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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Our Native Forests are worth more standing

For today’s #FloraAndFaunaFriday, the iconic species isn’t a single animal or plant. It's the entire forest. Spotted gums rising like pale columns above an ancient under-storey of burrawangs. Between and among them are hollows, fallen timber, leaf litter, fungi, insects, orchids, birds, bats and marsupials. Beneath them, roots and soil organisms hold water, store carbon and keep the whole living system functioning. This isn't simply a collection of trees waiting to become tim

Gregory Andrews

2 days ago3 min read

80% of Australians Are Not Antisemitic

A NSW Supreme Court judge has demolished the politically convenient lie that criticism of Israel is hatred of Jewish people. Almost four in every five Australians view Israel unfavourably. Are we all antisemites? Of course not. And now a NSW Supreme Court judge has said so with a clarity that many Australian politicians, officials and media commentators conspicuously lack. In State of NSW vs Farhat, Justice Desmond Fagan rejected the dangerous conflation of criticism of Israe

Gregory Andrews

2 days ago2 min read

The Evolution of Climate Denial: And Where Australia Sits

Climate denial used to be easy to recognise. It told us global warming was a hoax, scientists were conspiring for grant money and a day of snow disproved decades of evidence. It sounds just like Donald Trump or Pauline Hanson. Of course that kind of denial remains alive and dangerous. But it’s no longer the only - or even the most politically effective - way to obstruct climate action. Climate denial has evolved. It's learned to accept the science while denying what the scien

Gregory Andrews

6 days ago3 min read

Bird Flu Has Landed - and Australia’s Wildlife Has Nowhere Else to Go

The virus is unavoidable. But an extinction crisis should not be. This is me on Christmas Island back in 2014, when I was Australia’s Threatened Species Commissioner, meeting an endangered Abbott’s booby. Sorry about the name. This Abbott has done nothing wrong! But joking aside, that photograph now carries a significance I couldn't have imagined at the time. The Abbott’s booby nests in only one place on Earth: the rainforests of Christmas Island. It's long-lived, slow to mat

Gregory Andrews

Aug 146 min read

One Nation’s Target Changes. But It’s Politics Of Hate Doesn’t.

Pauline Hanson is trying to distance One Nation from homophobia following remarks by a former One Nation candidate who described homosexuality as a “mental illness” and blamed parents for their children’s sexual orientation. Homosexuality hasn’t been classified as a mental illness in Australia for more than half a century. And even back then, that was wrong. Hanson says the comments don’t reflect her views and his profile has been removed from the One Nation website after the

Gregory Andrews

Aug 133 min read

Climate Warming Faster Than We Planned For?

Will 2026 be the hottest year ever recorded, or merely the second hottest? The answer will depend on which global temperature dataset is used. Some datasets place the projected 2026 temperature just above the 2024 record; others put it a few hundredths of a degree below. That distinction matters to climate scientists. But it means little to us, the communities confronting heatwaves, fires and floods, nor to ecosystems already being pushed towards collapse. A more important wa

Gregory Andrews

Aug 133 min read

Weather Whiplash: Fasten Your Seatbelts

Climate disasters often reveal something unexpected. Not just how vulnerable our landscapes have become, but how easily we mistake the real story. I was yarning with someone this week about the catastrophic fires sweeping through France. Their immediate response was, "Oh yes... this is really going to wreck French wines." I don't blame them. In fact, I suspect many of us would instinctively reach for the same sort of observation. We relate to climate change through the things

Gregory Andrews

Aug 13 min read

Help shape the future of Gang-gang Cockatoos

This week's #FloraAndFaunaFriday post is about Australia's endangered Gang-gang Cockatoo, one of our most iconic and distinctive birds. For many people living in the Canberra region like me, its creaking call is the sound of autumn. For Aboriginal people, including my own D'harawal community, Gang-gangs are more than that. They’re a part of Country. But sadly, Gang-gang populations are declining across most of their range due to the combined impacts of habitat loss, climate c

Gregory Andrews

Jul 312 min read

Four Dollars for Fossil Fuels. One for Renewables.

How often do we hear that renewable energy survives only because of government subsidies. Well the facts tell a very different story. A new report by WWF-Australia has found that Australia's Federal and state governments provide around four times more financial support to fossil fuels than to renewables. They put a total of $14.9 billion into fossil fuel subsidies in 2024-25, compared with $3.5 billion for renewable energy and energy storage. Think about that for a moment. Th

Gregory Andrews

Jul 263 min read

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

Jul 173 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

Jul 163 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

Jul 153 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