Tim Flannery

Tim Flannery is one of the world’s most prominent environmentalists. In 2007 he was named ‘Australian of the Year’, arguably Australia’s highest honour. He delivered the 2002 Australia Day Address to the nation. In 2013 he founded, and is now chief councillor, of the Australian Climate Council, Australia’s largest and most successful crowdfunded organisation. His latest book is Sunlight and Seaweed: An argument for how to feed, power, and clean up the world (Text Publishing, 2017).

Tim Flannery reviews 'No One Is Too Small To Make a Difference' By Greta Thunberg, 'This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion handbook' By Extinction Rebellion, and 'Global Planet Authority: How we’re about to save the biosphere' by Angus Forbes

October 2019, no. 415 • 24 September 2019

Many climate activists and scientists are becoming desperate. They have devoted decades to warning the world of the danger of climate change and to forging solutions. But nothing has worked. No climate report or warning, no political agreement, no technological innovation has altered the ever-upwards trajectory of the greenhouse pollution that is ravaging our world. I am not alone in becoming furi ... (read more)

Tim Flannery reviews 'Down to Earth: Politics in the new climate regime' by Bruno Latour

October 2018, no. 405 • 24 September 2018

Bruno Latour is one of the world’s leading sociologists and anthropologists. Based in France, he brings a refreshingly non-Anglophone approach to the big political problems of our times. At the heart of his latest book are the hypotheses that ‘we can understand nothing about the politics of the last 50 years if we do not put the question of climate change and its denial front and center’, an ... (read more)

Tim Flannery reviews 'Call of the Reed Warbler: A new agriculture – a new earth' by Charles Massy

October 2017, no. 395 • 22 September 2017

The Call of the Reed Warbler is a brutally honest book – an account of personal redemption following generations of sin. The only comparable work I know of is Rian Malan’s great saga of South Africa, My Traitor’s Heart (1990) – revolutionary, threatening, and the traducing efforts of an insider. Malan, a relative of the architect of apartheid, South African Prime Minister Daniel Malan, was ... (read more)