Julie-Anne's media statement at Warsaw Climate Conference, 13 November 2013

You can watch my statement here (at 09:31):  http://bit.ly/1bu6z3L

My name’s Julie-Anne and I’m an Australian.  Which is quite an admission in these halls at the moment.

People keep coming up to me and asking what’s going on?  Why my government is doing such terrible things on climate policy?  Why are they so addicted to coal?  Why are they so determined to go backwards?  How can they trash their climate policy when the rest of the world is meeting here in Warsaw to try and move forward on climate?  And, particularly when our neighbouring countries, especially the Philippines, are suffering such devastation from the worst ever (worst ever!) Typhoon.    

But the main question they ask me is - do the Australian people support all of this negativity and destruction?

The answer to that question is they categorically do not.  The majority of Australian people do not support repealing the carbon price, trashing renewable energy support, dismantling the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and winding back support for a long term target of reducing carbon pollution by 80% by 2050.

The International Climate Negotiations ... is there hope? And what does it mean for Australia? (and other countries?)

I was recently asked to give a presentation on the international climate negotiations - is there hope?  As you'll see I assess what went wrong in the lead up to Copenhagen, and whether things are different in the lead up to 2015.  I won't give away the punchline - you've only got to get to slide 8 to read my answer to "is there hope".  The rest of the presentation is thoughts on what we need to get a good international climate agreement - within the negotiations and domestically.

The presentation can be downloaded from slideshare here, and via google docs here.  And for the super keen the video of me delivering it is here (but I have added a slide to the slideshow version, based on the discussion we had when I delivered it in Melbourne and Sydney).

I'd welcome your comments below on whether you think I'm on the money. 

44 degrees and still rising

Today's my day off.  But I'm trapped in the study as a heat wave beats down.  The study is a very small room in our very small apartment.  But the only room that our even smaller air conditioner can handle cooling on this 44oC and rising day.  So instead of going shopping, to yoga, for a swim or a walk – I'm writing about climate change!

Not that I need do the writing, actually.  Because an excellent bunch of scientists from the Australian Bureau of Metereology (or the BOM as I like to call them as in “it’s da BOMb”) have done the writing for me here.  But as they are scientists, writing in an age where being a scientist seems to be a license for people to persecute you, the article is not super short nor snappy.  So, the summary (with some ‘colour’ from me) is:

• The first two weeks of January 2013 now hold the records for the hottest Australian day on record, the hottest two-day period on record, the hottest three-day period, the hottest four-day period and, so on up to the hottest 14 day period on record (for Australia-wide average daily temperatures)