposed by McGregor Coxall (landscape architecture and urban design) and architects Choi Ropiha the plan is an important first step in revitalising the CBD, and one that can tempt developers towards the benefits of green star designed buildings. Read More  
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26 May 2011 – Households nation-wide will save on energy costs if the recommendations in a new national policy statement are adopted. The statement from the Australian Council of Social Services, the Brotherhood of St Laurence, the Clean Energy Council, the Energy Efficiency Council, the Property Council, the Australian Council of Trade Unions and The Climate Institute outlines national projects that would increase residential energy efficiency and bring a range of benefits including minimising energy bills for Australian households. The groups propose: Targeted support for high-needs households funded through carbon pollution price revenue. A specific program to assist low-income and financially stressed households that are at risk of fuel poverty. The program could target individual households at risk (such as households that are having difficulty paying their energy bills, or with very high electricity use) or high-risk communities (such as high electricity charges, no access to... 
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By Tina Perinotto 26 May 2011 – GE one of the world’s largest multinational technology and finance companies has thrown its weight behind the call for a carbon price with a report launched on Thursday that says other countries have proved it is possible to grow the economy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The report, Protecting Prosperity : Lessons from leading low carbon economies, focuses on the emerging concept of carbon productivity – using less energy to generate the same amount of economic wealth and emitting less pollution from the energy used. Read More  
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By Michael Mobbs 29 April 2011 – Merchants of doubt: how Earth is sold out What if someone said to you at dinner: “Scientists are divided about whether the Earth orbits around the Sun, you know.” Would you reply? If you did, what would you say?¬ May I invite you to join such a dinner, and to imagine there’s six billion of us at the one table to answer such questions? (Yes, that’s a lot of chairs and you may end up sitting on the floor, sorry.) The table is Earth. Since December 1953, when the tobacco industry hit on a plan to generate doubt in the media as a tactic by which they could buy time to keep selling cigarettes they knew killed their customers, merchants of doubt have controlled the politics of managing Earth’s resources and pollution. A new book, Merchants of Doubt, gives their names Read More  
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By Lynne Blundell 24 March 2011 – We live in tumultuous times. Daily we are bombarded with news and images of disaster – floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, social unrest and impending nuclear catastrophe, all against a backdrop of a warming planet. Meanwhile in Australia we still can’t even get our minds Read More  
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10 March 2011 – From The Economist. Australian mammalogist and palaeontologist, Tim Flannery is an environmental celebrity. His 2005 book,The Weather Makers, about climate science and global warming, was a bestseller. His latest Here on Earth is his most ambitious book so far. The publisher calls it a twin biography, of humanity and the planet it inhabits, but that description is inadequate. Mr Flannery’s subject is the likely fate of humankind, and whether the powers granted to modern civilisation by science and technology will prove to be its downfall or its salvation. He muses on whether humanity counts as a superorganism  –a classification usually reserved for bees and ants – why we have yet to discover intelligent aliens, the poorly understood effects of dumping industrial chemicals into the environment, the power of planet-watching networks of satellites and the benefits of aboriginal scrub-burning. There is an effort to organise the chapters around two competing models of... 
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By Michael Mobbs 17 February 2011 – Australia’s councils are perhaps the most ignorant and contemptuous of indigenous culture of any part of our society. Councils manifest their damaged psyche unintentionally in their development approvals every week. They’re unaware of what they say and do. Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 4 February 2011 – The Australian property industry has the power to radically transform itself and society, both here and overseas, says leading sustainability design consultant, Simon Wild. The key to its success lies in industry and community collaboration. Read More  
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By Michael Mobbs 11 January 2010 – Coal is Australia’s biggest boomerang. With every shipload of coal we send overseas we import more frequent and extreme droughts and floods. Our coal comes back to Australia in the form of heartbreaking storms, dying crops, droughts and suiciding farmers. (Two farmer suicide each week in Australia.) Coal digging and coal burning causes climate change. It causes massive amounts of carbon dioxide pollution Australia digs and sells more coal than any other country on Earth. According to an article on 5 January in the US financial website Bloomberg, “While most Australian hard coal is sold to steelmakers, higher prices are spilling over into Germany, where E.ON AG and RWE AG use it for 18 per cent of the country’s electricity, and Britain, where Drax Group Plc operates western Europe’s biggest coal plant.” As Earth’s biggest digger and exporter of coal Australia has more power than most to stop global warming. Bloomberg’s article makes... 
