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Peter Sainsbury

Peter Sainsbury

Pearls and Irritations

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Environment: Warming, thawing Arctic presents problems for everyone

21.12.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Global plastic pollution treaty talks collapse

14.12.2024 4

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Australia opposes nations’ legal obligations to tackle climate change

07.12.2024 7

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Climate protesters blockade Newcastle’s coal port despite government bans

Draconian laws don’t discourage climate protesters. Hydrogen’s rainbow of colours. CCS continues to underperform. Clean energy investments...

30.11.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: The future of humanity hangs in the balance

‘We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster’, scientists conclude. Donkeys: feral pests or nature’s saviours? Climate change...

23.11.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Carbon capture and storage – what’s the real goal?

Carbon capture and storage fails to deliver carbon but succeeds for governments and industry. The pros and cons of reducing your personal carbon...

16.11.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Optimistic predictions for the energy transition

15.09.2024 40

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Earth system tipping points threaten our stable environment

Dangerous tipping points threaten the stability of several of Earth’s natural climate-controlling systems. Conclusion: warming of 1.5oC is not safe....

07.09.2024 7

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: The climate crisis is a health crisis

Climate change will soon be causing an additional 250,000 deaths per year worldwide – children are at particular risk. Only 4% of greenhouse gas...

31.08.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: using the law to drive (and retard) climate action

Climate activists are increasingly using the courts to challenge development approvals and change the law, but so are action delayers. Access to...

24.08.2024 5

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: NSW’s environmental assessment process for logging ignores the previous 200 years

Ignoring 200 years of native forest logging underestimates the consequences of current logging. Beware of false solutions for plastic pollution. How...

17.08.2024 9

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Zambia has lots of copper but will Zambians benefit?

The green transition needs copper but how do poor copper-rich countries reap the rewards? The hydrogen-energy balloon is floating away. Underground...

10.08.2024 8

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Peak oil is close but the descent will be slow

Peak oil is imminent but it will be a long time before we return to base camp. China surging ahead with solar while continuing to burn coal. NATO...

03.08.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: hole in the ozone layer: the patient is improving but still needs intensive care

The hole in the Antarctic’s ozone layer is recovering but very slowly. How to eat seafood sustainably, restoring our disappearing mangroves and...

27.07.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: burning wood in power stations doesn’t help the climate

The living, not our forebears, have put most of the CO2 into the atmosphere. Substituting wood for coal in power stations doesn’t reduce CO2...

21.07.2024 30

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: will humans behave like monkeys when climate apocalypse strikes?

Summers right across the northern hemisphere are getting hotter but vegetation can lower the temperature locally. Macaques show humans how to cope...

13.07.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: banks still bankrolling fossil fuels

Big banks keep providing big money to fossil fuel companies but it’s time for the Global North to invest for the future and pay its historic climate...

06.07.2024 7

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: eating responsibly – less bottled water and even less meat

Bottled water is not good for the environment or your health. If you eat meat, eating less is good for both. Governments are unreliable protectors of...

29.06.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Solar gets cheaper but more oil and gas is what we’re promised

As solar panels get cheaper, companies and governments commit to increasing oil and gas production. Community opposition to wind farms funded by...

22.06.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Pacific politician calls out Australia’s climate duplicity

The temperature is rising and the world is getting increasingly dangerous, even the rich bits. Former Tuvalu PM slams Australia’s climate policies....

15.06.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: When will politicians take climate change seriously?

  Both the WHO and UN may be starting to take seriously the effects of climate change on health. A global plan to save 1,000 freshwater fish from...

08.06.2024 7

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Government delivers climate rhetoric but not emissions reductions

Australia’s emissions reductions have stalled just when we need to be ramping up ambition and action. Concrete’s emissions set to be high for...

01.06.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Old trees are good trees

Big old trees are few in number but store lots of carbon. Loopholes found in Victoria’s ban on native tree logging. Great Barrier Reef bleaches for...

25.05.2024 30

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: CO2 emissions still increasing

18.05.2024 20

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Expert calls Australia’s carbon offset scheme a scam

Australia’s carbon offset scheme costs a lot and captures almost no carbon but provides a fig leaf for continuing emissions. Technology-based Carbon...

20.04.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Oil and gas producers underreport methane emissions

How accurately are methane emissions reported and whose estimates can you believe? Who should be the last producers of oil and gas? What are...

13.04.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Australia publishes its first climate risk assessment

Australia is conducting its first climate risk assessment and developing an adaptation plan. Not only humans experience heat stress, so do other...

06.04.2024 6

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Who is supplying Israel with the oil it needs?

It’s no surprise that USA and Russia are supplying oil to Israel to fight its war. Nor that that some major international oil companies are keen to...

01.04.2024 20

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Fossil fuel company profits are delaying grid decarbonisation

Securing a liveable planet and the retail price of electricity are important but current fossil fuel profit margins are slowing grid decarbonisation....

30.03.2024 5

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Booming oil and gas profits mainly benefit shareholders

The oil market is twice as large as all ten largest metal markets combined. Most oil and gas profits go to shareholders, not reinvestment in the...

23.03.2024 8

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Oil and gas making massive profits now but stormy waters ahead

Shrinking demand signifies rocky times ahead for many individual oil and gas producers but the industry will survive for decades yet. Emissions from...

16.03.2024 9

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Cryptocurrency using as much electricity as Sub-Saharan Africa

Renewables are about to supply the annual increase in electricity usage globally but cryptocurrency’s power demands are surging. Most industrial...

09.03.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Putting a price on carbon: is it worth all the trouble?

Economic theory supports a price on carbon but implemented schemes struggle to deliver emissions reductions. China firmly in the EV driving seat....

02.03.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: The wealthy cause climate change; the poor suffer its consequences

Richest 1% produce as many greenhouse gases as the poorest 66%. Climate denialists have a new lyric: ‘sure, it’s happening – so what?’ but...

24.02.2024 7

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Leading oil and gas producers plan to keep pumping

USA plans to maintain high levels of oil and gas production until at least 2050 – so it can export freedom. Healthy ecosystems require integrity,...

17.02.2024 6

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Humans don’t make history – we play host

How germs made history. Greenhouse gas emissions keep rising but USA and Europe are still the major causes of global warming.   Measles and...

10.02.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Government inaction is killing our parrots

Australia’s parrots are increasingly threatened. Coal, gas, wind and solar supply the world’s surging demand for electricity. Methane emissions...

03.02.2024 9

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Canadians and Sydney-siders destroying their trees

Canadians are destroying their boreal forests. Kelp forests need help worldwide. Advice for Australian company directors on preparing for climate...

27.01.2024 9

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: The best of Peter Sainsbury

Reporting a climate of hope and despair for the environment in 2023, Peter Sainsbury has brought us a raft of issues impacting our environment in his...

06.01.2024 9

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: 2023 – increased GHG emissions, increased atmospheric GHG levels and record high temperatures

Despite what we have we seen and learnt during 2023, the COP meeting failed again to take strong action on fossil fuels. Is nature for nature or only...

23.12.2023 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Not much environmental cheer in the season of goodwill

Exmouth Gulf threatened with industrial development. Africa being forgotten as global economies develop. Australia’s emissions reductions likely to...

16.12.2023 8

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Health, budgets and the environment, all damaged by food and plastic waste

Food loss and waste harm the environment, human health and wallets. Chemical recycling of plastic not living up to its promise. Concerns about dead...

09.12.2023 7

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

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