Obama has rejected the proposal to build a pipeline to bring tar sands oil south from Canada to refineries in the Gulf Coast.
Ross Gittins describes the CSIRO’s first Australian National Outlook report as “heroic” and “fair dinkum”. It does what the Government Intergenerational Report failed to do. It takes account of the effects of climate change and environmental sustainability.
The report says we can have dynamic economic growth simultaneously with sustainable resource use and reduced environmental stress, but only if we make the right choices collectively. Policy matters. Continue reading CSIRO’s first Australian National Outlook report
“A female jockey has won the Melbourne Cup,” said the ABC’s Gerard Whateley in calling the winning moment. Indeed she had, along with Prince of Penzance, a 100-1 outsider. Had Prince of Penzance been at shorter odds the ride would have been given to a bloke. Almost certainly. Continue reading Saturday salon 7/11
While the findings are quite complex, the take-out message from a recent OECD study is:
Goran Roos, Adjunct professor at University of Technology Sydney, explains why advanced manufacturing is an essential feature of ‘economic complexity’ and that “a nation’s potential to create prosperity is a direct function of its economic complexity.”
Australia’s economic complexity has declined over the last 25 years, to the point where it ranked 53 among all countries in 2012. The top three were Japan, Switzerland and Sweden. Losing the car industry is likely to lower Australia’s economic complexity by a further 5-15%. The share of manufacturing in Australia’s economy is likely to be below 5%, compared to Switzerland’s 20%. Continue reading Innovation and economic complexity
The news comes courtesy of Giles Parkinson at RenewEconomy:
Radio National’s Background Briefing is about to take a look at Turnbull’s NBN.
The program will go to air on Sunday, November 1 at 8am, repeated Tuesday, November 3 at 9pm. It will also be repeated on NewsRadio at 1pm on Sunday. Continue reading NBN alert
The WHO pronouncement on the linkage between processed meats and cancer generated a lot of misleading stories, like this one from The Guardian:
John Quiggin has a post Climate change and catastrophe wherein he links to his article in The Economist Why the Paris conference may not be enough. I know from the WordPress software that people are slack in following links, so I’ll try to give a sense of what he said. Continue reading Quiggin on climate risk
Newspoll has the LNP on a comfortable lead of 52-48 on TPP terms. Last week Fairfax-Ipsos came in at 53-47, which is landslide territory.
If you go to Fairfax Polls and click on “Poll of polls” and go to last week, you’ll find that Labor averaged 46.7 across the polls. Roy Morgan has been the most negative for Labor. Continue reading Should Bill Shorten give up?
Two articles have come my way which may be of interest to people trying to come to grips with the refugee situation in Europe. First:
Overall while there have been some protests and violent attacks, the German people have been welcoming. As leader, Angela Merkel has been very firm: Continue reading Europe’s dilemma over refugees
