Normally we hope that crisis brings the best out in people: cooperation, mutual aid and empathy. This seems to be true of bushfires and floods but something about this pandemic is driving a divisiveness that is making our lives feel more unhinged and conflicted than ever.

Social media has begun to feel like […]

What is ironic about these so-called sovereign citizen raves is that they actually hold the legal system in naively high regard. Despite appearing to challenge the system, they are actually predicated on the assumption that the legal system has such immutable internal logic and moral integrity that the mere revealing of a fundamental flaw will cause it to voluntarily disband itself. This is the fantasy novel aspect.

Oh dear, it’s become very strange of late. Lock down, isolation, social media and fear have provided  fertile ground for all manner of weird theories about the state of the world.

Now let’s be clear. The world is not in good shape. For a start we have a massive problem with climate change, […]

Just like the droughts and bushfires have confirmed the dire warnings scientists have been issuing for decades about what to expect from climate chaos, so too does the emergence of a potential anthropandemic virus whether coronavirus or any number of later anthropandemics serve as a warning of the future we are approaching.

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Climate chaos would be problematic enough if we were able to stand and face it with intact systems of democratic governance and an economic system capable of adaptive resilience. Unfortunately we are instead faced with a truly dysfunctional trilemma of climate chaos, rising global fascism, and an economic system that continues to defy […]

It has been palpably difficult to utter the words ‘happy new year’ this time around. The sense of foreboding as the clock of linear time clicks from one decade to another is that we stand at the beginning of our own great reckoning.

Yes fires, the most intensely embodied sign that climate chaos […]

Even for those of us who have had the intelligence and humility to heed the scientists and have been expecting catastrophic climate events, these fires have shocked us.  ‘A rapid onset apocalypse’ is how a friend described it.

After thirty or more years of warnings catastrophe is upon us in what is only […]

It is tragic but Labor itself is becoming an impediment to progressive politics in this country by enabling the slide into right wing populism. There’s more to politics than gaining government, it’s also about defending good policy between elections, and holding your ground.

There is so much one could write about at the moment. We are living in a ‘pick your own apocalypse’ kind of theme park. What will it be, global fascism, nuclear war, economic and social collapse or climate catastrophe?

Well my bet is that the major economic collapse is going to rearrange […]

As thousands of people discovered at Camp Liberty at the Bentley blockade there is more to protests and blockades than potential confrontation with the corporate police state. If you have any time at all to travel in the near future do yourself and the planet a favour and visit camp Binbee, permanent […]

I can’t personally remember a more insane and dangerous time in world and domestic politics. We watch almost helplessly as the sixth great extinction, this time caused by humans, ravages life on this planet. No matter how graphic the reality of the climate and extinction crisis becomes, there seems to be two […]

Die-in at Lismore City Hall

Well our trip on the Titanic just got a lot more dire.

I’m relieved the election season is over so we can get back to talking and thinking about bigger picture things, but I’m aghast at how our federal and state elections turned out. I […]

Here we are in the late Anthropocene, with an extinction crisis unfolding before our eyes and a rapidly diminishing window to respond to runaway climate change and we are facing a federal election that seems to be about anything other than the very much endangered elephant in the room.

Psychologists […]

The recent NSW election has left me wondering when the massively overdue “climate election” is ever going to eventuate in the minds of the population, the media barons and the big corporate donation swilling major parties. With fish kills, record March temperatures, a global epidemic of extinction all around us we […]