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 Strongman and the Slippery Slope: How Close to Fascism is the United States?

I’ve already written about how the US is now a rogue state : “America first” has become “rules last”. That argument was about the Trump Regime's external behaviour: conquest language, coercion, bullying of allies, and contempt for international referees. This one is about internal dynamics. Rogue states abroad often become strongman states at home, because contempt for rules is rarely compartmentalised. Against any serious set of historical and political benchmarks, the Unite

Gregory Andrews

1 day ago4 min read

Urgent: Comments on the Hate Speech Bill Close Tomorrow at 4pm!

The Federal Parliament has opened public submissions on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026 . Submissions opened yesterday and close tomorrow at 4pm. In other words, Australians have been given only three days to comment on one of the most complex and far-reaching pieces of legislation in years. That alone should worry all of us. Rushed legislation is almost always poor legislation. It creates unintended consequences, weakens safeguards, produces unfair

Gregory Andrews

3 days ago3 min read

Concern and “Stay Safe” Tweets aren’t Climate Policy

As I write this on 11 January 2026, Australia’s in the grip of a brutal heatwave and Victoria is on fire. Houses have been lost, farms destroyed and people are unaccounted for as out-of-control fires rip through communities. Conditions are officially “catastrophic” with temperatures well above 40°C across much of South Australia, Victoria, the ACT and NSW. This isn’t an abstract “extreme weather event”. It’s heat that strains bodies and systems. It’s wind that turns embers in

Gregory Andrews

7 days ago3 min read

Cancel Your US World Cup and Olympics Tickets Now

The United States is about to host two of the world’s biggest sporting events: the 2026 Men’s World Cup and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Normally, that would be a celebration. Sport can be an expresssion of our shared humanity, a reason to travel, connect, and feel part of something bigger than politics. But we’re not in normal times. Under the Trump Regime , the United States is behaving in ways that make the world less safe, and mega-events like the World Cup and Olympics

Gregory Andrews

Jan 103 min read

Greenland, Pine Gap, and the Moment Australia Must Choose

It is a sign of how far things have slid that US allies and members of NATO now feel the need to issue statements that amount to: do not invade us. Yet that is exactly where Europe has landed over Greenland, with leaders publicly have felt the need to issue a statement reaffirming that Greenland belongs to its people and that only Greenland and Denmark can decide its future. In any sane world, this would be unthinkable. In today’s world, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiks

Gregory Andrews

Jan 73 min read

America First, Rules Last: The US is Now a Rogue State

“Rogue state” has long been a label applied by the United States to its enemies. It’s been aimed at governments that ignore international law, threaten their neighbours, and treat rules as optional. Think Russia, North Korea, and Afghanistan under the Taliban, etc. Under the Trump Regime, the US now fits its own definition. Not because Americans are “bad”. Not because democracy has vanished overnight. But because the world’s most powerful country is acting as if its power is

Gregory Andrews

Jan 53 min read

Tied to the Titanic: Australia’s US Delusion Is Sinking Fast

The world just watched the most powerful nation on Earth launch a full-scale military attack - without UN Security Council approval, without any domestic legal justification, and with no plausible self-defense claim. Simply because it can. That’s exactly what happened when the United States struck Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro in a military operation that has drawn condemnation worldwide. It wasn’t a limited strike. It was a major military assault involving

Gregory Andrews

Jan 43 min read

Australia must oppose Israel’s mandatory death penalty proposal for Palestinians

In Australia we abolished the death penalty long ago because justice is meant to restrain vengeance, not legitimise it. Killing is irreversible, courts are fallible, the risk of executing an innocent person is real, and human dignity isn't something government's can switch on and off. And our stance isn't just domestic. It is a principled position we promote internationally through the Government's own strategy , which puts it plainly: "Australia opposes the death penalty in

Gregory Andrews

Jan 32 min read

Why Criticising Israel Isn’t Anti-Semitic

Australians should be able to hold two truths at once: antisemitism is real and rising, and criticism of Israel’s policies and actions isn’t the same thing as hatred of Jewish people. Judaism is a diverse community and identity; Israel is a nation-state with a government, laws, and military actions in Palestine that can and should be scrutinised. If human rights mean anything, they have to apply consistently - no matter whose flag is involved. That includes both Jewish and Pa

Gregory Andrews

Dec 30, 20253 min read

Freedom for Who? Monster Utes Are Stealing Our Streets

I’m not talking about hardworking tradie’s Utes that do real work. I’m talking about the new breed of “monster utes”. Flashy, American-style pickups like this one that are becoming more and more common in our suburbs and cities. They’re marketed as rugged and aspirational. But in our communities - where kids walk to school, older people shuffle to the shops, and cyclists hold their breath at intersections - they’re the opposite. They’re riskier, bulkier, and polluting. And th

