Some coal workers have the right skills and work in the right location to get a job in renewables. But many, such as semi-skilled machine operators, cannot.
No sooner had foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop announced that Australia should take a fresh look at nuclear power than Prime Minister Tony Abbott responded that nuclear power would only be supported…
To have any chance of avoiding dangerous climate change we’ll have to reduce the carbon emissions from our energy sectors — currently the largest human source of greenhouse gas emissions globally. And…
China’s recent move to limit imports of the dirtiest coal from 2015 onwards is a scary prospect for Australian miners. The proposed restrictions will ban the burning of coal with high levels of ash or…
China’s use of coal for electricity could peak as early as next year, then decline until 2020 in a turnaround of “global importance”, according to economist Ross Garnaut in a lecture presented at the Melbourne…
The Carmichael coal project, approved this week by environment minister Greg Hunt, is unprecedented in its scale, and also represents a significant shift in Australia’s coal industry. If the mine goes…
Australia’s biggest coal mine, the Carmichael Coal and Rail Project, yesterday received the go-ahead from the federal government. Environment minister Greg Hunt approved the mine, proposed by Indian coal…
From coal seam gas to wind farms, new resource projects seem to be pitting communities against corporations, and people against their neighbours. We often see, in such cases, community concerns labelled…
Last week saw a shareholders’ meeting of the mining company Bumi plc in London. Shareholders meetings are hardly unusual events. But this was no ordinary shareholders meeting. It involved a major Indonesian…
Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Discipline of Politics & International Relations, Macquarie School of Social Sciences, Macquarie University