Blog

I write about climate, human rights, biodiversity, and uncomfortable truths. From the wisdom of First Nations caring for Country to the global action needed to protect ecosystems and ensure intergenerational equity, these stories are personal, political, and urgent. They aim to inspire hope.

Explore my Yeah But... series for sharp takes on deflection, denial, and double standards. And scroll through Climate Conscious Man's reflections on what it means to live responsibly on a heating planet.

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The Wallabies We're Losing

For #FloraAndFaunaFriday this week, let’s talk about the Wallabies. Not Australia's rugby players. I'm talking about the small, cute, fury ones. Most people think a wallaby is simply a small kangaroo. That's broadly true, although the distinction isn't as scientifically tidy as you'd imagine. “Wallaby” is not a formal taxonomic category. It's a common name generally given to the smaller and medium-sized members of the macropod family, while “kangaroo” is reserved for its larg

Gregory Andrews

3 days ago3 min read

Another Antarctic warning shot: the “Doomsday Glacier” is losing its last shield

Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier is almost the size of Victoria, and more than two kilometres thick in places. It holds enough land-based ice to raise global sea levels by around 65 centimetres when fully melted. Now scientists believe its remaining eastern ice shelf - the floating extension that protects the glacier’s front - could break apart as early as this year. “The last bit of ice shelf in front of the glacier is poised to disintegrate,” British Antarctic Survey scientist

Gregory Andrews

4 days ago3 min read

Wait, Koalas Can't Offset Coal and Gas?

If you follow climate policy then you'll have heard of carbon offsets. The idea sounds logical enough. Rather than reducing all of its own emissions, a company can pay for emissions reductions somewhere else and claim those reductions against its own pollution. Supporters say offsets provide flexibility, lower costs and help with the 'transition' to 'net zero'. And in an ideal world perhaps they might. But the reality is that offsets allow major polluters to keep polluting wh

Gregory Andrews

5 days ago3 min read

The Yellow Line

How Gaza is being divided, enclosed and transformed while the world looks the other way Most Australians have heard of the Berlin Wall which separated Germany during the Cold War. And many know of the Green Line that delineated Israel and the Palestinian Territories back in 1967. But few have ever heard of the Yellow Line. And if history judges our generation harshly over Gaza, it may very well be this line - more than any speech, resolution or ceasefire - that comes to symbo

Gregory Andrews

Jul 126 min read

AI’s Environmental Reckoning

Artificial intelligence is increasing emissions, undermining renewable energy gains and threatening our environment. Artificial intelligence presents significant opportunities and benefits. It’s already helping doctors diagnose disease, scientists model climate change and businesses become more productive. But it has also arrived at a pivotal moment in the global energy transition. Just as the world is finally building renewable energy at the scale needed to replace fossil fu

Gregory Andrews

Jul 124 min read

The Graph That Should Be Front-Page News

Every so often the Earth produces a signal that is impossible to ignore. This graph is one of them. It shows sea-surface temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific, one of the most important parts of the Earth's climate system. Each blue line represents a different year since 1982. The red line is this year. It doesn't just set a new record. It has departed entirely from the range of previous observations. If this graph represented stock market prices, a ne

Gregory Andrews

Jul 114 min read

The Boab: Australia’s Link to an Ancient World

This week’s #FloraAndFaunaFriday post explores a survivor from deep time. Whenever I’m in the Kimberley, one of the things that always captivates me is the magnificent boab trees. Their swollen trunks, gnarled branches and incredible longevity make them unlike almost any other tree on Earth. And when I was serving as an Australian Ambassador in West Africa, I was surprised to find also their close cousins growing across places like northern Ghana. Half a world apart, yet inst

Gregory Andrews

Jul 102 min read

Vale Lee Willis-Ardler

My good friend and Aboriginal brother Lee Willis-Ardler died this week after a courageous battle with an aggressive brain tumour. Lee fought it for 12 weeks. His sisters Fiona and Gillian lovingly cared for him at home every day. I met Lee almost 20 years ago. He was one of those rare people whose friendship never comes with conditions. He was loyal. He was compassionate. He was generous in ways that were both enormous and completely ordinary to him. Lee was the kind of frien

Gregory Andrews

Jul 92 min read

The Carbon Capture Con: Why CCS is a Fraud

Carbon capture and storage sounded seductive right? Keep the coal mines. Keep the gas fields. Keep the LNG export terminals. Keep the profits. Keep the political donations. Then bolt on a giant industrial vacuum cleaner and bury the pollution somewhere underground. That was the promise. The problem is that the promise hasn’t survived contact with reality. A new investigation has sharpened what climate advocates have known for years: carbon capture and storage, or CCS, has bee

Gregory Andrews

Jul 75 min read

Labor’s Gambling Ad Ban Is a Joke

If you’ve been watching the Socceroos in the World Cup on SBS expecting to see football like me, you’ll know what I’m talking about. A barrage of gambling ads! According to analysis from the ABC, more than one in every three ads during SBS’s Socceroos coverage promoted online gambling. That’s on an Australian taxpayer-funded national broadcaster, and after the Albanese Government proudly announced its long-awaited gambling advertising reforms! If this is what a crackdown look

