Peter Christoff

Peter Christoff teaches in the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne. He has published extensively on environmental and climate policy and politics, and his latest books include Globalization and the Environment (2013), with Robyn Eckersley, and Four Degrees of Global Warming: Australia in a hot world (2013). Peter formerly was the Victorian Assistant Commissioner for the Environment, and served on the Victorian Premier's Advisory Group on Climate Change and as a Board member of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Peter Christoff reviews 'Burn Out: The endgame for fossil fuels' by Dieter Helm

October 2017, no. 395 • 28 September 2017

While Australian governments line up to help Adani dig the world’s biggest coal mine, energy experts are burying fossil fuels forever. Dieter Helm is an economist and professor of energy policy at Oxford. Burn Out: The endgame for fossil fuels is his ambitious, provocative, and sometimes perverse take on global energy prospects. Helm sees no future for fossil fuels. However, he sees the coming e ... (read more)

Peter Christoff reviews 'The Lucky Country? Reinventing Australia' by Ian Lowe

August 2016, no. 383 • 25 July 2016

When The Lucky Country was published in 1964, its cover – Albert Tucker's painting of a hat-wearing, stony-faced, beer-swilling Aussie gambler – captured its essence. Donald Horne's interrogation of Australia was a powerful critique of a nation marked by cultural and political conservatism and economic insularity. His conclusion opened with the much-quoted sentence, 'Australia is a lucky count ... (read more)