Over the past decade Australia bet hundreds of billions of dollars that the rest of the world wasn't serious about tackling climate change. It looks like we lost. World demand, and in turn the prices we receive for our precious raw materials, are collapsing under the weight of the oversupply we helped cause. While demand for coal stubbornly refuses to live up to the optimistic forecasts of Australian politicians, the price of renewables keeps falling faster than its most ambitious boosters predicted.

Is the hydrocarbon economy too big to fail?

The battles are furious... The debates are like tar pits and asphyxiating feather pillows... but one of these candidates will finish on top...

I believe Al Bundy would do a great average job as President of the USA... or grandpa Simpson (with a Abraham Lincoln top-hat)...

The rat before Homer, though... 

Yes, in this article from the SMH, 1959, the notion of global warming had not penetrated our brains and science was still going as if the "natural" rhythms of the climate was in charge. As I have mentioned before on this site, science believed rightly that the earth's climate was going towards another ice age.

Governments in Hobart and Canberra have discovered that trees make their carbon accounts look good, but it’s a con.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has sent out a research note calling for clients to brace themselves for what would be a "cataclysmic year" on the markets.

The bank's advice? "Sell everything".

In Gus collection of odd stuff, there was this article published in the SMH (1961), before the Gladesville Bridge, Sydney, was built... The amazing story here is that engineer Tony Gee was just 22 years old when he was given the job to design the bridge. After searching for a month, I have found the picture above. Hurray...

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My latest journey to Timor-Leste (East Timor) began on 16 October, the 40th anniversary of the murder of five Australian-based journalists in Balibo by Indonesian special forces. My first trip there was in March 1975, six months prior to their deaths.

Could you explain to me this custom?” We had spent three days with our Turkish colleague, and by our final evening together in Çanakkale, on the eastern shore of the Dardanelles strait, the conversation had become more expansive. “Why do Australians insert newspaper into their backsides and set fire to it as they leap into the sea?”

From David Corn

On Friday night, New York Times columnist David Brooks, a mild conservative, and I were on the PBS Newshour, and our discussion of Cruz's recent surge in Iowa really ticked off some within the right-wing press. Here are a few headlines: