Issue 53 : 15 to 21 July 2021

Costello exaggerated the costs of ageing. Why won’t the Coalition face up to the costs of the climate crisis?
Richard Denniss | The Guardian
The environment minister, Sussan Ley, has announced she will spend millions of dollars appealing a federal court judgment that she has a duty of care to protect Australian children from climate harm. She’s not alone in neglecting our children’s future

The high cost of housing is a disaster for climate change and public health
Laura Phillips | Overland
To add fuel to the encroaching flames of system failure, inflationary housing policies are a leading cause of vulnerability to the effects of climate change. Poor quality, insecure, unaffordable and marginally located housing significantly increases occupants’ vulnerability to health risks arising from climate change. 

Captured carbon can’t be stored, despite the best efforts of fossil-fuel giants
Bernard Keane | Crikey
While carbon capture and storage is a scam that has already taken billions of taxpayer dollars and is now taking hundreds of millions of dollars more, the bigger problem is that the idea of a relatively straightforward transition to net zero is based on CCS working. And it doesn’t.

Mending the metabolic rift: Marxism, nature and society
James Plested | Red Flag
Karl Marx’s analysis of capitalism provides the key to understanding the environmental catastrophe we’re witnessing, and to gaining a clearer picture of what’s needed to repair our damaged relationship with the Earth.

Reality is catching up with our freeloading, populist climate deniers
Ross Gittins | Nine Newspapers
What we’re seeing is just the reality of the world’s need to act to limit climate change catching up with a government and federal party which, since Tony Abbott used denialism to seize the party’s leadership from Malcolm Turnbull in 2009, decided to make global warming a party-political football: a way to beat your opponents, not a need to tackle the nation’s biggest problem.

UQ handed NT fracking research contract, sparking conflict of interest concerns
Kate Ashton, Jesse Thompson | ABC News

How private wealth can be employed to re-orient sustainability
Susan Schroeder | Progress in Political Economy

SANTOS pulls out of Bight
Nick G. | Vanguard

Gas generation slumps in first half of 2021, as wind and solar continue to shine
Michael Mazengarb | Renew Economy

Beyond our shores is a dangerous, unstable world — and COVID is making it worse
Janine Perrett | Crikey
While we grapple with such first world problems as whether a florist is an essential service, from the Caribbean to the Middle East and Africa there is turmoil exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis.

NSW open for big business to spread Covid
Louisa L. | Vanguard

Vaccines, part two: ‘Is this guy serious?’
Rick Morton | The Saturday Paper

Next frontier: The case for vaccinating schoolchildren
Karen Middleton | The Saturday Paper

How fast is Australia’s economy running? Fiscal and monetary stimulus certainly helps
Greg Jericho | The Guardian
If the number of employed stays the same but some unemployed people leave the labour force, then the unemployment rate itself will go down despite not one extra person getting a job. And in a sense that is what has happened during the pandemic

Billionaires in space
John Quiggin | Independent Australia
This spectacle is not, as its boosters have rushed to claim, the dawn of a new era. But it has a lot to tell us about humanity, space and billionaires. The most immediate lesson is that with marginal exceptions symbolised by the billionaire joyrides, humans will never leave Earth. 

Of Warriors, Bad Apples and Blood Lust
Caroline Graham | Meanjin Quarterly
Are Australian soldiers more brutal than others, as an American marine claimed recently? 

What is wrong with the Reserve Bank’s push to encourage the study of economics?
Tim Thornton | Progress in Political Economy
The economics curriculum, by any reasonable measure, is overly narrow, out of date and unable to sufficiently illuminate contemporary realities. As a consequence, economics is unique in the extent to which its students so regularly rebel against the content of their instruction. 

Rural women’s resistance to neoliberal agricultural reform: the women of Monaragala Sri Lanka
Buddhima Padmasiri | Progress in Political Economy

Morrison Government yet to deal with massive asylum seeker and visa backlog
Abul Rizvi | Independent Australia

Caution needed — banning people for their views is the road to censorship
Guy Rundle | Crikey
The principle of the vaccine is that you need to introduce poison into yourself to get better, which brings us to Katie Hopkins

‘If you have a mobile phone, you can call yourself a funeral director’
Amber Schultz | Crikey

Australia’s second pandemic — gendered violence
Markela Panegyres | Green Left

Death in custody at Royal Adelaide Hospital
Rachael Knowles | National Indigneous Times

Research shows kids protect Elders from social isolation in lockdowns
Sarah Smit | National Indigenous Times

Touch one, touch all – fighting call of the working class
Alice M. | Vanguard
Maritime Union of Australia members across Australia are gearing up for a long and hard fight against Svitzer-Maersk, the biggest global multinational shipping company. Svitzer, owned by Maersk, operates 104 tug boats in Australia.

Pay rise overdue for Geelong library workers
Sagar Sanyal | Red Flag

Truck drivers push for strike over Toll’s threat to jobs, conditions
Jim McIlroy | Green Left