John Quiggin

I was looking at this picture of people (mostly tourists, it appears) fleeing massive fires in Rhodes, feeling despair about the future of the world when I was struck by an even more despairing thought.Almost certainly, a lot of the people in the picture are climate denialists. And even more certainly, they will mostly remain so despite this experience. Australia was one of the first countries to experience massive fires clearly attributable to global heating. In December...

Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

– but this dream has failed before. My latest in The Conversation over the fold Last week, opposition leader Peter Dutton called for Australia to join what he dubbed the “international nuclear energy renaissance”. The same phrase was used 20 years ago to describe plans for a massive expansion of nuclear. New Generation III plants would be safer and more efficient than the Generation II plants built in the 1970s and 1980s. But the supposed renaissance delivered only a trickle...

Crooked Timber, the group blog of which I’m a member turns 20 today. Here’s a post I’ve written to mark the occasion. Not quite 20 years ago, I got an invitation to spend a week as a visiting blogger at an exciting new group blog called Crooked Timber. In the manner of the most catastrophic house guests, I managed to turn that into permanent residence. Looking back at posts from that time, it’s startling how active we were; with multiple posts most days. That’s ebbed away to...

Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Hard to describe how depressed I am feeling about Australian politics right now. The Voice Referendum was always going to be a longshot because referendums usually fail. But Albanese’s refusal to put forward a model, and the promotion of someone as abrasive as Noel Pearson as a leading advocate risk a defeat so bad that the fallback of option of a legislated Voice is unlikely. In economic terms, Australians will be worse off by the next election than when Labor was elected –...

Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

From June 23 2002 John Quiggin What I’m reading: The Consolation of Philosophy, by Boethius. This work, written when the author (a 5th century Roman noble in the service of the Gothic king Theoderic) was imprisoned and awaiting execution, is the inspiration for the recent popular book by Alain de Botton. Is philosophy really a consolation in times of suffering? I don’t know, but I also don’t know of anything better. View original postShare this:Like this:Like Loading...

Bush declares war!!Sacrifice Is for Losers(on death duties) This is the first of what may become a regular series of reposts from 21 years ago. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...