This is an essay about “quarry vision”, the mindset that sees Australia’s greatest asset as its mineral and energy resources – coal especially. How has this distorted our national politics and our response to climate change? What happens now that our coal-fired resources boom has gone bust? In this powerful essay about the national interest, Guy Pearse discusses the future of the coal industry and argues with the economic orthodoxy. He exposes the shadowy world of greenhouse lobbyists; how they think, operate and skin cats. Quarry vision, he argues, is a carbon-laced trap and a blind faith and a mentality we can no longer afford.

Australia's response to climate change must truly baffle outsiders. Why do our leaders pretend that they are leading the world in the battle against global warming? When do environmental risks outweigh economic benefits? Why dig deeper when the rest of the world is looking for alternatives to coal? This is an essay about 'quarry vision,' the belief that Australia's greatest asset is its mineral and energy resources - coal above all. How has this distorted our national politics and stymied action on climate change? In this powerful essay about the national interest, Guy Pearse dissects the Rudd government's climate change response- from the Garnaut report to the silver bullet of 'clean coal' and beyond. He exposes the shadowy world of the carbon lobbyists; how they think, operate and advance their agenda. He discusses the future of the coal industry and challenges the economic orthodoxy. Quarry vision, he argues, is a trap and a blind faith we can no longer afford. 'A generation ago, our leaders showed courage and vision in pushing for unilateral trade liberalisation - they knew it was good for Australia no matter how fast others acted. They were right to turn Australia's economy outward, and the establishment they challenged was wrong. Today the generation that was right on trade liberalisation has much of it wrong on climate change. They now wear the establishment mantle, and it is their turn to be challenged.' GUY PEARSE, QUARRY VISIONGuy Pearseis a former member of the Liberal Party and was a speechwriter for former environment minister Robert Hill. He has also been an industry lobbyist, consultant and spin doctor. In 2007 he exposed the politics behind Australia's response to climate change on Four Cornersand in his book High & Dry.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Professional Communication provides a broad coverage of the key areas where language and professional communication intersect and gives a comprehensive account of the field. The four main sections of the Handbook cover: Approaches to Professional Communication Practice Acquisition of Professional Competence Views from the Professions This invaluable reference book incorporates not only an historical view of the field, but also looks to possible future developments. Contributions from international scholars and practitioners, focusing on specific issues, explore the major approaches to professional communication and bring into focus recent research. This is the first handbook of language and professional communication to account for both pedagogic and practitioner perspectives and as such is an essential reference for postgraduate students and those researching and working in the areas of applied linguistics and professional communication.

This volume examines the role of communication in contributing to and contesting the current climate crisis. There is now widespread agreement that even if increases in carbon emissions are kept to the current international target the climate crisis will continue to intensify. This book brings together, for the first time, state-of-the-art research with activists’ interventions to place debate around climate crisis within the wider conversation about the changing relations between communications and contemporary capitalism. Contributors include; Naomi Klein, Michael Mann, Alan Rusbridger, Vincent Mosco, Jodi Dean, and leading figures in Greenpeace and 350.org.

Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humanity, a definitive manifestation of the well-worn links between progress and devastation. This book explores the complex relationship that the corporate world has with climate change and examines the central role of corporations in shaping political and social responses to the climate crisis. The principal message of the book is that despite the need for dramatic economic and political change, corporate capitalism continues to rely on the maintenance of 'business as usual'. The authors explore the different processes through which corporations engage with climate change. Key discussion points include climate change as business risk, corporate climate politics, the role of justification and compromise, and managerial identity and emotional reactions to climate change. Written for researchers and graduate students, this book moves beyond descriptive and normative approaches to provide a sociologically and critically informed theory of corporate responses to climate change.

