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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Rural Climate Leaders: Perspectives from the Nambucca Valley

Local heroes caring for Country - Janette Blainey, Luby Simson, Dinah Eadie and Marc Percival Last night, after cycling 200km from Taree and watching the sun drop over the Nambucca River in Macksville, I had the privilege of sitting down with four remarkable people: Janette Blainey, Luby Simson, Dinah Eadie and Marc Percival. Each, their own way, embodies the kind of climate-and-Country leadership Australia desperately needs. Janette Blainey, from the Miimi Aboriginal Corpora

Gregory Andrews

12 hours ago2 min read

Dolphins, a Ferry, and the Truth We Already Know

Today, while crossing Port Stephens on the Tea Gardens Ferry , something simple and beautiful happened. Two dolphins began to swim in the bow wave. One person spotted them and pointed. Then another. And soon it seems everyone on the boat was taking turns, leaning over the rail, smiling, laughing, calling to strangers they hadn’t spoken to before. One woman just kept turning around to anyone who would listen and saying, “This is wonderful! Isn’t this just wonderful!” And it w

Gregory Andrews

2 days ago2 min read

Australia’s Dirtiest Open Secret: We Export the Climate Problem

As I waited for the Stockton Ferry to cross the Hunter River this morning, the truth sat in the air. I could smell coal. I could feel its dust in my eyes. Looking across to Newcastle’s loaders and endless coal trains, I saw what Australia rarely says out loud: we’re not just a coal country; we’re an coal export nation. We're shipping the problem offshore while counting the profits at home. Newcastle is the world's largest coal port. It ships out 150 million tonnes of coal a y

Gregory Andrews

2 days ago2 min read

Climate Adaptation is a Relationship, Not a Project

How First Nations wisdom and leadership can guide Australia through the climate crisis. Just after dawn this morning, I sat in Newtown with my Aboriginal brother Lee beneath the “I Have A Dream” and Aboriginal Flag mural on King Street. The sun was low, the air was warming, and we were just two fellas sitting in the shadow of a truth we both know: Australia will not get through climate change without First Nations wisdom and leadership. The Climate Crisis Isn’t Coming. It’s H

Gregory Andrews

3 days ago3 min read

What’s Really Choking Prime Farmland? Hint: It’s Not Wind Farms

As I cycled across Ngunnawal and Gundungurra Country today from Canberra, to Goulburn and into the NSW Southern Highlands, I couldn't help noticing massive blackberry thickets smothering good Country everywhere. It made me think about the story that climate change denialist politicians like Barnaby Joyce, Matt Canavan and Angus Taylor love to spruik - that wind farms and solar are “taking over” productive land. But here's the thing. The data says the complete opposite: invasi

Gregory Andrews

4 days ago2 min read

I'm Off to AlterCOP 30 Australia - Riding for Climate, Country and Hope

Panniers packed. Bike oiled. Heart full. This weekend I begin my next big #eBike4Australia journey. I’m riding more than 2,400 kilometres from Canberra to Brisbane and back. For AlterCOP 30 Australia , where as Guest of Honour on Day One, I'll be speaking on A First Nations Vision for Caring for Country in 2050 . For years I sat inside the so-called “real” COPs drafting paragraphs, negotiating commas, and watching ambition shrink in the shadow of politics and fossil-fuelled p

Gregory Andrews

5 days ago1 min read

Thirty Years of Climate Talks and the Planet’s Still Burning

Why the COP Process is Failing I remember one year at the UN climate change talks in Bonn, we all waited for over two weeks for the meeting to start. When it finally did, it opened and closed on the same day. Why? Russia refused to agree to the agenda. Because there are no formally adopted rules of procedure under the UNFCCC, everything has to be agreed by consensus. That meant because one country objected, 195 others - representing nearly every nation on Earth - were powerle

Gregory Andrews

Nov 53 min read

Climate Conscience Man and Online Shopping

It seems like every second day while the house is quiet - kids at school and uni, wife at work - the doorbell rings. Parcels. It's always parcels. Rarely, if ever, for him. Usually addressed to his teenagers. Nike shoes. A second-hand dress from his daughter’s app. Things from Amazon. Sometimes Temu. Bubble wrap, cardboard, air pillows. The recycling bin so full the lid won’t shut. Out on the street delivery vans prowl all day, idling at corners like sharks. He has a strong s

Gregory Andrews

Nov 22 min read

Cars As the New Megafauna

#FloraAndFaunaFriday: how Australia has swapped wombats for Hiluxes Saul Griffith shared a graphic this week that makes the biodiversity crisis uncomfortably concrete. He riffed on a 2018 paper The biomass distribution on Earth that famously estimated the weight all the living animals and plants on Earth. That paper showed that wild animals now make up less than four per cent of the biomass of all mammals on Earth - humans, their pets and livestock comprise the rest! Saul’s

Gregory Andrews

Oct 312 min read

Climate Conscience Man Broke Up with ANZ over Dirty Money

Climate Conscience Man banked with ANZ for decades. Out of habit, mostly. He can’t even remember when their relationship started. But then he came across ANZ’s lending books and didn’t like what he saw. Dirty money. Hundreds of millions of dollars each year poured into fossil fuels . He didn’t want his savings doing night shift for the coal and gas industry. Following the money more deeply, he realised the Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Westpac were just as bad. Collectively, the