Gregory Andrews

Jul 54 min read

Beginning of the End for Fossil-Fuelled Cars

Good climate news can feel rare. But this week, we got some. According to new analysis reported by The Driven, the number of vehicles registered in NSW with an internal combustion engine peaked on 27 February 2026 at 6,309,403. And now its declining. That includes petrol and diesel cars, vans, trucks, buses, motorcycles, hybrids and plug-in hybrids. This matters. Because for the first time, new EVs are not merely adding to the total number of cars on the road, they’re beginni

Gregory Andrews

Jul 42 min read

Ignoring the Warning Light

Imagine you’re driving down the highway. Your engine temperature gauge creeps up into the red. The next day again. Then the next. Twenty-eight days in a row. Would you ignore the gauge or accuse it of alarmism? Would you insist it was exaggerating? Or would stop and you ask the obvious question: Why is my engine getting hotter and what can I do to fix it? Earth’s oceans are our temperature gauge. More than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases ends up in the ocea

Gregory Andrews

Jul 32 min read

Left and Right are last Century’s Paradigm

Climate, Country, human rights and accountability are too important to be trapped in old ideological boxes. One of the great distractions of our time is the idea that every serious issue must be forced into a left-wing or right-wing box. Climate change becomes “left wing”. Human rights become “left wing”. Accountability becomes “right wing”. Welfare reform becomes “right wing”. Caring for Country becomes “left wing”. Public safety becomes “right wing”. Opposing genocide becom

Gregory Andrews

Jul 15 min read

Australia’s Flagship Climate Policy Is Failing to Cut Emissions

Australia’s biggest industrial polluters are supposed to be reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. That is the purpose of the Safeguard Mechanism, the federal government’s flagship policy for cutting emissions from large industrial facilities. On paper, it sounds like a sensible approach. The country’s largest emitters are each given an emissions limit, and those limits become progressively tighter over time. The expectation is that companies invest in cleaner technologies

Gregory Andrews

Jun 283 min read

When France Is Hotter Than the Sahara, It's Everyone’s Warning.

France is currently glowing red with heat. Not metaphorically. Literally. Land surface temperatures in parts of the country have been recorded at levels more commonly associated with the Sahara Desert. France. The country of vineyards, alpine villages, stone farmhouses, rivers, forests and temperate European summers. Looking like the Sahara. That should stop us in our tracks. The real story isn’t that France is having a heatwave. It’s that climate change is making places beha

Gregory Andrews

Jun 274 min read

Nature Doesn’t Do Monocultures

If Australia had a bird that embodied our national identity, it could belong to the Purple-crowned Fairy-wren. Tiny. Bold. Confident. Sporting a spectacular splash of purple that wouldn’t look out of place at an Australian music festival or on a TAFE or university campus. It’s all sass. And thank goodness it doesn’t believe Australia should be monochrome. Nature’s always known that diversity is something to celebrate. Perhaps I’m a little biased. I first met Purple-crowned Fa

Gregory Andrews

Jun 262 min read

Forgetting Abundance

Many Australians are noticing it, even if they haven’t quite put their finger on it. There seem to be fewer birds around - especially smaller ones. The dawn chorus is quieter. Windscreens collect fewer insects than they once did. Fairy-wrens and flycatchers seem less common. You might assume this is simply nostalgia. But unfortunately, the science increasingly suggests otherwise. A new Canadian study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences just found

Gregory Andrews

Jun 253 min read

Listening on Country: Cultural Capability Beyond the Script

There's a moment that happens sometimes in our work at Lyrebird Dreaming, and it always stops me in my tracks. It’s not when someone delivers a polished Acknowledgement of Country. Or when a strategy gets approved. It’s when a group of Australians sit down on Country in a circle and something shifts - from “we’re here to be seen doing the right thing” to “we’re here to listen, learn, and improve how we live and work”. That’s what this photo captures. A clear winter sky. A wid

Gregory Andrews

Jun 243 min read

Why We Chose Gaza And How You Can Too

Why our family is supporting culture, hope and healing through theatre and the arts in Gaza. Each year my family choses to make a significant annual investment in a charity that's doing good for humanity and/or the environment. This year we've chosen to invest $5,000 to support young people in Gaza through a partnership between the Basma Society for Culture and Arts and Australia's Indigo Foundation. There are no shortage of worthy causes in the world. Here at home, people st

Gregory Andrews

Jun 233 min read

Five Things We Can We Do To Stop Fascism

The rise of far-right authoritarianism around the world can feel overwhelming. And we’re seeing it here in Australia. Every day seems to bring another attack on democratic institutions, another culture war, another outrage designed to make us angry, frightened or exhausted. It is easy to feel powerless. Easy to believe that nothing we do matters. History suggests otherwise. One of the most important lessons from the history of fascism is that democracies are rarely destroyed

Gregory Andrews

Jun 203 min read