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By Michael Mobbs 23 December 2010 - “The underlying problem is confoundingly simple: agricultural methods that lose soil faster than it is replaced destroy societies” – David Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations I saw white sheets flapping and waving in a strong wind in the hot sun today. They were high on the top of a yellow building. Their sprightly dancing was spellbinding. (If you’ve never slept on sheets newly dried in the wind and sun, you’ll have no idea of the freshness they offer.) Then I fell from the magic of the dancing sheets and immediately the yakkity-yak bits of me (the analyst, the inner critic, the wonderer) regathered, yapping around the heels of my mind, Read More  
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10 December 2010- Sydney City Council will fund a project to investigate the feasibility of creating a demonstration sustainable suburb in inner city Chippendale that builds on the work of  local sustainability coach and columnist for The Fifth Estate, Michael Mobbs. The project to be led by Mr  Mobbs will work on ways to extend the  community food based gardening in the streets that he has fostered and initiatives such as low-cost stormwater harvesting Mr Mobbs will also investigate ways to cool ambient temperatures through lighter colours for streets and roofs. A council meeting this week approved a $30,000 grant to fund the initial consultancy and project development costs. Sydney City chief executive officer Monica Barone said in a council memo that Sustainable Sydney 2030 commits the City to becoming “green, global and connected.” She said: “The commitment to green living not only focuses on supporting green industries and making green lifestyle choices,... 
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By Peter Lewis From the ABC – 7 December 2010 - It was a year ago today that the hottest gig in global warming opened in Copenhagen, amidst expectations that the world’s leaders would rise above their geographical interests and make a stand for the future. Twelve months on and the hopes of Copenhagen seem as retro as a Midnight Oil album, the world has opted to sleep even when our beds are burning. While the lack of political action over the past year has been well Read More  
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By Michael Mobbs 5 November 2010 - Look with me now, if you will, at snapshots of two places where some people are seeking to use resources sustainably, one in Australia, the other in forests around the world, which are being logged for cities everywhere. Here I’ll focus on something that’s found in every project in every city on Earth – timber. Building city infrastructure – and living and working in cities – depends on cutting down trees. But trees are a key asset in sustaining Earth’s climate. No trees, or too few trees, and we cut down the climate we have at the moment. Timber for Earth’s cities One in every 10 trees cut down on Earth is illegally harvested and sold into most of the world’s countries, including Australia. Illegal timber in Australia is used for hoardings, formwork, furniture, cladding, packaging, toilet paper, and these products are widely available across Australia in hardware outlets, the big shopping chains, builders supplies. How much... 
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Warning: 30 October 2010 – It is now too late to avoid global warming of less than 2 per cent and too late to avoid “serious and pervasive ” climate change impacts that would “significantly disrupt the national economy” the federal government has said in a document released on Friday under the Freedom of Information Act, according to national newspapers today. Highlights of the reports include that electricity prices will rise.  But a speech by a senior bureaucrat mid-year explained exactly how serious the outlook was, how very difficult if not almost impossible it will be to achieve a 5 per cent reduction target, how risk was unavoidable and why the allocation of risk was the principle urgent question, and its  price set to escalate the longer we remained indecisive, he said. Key points in a Sydney Morning Herald report Include: electricity prices will rise further unless power generators get a clear carbon price by 2012, and that Australia’s greenhouse... 