This volume offers an empirically rich, theoretically informed study of the shifting intersections of nation/alism, gender and sexuality. Challenging a scholarly legacy that has overly focused on the masculinist character of nationalism, it pays particular attention to the people and issues less commonly considered in the context of nationalist projects, namely women and sexual minorities. Bringing together both established and emerging researchers from across the globe, this multidisciplinary and comparison-rich volume provides a multi-sited exploration of the shifting contours of belonging and Otherness generated by multifarious nationalisms. The diverse, and context specific positionings of men and women, masculinities and femininities, and hegemonic and non-normative sexualities, vis-à-vis nation/alism, are illuminated through a vibrant array of contemporary theoretical lenses. These include historical and feminist institutionalism, post-colonial theory, critical race approaches, transnational and migration theory and semiotics.

This thought-provoking Handbook provides a theoretical overview of the wide variety of anti-environmentalisms and offers an integrative research agenda for future research on the topic. Probing the ways in which groups have organized to oppose environmental movements and pro-environmental policies in recent decades, it examines those involved in these countermovements and studies their motivations and support systems. This Handbook explores core topics in the field, including contestation over climate change, wind power, mining, forestry, food sovereignty, oil and gas pipelines and population issues.

The focus of this edited volume is to identify challenges facing organizations in achieving zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and a new energy economy, and to explore solutions from various sectors of the economy to enable the transition to a zero emissions future. Research presented here is divided into three parts, with an introductory statement on growth and sustainability. Part one discusses strategies towards a sustainable economy under a zero emissions goal. Part two contains industry specific case studies focusing on construction and related activities. Part three is devoted to country specific case studies from the Asia-Pacific region. Each of the chapters address one or more of the following issues: restoration, mitigation, adaptation and/or promoting resilience in the face of climate change as part of achieving a sustainable economy. The volume is multi-disciplinary in nature, drawing on various disciplines in social science, business, environment and policy, and will be of interest to UN development agencies, academic institutions, government policy makers, NGOs and business leaders.

The story behind the reckless promotion of economic growth despite its disastrous consequences for life on the planet. The notion of ever-expanding economic growth has been promoted so relentlessly that “growth” is now entrenched as the natural objective of collective human effort. The public has been convinced that growth is the natural solution to virtually all social problems—poverty, debt, unemployment, and even the environmental degradation caused by the determined pursuit of growth. Meanwhile, warnings by scientists that we live on a finite planet that cannot sustain infinite economic expansion are ignored or even scorned. In Collision Course, Kerryn Higgs examines how society's commitment to growth has marginalized scientific findings on the limits of growth, casting them as bogus predictions of imminent doom. Higgs tells how in 1972, The Limits to Growth—written by MIT researchers Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William Behrens III—found that unimpeded economic growth was likely to collide with the realities of a finite planet within a century. Although the book's arguments received positive responses initially, before long the dominant narrative of growth as panacea took over. Higgs explores the resistance to ideas about limits, tracing the propagandizing of “free enterprise,” the elevation of growth as the central objective of policy makers, the celebration of “the magic of the market,” and the ever-widening influence of corporate-funded think tanks—a parallel academic universe dedicated to the dissemination of neoliberal principles and to the denial of health and environmental dangers from the effects of tobacco to global warming. More than forty years after The Limits to Growth, the idea that growth is essential continues to hold sway, despite the mounting evidence of its costs—climate destabilization, pollution, intensification of gross global inequalities, and depletion of the resources on which the modern economic edifice depends.

Global climate change creates new challenges in particular for cities and regions. As centres of human activity they are especially vulnerable to climate change impacts. Adapting to a changing climate requires dealing with multiple uncertainties and complexity in order to allow proactive action. Therefore, cities and regions around the globe face the challenge of exploring flexible and innovative forms of governance which have to address specific local or regional vulnerabilities and build capacity to accommodate future change. This raises questions about the roles of stakeholders, the involvement of citizens, the composition and use of formal and informal instruments as well as the implementation of different forms of organization and regulation at the local and regional level. This book provides case studies from cities and regions all around the world. It analyses climate change adaptation from a perspective of organizing, administering and implementing local and regional adaptation strategies and measures. It looks into actors, actor-constellations, institutions and networks of climate adaptation. And, it provides the reader with knowledge about good practices and experiences to be transferred for solving adaptation challenges in cities and regions around the globe.