the cost of climate change

Australia is currently engaged in (or suffering under?) a political debate on how we should address the issue of climate change. It isn't so long ago that many conservatives did not believe the scientific evidence that earth is warming at an alarming rate, and this will have disastrous consequences within a century. Then the argument shifted to whether the predicted changes were human-induced. Now we seem to be arguing about how much we should change our way of life, and how much we should pay, to address the problem. But the fact remains that Aussies, per capita, are among the world's biggest contributors to global warming.

connecting lives

We all know that Africa is a troubled continent, often a legacy of European colonialism - poverty, AIDS, civil war and genocide are some of the worst problems. But most of us don't know what it is like to live with poverty.

Yet there is another side. Africans often seem to be such happy people. And there is hope for those in the grip of poverty.

libya: stop the crackdown

Unless you've been under a rock, you know that there's a lot of anti-government unrest across North Africa and the Middle East right now. Libya is especially volatile, with the dictator, Colonel Qaddafi, reportedly unleashing significant weaponry on protesting civilians.

Avaaz is an international human rights organisation protesting this repression and calling for UN intervention to stop the killing. If you want to sign an online petition in support, you can do it here.

Read more about Avaaz here and here.

illegal immigration?

an old post (November 2009) revived to support my post yesterday

Photo: MorgueFile

For many years now, Australia has been the destination of "boat people" - refugees or would-be immigrants from troubled lands to the north and west. Decades ago they were from Vietnam, more recently from the Middle East, Afganistan and Sri Lanka.

And for the same period, debate has raged in Australia between those who want to keep out the "illegals", and those who want to offer help to people in distress. Elections have been fought over the issue, and opinions are highly polarised.

peter norman deserved better

(An old post re-visited)

I've never been a great fan of the Olympic Games, but I take an interest in the fortunes of Australians who compete. And so I can remember the silver medal won by Peter Norman in the 200m sprint in the 1968 games. And of course I can remember the "scandal" of him standing on the dias with two black American athletes giving what was said to be a black power salute. But I didn't know the rest of the story until two years ago.

Photo from Wikipedia

the rich get richer and the poor get the picture?

We all know that there is a wide gap between the world's richest countries and the world's poorest. For a while that gap was widening, but in the past 50 years, many of the formerly poor nations, especially in Asia, have been catching up. The big challenge remains Africa, where many of the poorest nations are, because while more people around the world are getting a fairer share of the pie, things haven't improved much for them

This excellent short video sets it out graphically.