Food & Environment
Food & Environment
Australia is rich in both ecology and natural resources. The Institute of Public Affairs Food and Environment Unit seeks to determine our national and international role in feeding the world and protecting the environment. The IPA examines environmental and agricultural policies across the countries, with particular emphasis on climate change policy, water, agricultural biotechnology, resource management, and market-based solutions to environmental challenges.
Sub-topics of Food & Environment
Publications
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...
Climate Change: China's approach
In November 2008, Dr Alan Moran, Director of the IPA's Deregulation Unit travelled overseas to get on-the-spot looks at the international policy climate for global warming mitigation strategies. This second part looks at China. (The first part, on...
What's happening to the Murray River
The Murray River is Australia's longest river, and together with its tributary, the Darling River, drains an area known as the Murray Darling Basin. The region has historically received only 6 per cent of Australia's annual rainfall but produced...
Big fat beat up
Arnold Schwarzenegger is obese. He's been obese his entire adult life, including the seven times he won the Mr Olympia bodybuilding title. Despite obesity not impacting his own, clearly excellent, health, Governor Schwarzenegger has introduced...
2008 Harold Clough Lecture: 'The Politics and Science of Climate Change: The Wrong Stuff'
The 2008 IPA Lecture was organised in conjunction with the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation. I am pleased to present this lecture today in Perth. I am particularly pleased to find that Perth is still here. I last visited here in 2005 - the...
Shooting down the enemies of progress
Tony Gilland reviews An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming by Nigel Lawson (Overlook, 2008, 144 pages) & The Enemies of Progress: The Dangers of Sustainabilityby Austin Williams (Imprint, 2008, 156 pages) An Appeal to Reason:...
Who should take the blame for the biofuels tragedy?
In Mexico early last year, 75,000 people took to the streets in protest of the increasing cost of basic grain, in what were branded the ‘tortilla riots.' In March 2008, there were food riots in Egypt. And in April, Haitians rioted over the...
Taking apart Australia
After more than two decades of economic reform there were few truly egregious examples of government sanctioned protection left to greet the incoming Rudd Government. Perhaps the most outstanding was the monopoly granted to a publicly listed...
Submission to the Green Paper on Australia's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme
Would you swap climate change for acid rain?
‘Climate change is happening so quickly that mankind may need to pump sulfur into the atmosphere to survive', argued Tim Flannery, 2007 Australian of the Year, in May. Flannery has suggested the sulfur be dispersed by jet fuel as a last...