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By Michael Mobbs 13 October 2010 - It’s interesting, the changing weather.  Not just the facts of it – the unusual events that are remarkable for their heat, their rain, their departure from the averages. But how we respond to it. I’ve had 60 turns around the sun, so I’ve become used to mostly repeated rhythms in the weather, much like those in a classical musical composition where the key and the time are prescribed from the first bar. But all that’s out the window now the climate’s changing. It’s a bit like watching the long shots of the far distant horizon in Lord of the Rings, where the hobbits would look with true awe at the immense might of the long off lighting and volcanoes; only for us, we humans in our own movie, the horizon is coming to us. And all of us are to be like the four hobbits, our singular difference is that we don’t know we’re hobbits, haven’t chosen to be hobbits who would go adventuring.  In fact, we, most of us, actively chose not to... 
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By Michael Mobbs 28 September 2010 – A student studying property has asked me, “Do you think “Green” Design and Development in residential properties is supported and progressive in Australia?” There is some support by governments. But when you add up what they do and subtract what they don’t do, Australia’s local, state and regional governments do not support sustainable residential development. Let me count the ways they can help and ways they don’t: Our governments do not: 1. Give rate rebates to private developers who design their projects to achieve savings that also reduce the depreciation of, or investment in, public infrastructure e.g. stormwater, transmission lines, electricity substations. For example, a residential house may be forced to pay a “stormwater levy” by a council as part of a council-wide levy to raise money for works to reduce stormwater pollution but the house may be so designed that no stormwater leaves the site at all; thus, the... 
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14 September 2010 - In a speech delivered to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia on 31 August in Sydney, director of energy efficiency consultancy Big Switch Projects, Gavin Gilchrist, argued that the energy industry, not taxpayers, should pay for the Federal Government’s smart grid project, and that more must be done to tackle regulations hostile to cogeneration and energy efficiency. Here follows a transcript of his speech. Good afternoon. I’m delighted to tell you that this is not another lunchtime session where all the speakers are in amicable, total agreement. I’m not such a fan of the Smart Grid project. Here’s why. On the surface, Smart Grid is a terrific research project. On the surface, it seems like a really good idea. But in fact I’m concerned about it for two reasons: most importantly because it’s a distraction from what I believe should be the main game. It gives the impression we’re serious about changing the way our energy system works,... 
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By Michael Mobbs 17 September 2010 - Let’s see if we can join up some dots. The first dot is: Dust It’s heaven, but I don’t know it then.  Not ‘til much later. I’m in the back seat, window down, the cold wind of evening cooling me down. The world is turning but the sun sets steady on the far, flat horizon in front of us.  Dust reddening it and air all about. Our car rushing into the red dust, westward ho. Going back to the farm from town. The Saturday trip for the groceries, done. And, sweetest of all, the latest Phantom comic in my hands. The drawings of my hero in lush Bengali jungles, his tough knock-out punches. A world far from these dry paddocks along the Lachlan River in NSW. The Lachlan.  Lost in its own thoughts, sunken and lurking out of sight behind the riverbank trees, flowing just off to our right, the road tracking beside it way on past our place. Coming from far away and going far off. And in my mouth the once-a-week luxury of a Freddo Frog, one of the spoils... 
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2 September 2010 – Human city-makers know less than ants when it comes to cooling and warming our cities. When it knows (we don’t know how) the coming summer will be hot the meat ant gathers white and pale pebbles and carries them to cover the ground above its nest.  For cold winter time the ant replaces the pebbles with dark coloured pebbles. In this way the little critters cool or warm their nest as the seasons vary the ground temperatures. I’ve just seen ants carrying pebbles and doing this on a recent ABC video and explained by Auntie Fran of the D’harawal people, south of Sydney; it swept me away. (1) And what do we humans do to cool down where we live, our cities? Most of what we do increases the heat of our cities. Red tape makers whack the private sector over the head with planning rules but ignore their own roads, schools, hospitals, freeways, train lines, harbour foreshores, esplanades and cover them in black tar, dark roofs and no trees.  Their own development... 
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