More than 80% of Australians and over half of the world’s population now live in cities: cities that are responsible, directly or indirectly, for nearly 75% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, the design and operation of our cities is a critical challenge facing humanity in the 21st century. Our success or failure to transform our cities over the next 20 years will be a key legacy to future generations
Much of our agricultural land is presently straining under the ‘worst drought in living memory’: 80% of Queensland is drought declared. This drought comes upon the heels of the Millennium Drought, the longest drought in the living memory of those who colonised this country. Stocking rates are down and impacts will continue to be felt as any debt to restock will be heavy when it rains. Markets have been distorted. Towns and communities are affected. Nature and humanity are distressed
In its earliest imaginings by politicians and bureaucrats, Canberra was imagined as a city — and a national capital — in a landscape. It was pictured using the graphic conventions of the time, as a place of remarkable formal harmony, and as a place to unify the perceived dichotomies in Australia between ‘the bush’ and the city, the uninhabitable and the habitable
The phrase inconvenient truth, made famous by Al Gore’s movie, has unfortunately for humanity turned out to be not only inconvenient and true, but quite prophetic about the climate. Climate change, on current projections, threatens the very life support systems on which human civilisation depends
Climate change represents the greatest challenge to human existence we have ever experienced ... For most people, the idea that our planet will become impossible for human life is nearly impossible to accept. Denying the possibility is easy and comforting. Not one of us would like to think that the quality of our lifestyle will cost a future generation the possibility of continued existence
Global warming threatens to transform our planet by raising sea levels, causing widespread water shortages, increasing the frequency and intensity of storms, extinguishing species, altering almost everything we do in future. It is the greatest environmental challenge ever faced by humans as a species. It is also, without doubt, one of the greatest social, political and economic challenges we face — a challenge far greater even than the global economic turmoil we are seeing around us at present
In 64AD, the city of Rome, mistress of the known world, was ravaged by a ferocious fire. The blaze swept through the crowded alleyways and decrepit housing of the city’s poorer districts. All who were caught in its path were incinerated
Climate change occurs because of the excessive release of green-house gases into the atmosphere. Not only is Australia one of the largest polluters in the world, the growth in its emissions in recent years has been among the fastest in the developed world
Although steps have been taken over the past 150 years or so to protect ‘heritage areas’ of great natural beauty, the idea that we have some long-term obligation to future generations has not resonated in the human discourse and is rarely, for example, enshrined in any substantial body of behavior, practice or law
There are numerous examples in the climate change and sustainability literature of people not getting the message, not connecting emotionally with the evidence, and not modifying their behaviours in the face of overwhelming evidence that they need to care for their world, or face catastrophic health consequences