Archived publication for 2009
Recent publications
Palming off livelihoods? The misguided campaign against palm oil
Internationally environmental non-government organisations and activists are campaigning against industry and consumer use of palm oil. Their opposition to is driven by claims that it is unsustainable promotes deforestation and reduces orang-utan...
Misguided Palm Oil Campaigns Won't Help Orang-Utans, But Will Harm Asia's Poor
"Misguided campaigns by the Melbourne Zoo, celebrities and activists lack understanding of why forest and orang-utans are being lost. It isn't palm oil it's poverty", said Tim Wilson, Director of the Intellectual Property and Free Trade Unit at...
The Costs to Australia of Renewable Energy
There can be few other cases in the history of modern economies where governments have taken action deliberately to increase the costs of production in their economies on the scale being contemplated with the Renewable Energy proposal. I n the...
ETS should be scrapped, not delayed
"While a delay is welcome, the ETS should be scrapped entirely," said John Roskam of the Institute of Public Affairs, a free market think tank. Kevin Rudd announced today that the government's ETS - effectively a tax on energy - is to be postponed...
A delinked and non-compliant Emissions Trading Scheme
Why Australia's ETS won't be linked to an international ETS and why it will be inconsistent with our WTO and FTA obligations
Imposing our preferences on whaling cultures
Few issues illustrate how subjective beliefs about morality distorts environmental debate more than the issue of whaling. Many environmentalists claim to be simply advocates for the sustainable use of resources; they claim that they are not in...
Biotechnology is bioterrific, not bioterrifying
Near the beginning of Richard Hindmarsh's Edging Towards BioUtopia he provides, apparently un-selfconsciously, a persuasive illustration of the chasm between scientists using rDNA techniques (the creation of artificial DNA) and critics of...