Gregory Andrews

Dec 29, 20254 min read

More Than Polar Bears and Penguins: Why Polar Warming Is Everyone’s Problem

Christmas Day in Iceland set a new temperature record of 19.8°C, extraordinarily warm for winter and a marker of how far “normal” has drifted. Of course a single datapoint isn’t, by itself, a climate story. But it’s stark example of what data and science are increasingly documenting. Earth’s poles are no longer behaving like stable cold reservoirs. And the consequences go far beyond the impacts on polar bears and penguins. The NOAA Arctic Report Card for 2025 (yes, Donald Tr

Gregory Andrews

Dec 28, 20253 min read

Trams, Trains & Bikes: Geometry That Cars And Even Busses Can’t Beat

This graphic it tells a simple but important story. It shows what it takes to move a thousand people. One train. A line of buses. Or a small army of cars. Most of us conceptualise transport as being about vehicles. But it’s also very much about space. Cities don’t run out of petrol or electricity first. They run out of room. Footpath space. Lane space. Parking space. Turning lanes. Once you see that, the hierarchy becomes obvious: modes that move the most people with the leas

Gregory Andrews

Dec 26, 20254 min read

What's Degrowth? And Why If We Don't Choose It, Collapse Will Choose Us

I’ve been thinking about a word that can make otherwise reasonable people flinch: degrowth. Say it at a dinner party and you can feel the temperature change. Someone will hear “recession”. Someone else will hear “austerity”. Another will think you mean “hair shirts and cold showers”. A politician will hear “career-ending”. But degrowth is none of those things. As heart, it's a simple proposition: you can’t grow the human economy’s physical footprint forever on a finite planet

Gregory Andrews

Dec 23, 20254 min read

Yeah But… It Was Cold Yesterday

Yeah, but it was cold yesterday. It snowed. I had to scrape ice off my windscreen. Explain that , climate man! This one turns up in comments on my socials often, usually accompanied by a smirk and a photo of snow falling somewhere. And every time it does, it reveals the same basic mistake that climate change delialists make: conflating weather with climate, and then pretending that it's a clever rebuttal. So let’s deal with it. Weather is what happens today, this week, or thi

Gregory Andrews

Dec 22, 20253 min read

EVs At The Tipping Point: Why You Don’t Want To Be A Late Adopter

These graphs tell an important story. On the left is how horses disappeared from cities once cars took off. On the right is the same kind of substitution curve - petrol and diesel powered cars giving way to EVs. Horses didn’t fade gently; they were replaced rapidly. And internal combustion engines aren't “phasing down” with polite applause either. They’re already being substituted - and the steep part of the curve is the part we’re entering. A new paper from the Centre for Ne

Gregory Andrews

Dec 21, 20253 min read

Two Years to 1.7°C: the “Prediction Game” We Can’t Afford to Lose

Australia’s sweltering through another early-summer heatwave, and I’m trying to decide whether to write about the weather outside my window - or the bigger climate system we’re reengineering on this planet. I’ve chooses the bigger one. This week, Professor James Hansen and colleagues published projections that the global temperature record could reach +1.7°C by 2027. That’s not a throwaway line from a pundit. It is a blunt forecast from one of the world’s most influential

Gregory Andrews

Dec 20, 20253 min read

Canberra's Tiny Earless Reptile that Lives In Wolf-Spider Burrows

This week's #FloraAndFaunaFriday favourite I first met the Grassland Earless Dragon on Ngunnawal Country in 2015 when I was Australia’s Threatened Species Commissioner. It sat like a tiny sculpture in my palm - calm, perfect, impossibly delicate - and then vanished down into a wolf-spider burrow. That’s home for these dragons: they borrow the architecture of invertebrates, living and sheltering in spider and insect tunnels across natural temperate grasslands. And true to the

Gregory Andrews

Dec 19, 20252 min read

Bondi: Australia's Choice To Lead Again On Gun Control

Immediately after Bondi, a familiar chorus started to arrive from the United States: “See? Your gun laws didn’t stop it.” The insinuation was that more guns would have somehow prevented the terror. It’s a strange thing to watch people from a country that has normalised gun death as a daily feature of public life try to lecture Australians about what works. In the US, close to 50,000 people die from guns each year. That's about 14 deaths per 100,000 people. Australia’s rate is

Gregory Andrews

Dec 16, 20254 min read

Bondi: Australians Must Choose Each Other - Not Hate and Guns

Bondi has been attacked, and people are dead because of hatred enabled with guns. This wasn't random violence; it was a targeted assault on Jewish Aussies gathered to celebrate Hanukkah. Grief and anger are natural responses. But we should be clear-eyed about what this moment demands of us: solidarity with the Jewish community, of course. But also an unflinching refusal to let anyone turn tragedy into a fresh excuse for division, denigration of others or access to more guns.

Gregory Andrews

Dec 15, 20253 min read

Travel Rorts Feed Trump-Style Politics

In my first election I voted Labor after asking my mum who to vote for. After that, for most of my adult life, I voted Greens and preferenced Labor. Not because they were perfect, but because they were the best of a bad bunch. But then credible independents came along - David Pocock in my electorate. I shifted again, not because I became less progressive, but because I had long stopped trusting the machine. The latest travel-rorts scandal has just confirmed why. We now know t

Gregory Andrews

Dec 12, 20253 min read