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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AUKUS: What Else Could Australia Buy for $368 Billion?

Pardon the pun, but Anthony Albanese’s Government is clearly rusted on to spending $368 billion on AUKUS. Second-hand nuclear-powered submarines from the United States with no warranty, no guaranteed delivery, and no guarantee of sovereign control. We’re told they’re necessary to keep us safe in an increasingly uncertain strategic environment. I don’t buy it. AUKUS is not about making Australia safer. It risks making our region more unstable, deepens our dependence on the Uni

Gregory Andrews

6 hours ago3 min read

Fossil Fuel Fascism: When a Dying Industry Tries to Take Democracy With It

There is a phrase that captures something ugly about the world we are now living through. It sounds extreme. But so is the behaviour it describes. Fossil fuel fascism is what happens when the coal, gas and oil industries begin to lose the economic argument, the scientific argument and the moral argument - and respond by attacking democracy itself. It’s not simply climate denial. It’s not just lobbying. It’s not even just greenwashing. It’s the hardening of fossil fuel politic

Gregory Andrews

2 days ago4 min read

Question for Penny Wong: Is Australian Citizenship Worth Anything?

When I was a diplomat, there was one principle that sat above politics, ideology and personal opinion. The Australian Government had a duty to protect its citizens. Not some citizens. Not citizens whose views they agree with. Not citizens whose activities are politically convenient. At every Embassy, we always put protecting and supporting Australian citizens first. All Australian citizens. That’s why I find myself increasingly bewildered by Australia’s response to a series o

Gregory Andrews

3 days ago2 min read

What Do Feral Pigs, Lantana and Reconciliation Have in Common?

This week on Mabo Day, I had the privilege of speaking at the launch of a Reconciliation Action Plan: a first for the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions (CISS). Over the past year, I’ve served as a member of its Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group, helping guide the RAP from its earliest stages through to endorsement by Reconciliation Australia and launch. That experience gave me a front-row seat to an interesting question. What do invasive species management and Reco

Gregory Andrews

4 days ago3 min read

Climate Policy Counts Dollars and Tonnes. What if We Counted the Dead?

Climate policy has a strange way of making the human disappear. Governments talk about tonnes of CO₂. Economists talk about dollars. Corporations talk about CO₂ equivalent and offsets. Consultants talk about pathways, baselines and scenarios. International negotiators talk about degrees of warming, carbon budgets and least-cost abatement. Of course, all of that matters. But none of it captures the thing that should matter most. A new preprint shared with me this week by Nigel

Gregory Andrews

May 303 min read

Green Sea Turtles and the Beach They Always Come Back To

#FloraAndFaunaFriday this week shares the story of Australia's extraordinary Green Sea Turtles. A decade ago, I travelled as Australia’s Threatened Species Commissioner with scientists, rangers and Eddie Mabo’s relatives to Raine Island, at the very top of the Great Barrier Reef. It was one of the most extraordinary places I've ever been. Raine Island isn't just a speck of sand and coral in the northern Reef. It is the world’s largest green sea turtle hatchery. In big seasons

Gregory Andrews

May 294 min read

Nature Positive? Then Why Are the Bulldozers Still Running?

Last year the Albanese Government congratulated itself for fixing Australia’s environment laws. It spoke proudly about “Nature Positive” reforms, restoring trust in environmental protection and repairing Australia’s “broken” system. This week we’re getting a glimpse of what that actually means. The Environment Centre NT is in the Federal Court trying to stop nearly 3,000 hectares of habitat destruction approved by Environment Minister Murray Watt after the new laws came into

Gregory Andrews

May 283 min read

Words Matter: Stop Calling Gaza a "War" or "Humanitarian Situation"

Words matter. They shape what we see, what we feel, what we excuse, and what we allow governments to get away with. And that's why we need to stop casually calling what is happening in Gaza a “war”. A war implies two sides fighting each other with at least some degree of comparable military capacity. It suggests armies, fronts, battles, advances and retreats. It suggests mutual destruction. It suggests tragedy, but also a degree of symmetry. Like what's happening in Ukraine.

Gregory Andrews

May 253 min read

Australians in the IDF and the War Crimes Questions We Can’t Ignore

Some disturbing questions are beginning to emerge in Australia. Ones that our political leaders, media and law enforcement agencies aren't talking about and seem deeply uncomfortable confronting. How many Australians are serving in the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza and what are they doing? And with credible evidence of abuse and war crimes continuing to mount, what responsibilities does Australia have for investigating our own citizens? These questions stopped being abstract

Gregory Andrews

May 243 min read

AUKUS, Port Kembla and why Gough Whitlam Would Roll in His Grave

Fifty years ago, Gough Whitlam finally put a stop to Australia’s nuclear plans at Jervis Bay. Known as Booderee by the Traditional Custodians, it’s now a national park and Aboriginal land owned by the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community. But less than 100km up the road at Port Kembla, Australian Labor is now proposing a nuclear submarine base. Port Kembla isn’t just an empty industrial sacrifice zone. It is a living community. It’s steelworkers and surfers, migrant families and ar

