Society

Mar 24 2021

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How feasible are these 2050 targets?

By Don Aitkin | Climate Change, Economy, Environment, Politics, Society | 286 Comments

The year 2050 is the target moment for those who want an end to greenhouse gas emissions, and a lot of countries have signed up to it. Ours hasn’t yet, thank goodness. The target year is a long way away, and nearly all of those who have signed up to it won’t be alive then, I should think. I shan’t be there — I’d be 113 if I were, and that is rather unlikely, to say the least. How is the process of transition going to work? I haven’t seen any detailed plans for implementation. I doubt there are any,…

Mar 17 2021

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The Day of the Social Justice Warrior

By Don Aitkin | Humour, Politics, Society | 119 Comments

One of my sons has begun to refer to ‘social justice warriors’, and the other day I came across the short form: ‘SJW’. The term applies to anyone who thinks he or she, or someone they like, has been hardly done by, and something should be done about it. Exactly what should be done is not always clear, but who should do it is always obvious: ‘they’, usually meaning the government, council, corporation or whatever. Sometimes it is an opportunity for the ceremonial wringing of the hands, as in ‘we ought to be able to do better than this’ and…

Mar 10 2021

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What to do with Christian Porter

By Don Aitkin | Health, Politics, Society | 23 Comments

The case of Christian Porter is a difficult one. He is the Commonwealth’s Attorney-General, and it is said that thirty or so years ago, when he was seventeen, he raped a sixteen–year old girl who was also part of a debating team. The girl killed herself many years later. She did report all this much later to the NSW police, who took no action, partly because the alleged rape happened a long time ago, partly because she made no sworn statement, and partly because of her assumed mental condition at the time of the police interviews. It was not long…

Feb 17 2021

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Back to energy, again

By Don Aitkin | Climate Change, Economy, Environment, Politics, Research, Society | 387 Comments

Driving in the bush with my son on Saturday I saw some gigantic wind turbines on top of a small range, and he told me there was a line of them stretching up to Crookwell, quite a way away. That got us talking about the fantasy of wind power, while later the talk took me to another excellent Judy Curry piece, the origin of which I have begun to read. Since it is nearly 350 pp long I will give readers bits of the Extensive Summary instead. Written by two members of the European Parliament, Katinka Brouwer and Dr Lucas Bergkamp,…

Feb 10 2021

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What do popular votes mean in the USA?

By Don Aitkin | Climate Change, Politics, Society | 117 Comments

In this essay I want to return to the US Presidential election, not because I think there was anything suss in the outcome, though there might have been (see Time magazine’s expose here), but to point out some singular features of the result, and what they might mean both in the USA and here. First, the numbers. No one in American history has won more votes than Donald Trump did last November, save for Joe Biden, who won over 81 million popular votes, just over 51 per cent of the votes cast. Donald Trump won 74 million, or not quite 47…

Feb 03 2021

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The Right Talk

By Don Aitkin | Climate Change, Economy, Environment, Media, Politics, Society | 25 Comments

There I was at the National Press Club, to hear the new Prime Minister. Some years have passed since I was last there. Often the take-home message has been given to the media, so you know what the speech is all about. But not this time. I had my recorder on, and I can tell you that this is exactly what he said. Friends, he said, I have heard a lot of people speak in this renowned venue, and most of them look happily to the future, because of what they and their government, or their corporation, are going to…

Jan 27 2021

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The cancel culture is here

By Don Aitkin | Indigenous, Language, Politics, Religion, Society | 20 Comments

I played tennis from the time I was six until the day in 2018 when I hurt my back during a game and discovered I had multiple myeloma and a compression fracture on T8, which spelled the end of my tennis. I followed my favourite players, men and women, until I was too old to care. My favourites were Ken Rosewall, Bjorn Borg and Pete Sampras. I was once a ball boy for a doubles match between John Bromwich-Adrian Quist and Mervyn Rose-Ken McGregor. Only the oldies will know whom I’m talking about. I used to wonder why we didn’t have…

Mar 08 2019

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On the downfall of George Pell

By Don Aitkin | ABC, History, Media, Politics, Religion, Society | 81 Comments

I should begin by saying that I am not a Catholic, and not even a Christian in any practising sense. I have said this before, but it is a necessary opening to this essay. I add to it the fact that I have never spoken to Cardinal Pell nor heard him speak save on television, though I have read a good deal of what he has written. With these caveats in mind I would argue that the sentence on Pell was wrong in terms of natural justice, for the details of the alleged crime were simply improbable in the extreme. They…

Mar 01 2019

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Oh dear, elections are approaching

By Don Aitkin | Climate Change, Economy, Environment, History, Politics, Society | 20 Comments

For weeks now there have been short election ads urging viewers to vote for a new party, Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party. The really old ones amongst us, that is, people older than me, will remember another UAP which flourished in the interwar years in part because of a Labor split. But there have been no ads from the majors. It hardly matters, since the nightly news telecasts have abundant image and text about the coming election and the daily promises made by the leaders. But I guess we’ll see a proper Labor or Coalition ad once there is an…

Feb 22 2019

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There’s nothing like a good ban!

By Don Aitkin | ABC, Environment, History, Media, Politics, Religion, Society | 34 Comments

The ABC announced the other day that the ACT Government was considering a total ban on single-use plastics, like plastic bags, knives, forks and other picnic and fast-food essentials. The relevant Minister said that the Government thought a ban was a good idea, but the community ought to be involved, so there would need to be a discussion paper. We in Canberra have a lot of discussion papers. What effect they have on public policy is rarely clear. Before I could gather my own voice, I heard my wife say, loudly, ‘What a silly idea!’ and I agreed. It is…