Gregory Andrews

Oct 302 min read

1.5°C Is Blown: Put People Before Polluters

The United Nations Secretary-General j ust said the quiet part out loud: the world is going to overshoot 1.5°C. António Guterres calls it “inevitable”, warns of “devastating consequences”, and urges leaders heading to COP30 in Brazil to change course fast so the overshoot is as short and shallow as possible. That means slashing emissions now, not in the next election cycle. And it means fixing who gets heard. He’s blunt: while the lobbyists are there to protect profits, the p

Gregory Andrews

Oct 292 min read

Caught in Conflict: Journalism in Adversity with Integrity

A full house at the Canberra Writers Festival leaned in today as Peter Greste, Cheng Lei and John Lyons pulled back the curtain on what it takes to report truth when power would rather the lights stay off. It was a masterclass on journalism in adversity with integrity, expertly chaired by Karen Middleton. What struck me wasn’t only the courage on stage; it was the context. Peter Greste reminded us that last year was the deadliest on record for journalists since the Committee

Gregory Andrews

Oct 262 min read

Still Stuck at the Lights on Climate Action

I’ve just finished reading the latest State of Climate Action report which is released each year ahead of the Climate COPs. One line keeps echoing in my mind: “Most, if not all, of the bright spots represent isolated instances of rapid change - a far cry from the systemwide transformations urgently needed to close the greenhouse gas emissions gap for 1.5°C.” It’s a stark truth. There are glimmers of hope everywhere - solar uptake, electrification, people installing home batt

Gregory Andrews

Oct 252 min read

No Climate, No Koalas: Australia's Broken Environment Protection Laws

Australia’s making another supposed attempt to improve its ineffective environment protection laws. But this week Environment Minister Murray Watt confirmed the government’s re-write won’t include a “climate trigger”. Greenhouse gas pollution won’t be considered in project approval decisions. There will be no power to refuse projects on climate grounds. Let’s tell it like it is. Broken laws mean broken Country. No climate test means no protection, for Country or community. Wh

Gregory Andrews

Oct 243 min read

Climate Conscience Man’s Slow Wardrobe vs. Fast Fashion

Climate Conscience Man has never treated clothes like snacks. He likes clothes, but has never enjoyed buying them. He hates the shops and really doesn’t get the buy-wear-dump carousel. It frustrates him especially when it comes to the global plastics and climate crises. He’s read the stats on fast fashion - the water, dyes, plastic fibres, and waste. And he can’t shake the images of clothing from Australia washing up on beaches in West Africa. At home, he’s outnumbered by the

Gregory Andrews

Oct 222 min read

From COP to AlterCOP: Join Me for the People-Powered One

For years, I was part of the so-called COPs. I represented Australia at the global climate conferences where negotiators spend sleepless nights arguing over commas. While emissions kept climbing, I helped write dodgy paragraphs. I even chaired some of the negotiations. I remember at COP18 in Doha I didn't go back to my hotel for three days. I slept sporadically in a prayer room while the planet burned! Don't get me wrong. I'm a firm believer in the importance of the United N

Gregory Andrews

Oct 212 min read

We’re Touching 1.9°C - And It’s Only 2025

Real time data coming out of the world’s climate measurement systems should be stopping us in our tracks. The latest estimate by climate scientist Dr Karsten Haustein shows that, this week, the Earth is 1.9°C warmer than before humans began burning fossil fuels at scale. Haustein’s work is widely respected in the field of climate science. A researcher at the University of Leipzig and formerly of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, he specialises in the modelling and attr

Gregory Andrews

Oct 202 min read

The Hollow Cliff: Australia’s Paddock Trees Are Dying Out

Why we must grow the next century. #FloraAndFaunaFriday Cycling through the wheat–sheep belt between Canberra and Melbourne to #CitSciOz25 last week, something hit me harder than any of the headwinds. The big, old trees dotting the paddocks are the last elders of a pre-clearing world - they’re sentinels holding space for Nature. But they’re reaching the end of their lives. These paddock trees aren’t just scenery. They’re habitat pillars. Their hollows shelter parrots and cock

Gregory Andrews

Oct 173 min read

Batteries Are the New Solar: And Our Next Leap for Climate Hope

Ten years ago, solar power was often dismissed as too expensive, too small-scale, too niche. Then the cost curve bent - steeply. In 2023, the world installed more solar than in 2021 and 2022 combined, and then 2024 smashed the record again. Now, batteries are tracing the same curve as solar. Batteries are becoming the new solar: according to the Financial Times, prices are down over 95 per cent since 2010, and around 50 per cent lower than just 18 months ago. Each drop in cos

Gregory Andrews

Oct 153 min read

Citizen Science: A Quiet Revolution

I'm up early to start cycling back to Canberra this morning, but still buzzing after keynoting at the Australian Citizen Science Association 's annual conference #CitSciOz25 in Naarm Melbourne yesterday. It was an honour to share the stage with Professor Brendan Wintle from the Univeristy of Melbourne and Dr Amanda Caples, Victoria’s Chief Scientist, and to share why citizen science matters now more than ever . Citizen scientists are helping to reverse three great unravelling

Gregory Andrews

Oct 142 min read