Gregory Andrews

May 182 min read

The Climate Crisis is a Health Crisis

Climate change is usually talked about as an environmental issue. Coral reefs, glaciers, bushfires and endangered species etc. All of that matters enormously. But it's also increasingly missing the point. The climate crisis is now fundamentally a public health emergency. This week, a panel of leading international experts convened by the World Health Organization urged it to formally declare the climate crisis a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” - the same hi

Gregory Andrews

May 173 min read

Even Israel’s Leading Newspaper Is Sounding the Alarm

One of the strangest and most disturbing things about what’s happening in Gaza is how difficult it has become in countries like Australia to even discuss it without being attacked, smeared or accused of extremism. Yet some of the strongest warnings about Israel’s conduct are no longer coming from progressive activists or Arab media. They’re coming from inside Israel itself. This week, one of Israel’s most respected newspapers Haaretz published a lead editorial condemning Isra

Gregory Andrews

May 163 min read

The Aussie Bird That Outflies an Airbus A380

I first encountered Bar-tailed Godwits on Lord Howe Island. Later, I watched them again near Broome, probing mudflats with their long bills, seemingly calm and unhurried. I couldn’t stop thinking that I was looking at one of the world’s greatest endurance athletes. The Bar-tailed Godwit looks like a relatively unassuming shorebird. Brown and grey mottled feathers. Long legs. Long bill. Nothing about it screams “superhero”. But every year these birds undertake one of the most

Gregory Andrews

May 153 min read

Budget 2026: Nature Nowhere, Decline Everywhere

Last night’s Federal Budget was full of the things that usually dominate Australian politics: spin and taxes. The Government wants it remembered as one that rewarded workers and cooled speculative investment in housing. And superficially, that probably makes sense. But while the media panels discussed who will gain or lose a few hundred dollars here and there, and whether property investors are being hard done by, I kept looking for something else: Where is Nature in all this

Gregory Andrews

May 134 min read

Batteries Mean the “Base Load” Myth is Dead

For years, coal, gas and nuclear advocates have regurgitated the same argument: renewables can never replace “base-load” generation because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. That argument is now dead. Not because physics changed. Not because climate activists won a slogan war. But because batteries have changed the economics of electricity systems faster than governments, media commentators and energy companies have adapted. A major new report fro

Gregory Andrews

May 113 min read

Iran Is Not Venezuela

There’s a recurring pathology in US foreign policy that confuses moral condemnation with strategic understanding. Washington is remarkably good at convincing itself that because it dislikes a regime - and because American and allied media audiences dislike a regime - that regime must also be weak, brittle, isolated and close to collapse. Time and again, that assumption has proven catastrophically wrong. But Trump takes this long-standing American weakness and puts it on stero

Gregory Andrews

May 103 min read

Biofuels vs Solar: Numbers Don’t Lie

The biofuels proposition is basically this: use farmland, water, fertiliser, machinery and energy to grow crops, harvest them, transport them, process them into liquid fuel, then burn them in an inefficient internal combustion engine. Alternatively, we could put solar on a tiny fraction of that land, feed electricity into batteries, and drive. This is why biofuels sit in the same bucket as nuclear power, fossil hydrogen and carbon capture and storage as so-called energy solut

Gregory Andrews

May 92 min read

Flag shagging, free speech and the hypocrisy of Palestine policing

There's a strange kind of patriotism on display when people wrap themselves in the Australian flag while trampling on Australian values. At Coogee this weekend, I came across the end of a peaceful protest - of mostly elderly women and Jewish community members standing for Palestinian human rights - who were bullied by pro-Israel agitators carrying a bizarre hybrid flag: the Australian flag visually overwritten with the Israeli flag. That matters. The Australian Government’s o

Gregory Andrews

May 52 min read

What Happened to the EV Battery Apocalypse?

For years, EV critics have repeated the same warning: “What happens when the battery dies?” It’s usually delivered with the confidence of someone revealing a fatal flaw. The implication is clear: EVs are ticking time bombs waiting to strand owners with a catastrophic repair bill. But here’s the thing. They’ve been around for over 15 years now, and the data tells a very different story. A recent report tracking battery health across more than 30,000 EVs found battery replaceme

Gregory Andrews

Apr 303 min read

How Australia Became The Resource-Rich Country That Acts Poor

Here’s something I can’t get my head around. Australia is one of the largest gas exporters in the world. We let huge foreign companies pump it up, liquefy it, ship it offshore, and sell at enormous profit into global markets. But somehow, as a country, we act like we’re poor. That’s not rhetoric. That’s the numbers. The tax we collect from this industry is tiny. Aussies pay more more in beer excise each year than the gas industry pays in royalty taxes. And students’ universit

Gregory Andrews

Apr 264 min read