Blogotariat

Dartmoor National Park is not dying; it is being killed, and these are the killers.

By George Monbiot, adapted from a Bluesky thread, 11th May 2025.

This is Piles Copse, the largest remaining fragment of high-ground temperate rainforest on Dartmoor. It’s a tiny speck of green in a dismal, human-made desert. Prepare yourselves for a story of breathtaking perversity.

Those of you paying attention might recall I set my kitchen on fire about a year ago, or at least I set the roast pork loin in the oven on fire… somehow. We finally had the oven replaced last week, and having a baker in the house meant that the first thing out of it were these amazing cinnamon scrolls.

Ben was joined by Kevin Bonham to run through the close seats and the Senate race that have dragged out, one week after the election.

The remote pearling and tourism town of Broome to get a big solar farm and a 6-hour battery to replace its soon to expire gas and diesel contract. A wind option was rejected.

Global oil prices fell to around $US60 per barrel last week after peaking above $US80 earlier this year and holding above $US70 just before “Liberation Day”. The oil price was down by around 25% from the previous year and was half the towering peaks achieved in early 2022. The downturn reflects fears about the global

The post Plunging oil prices to drive interest rates lower appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Controversial and constested wind project suffers another delay, this time likely because of the election timing. It has now been in the EPBC process for eight years.

Australian solar innovator signs up China manufacturing heavyweights to help launch its potentially game-changing copper-based PV technology onto the global market.

China data over the weekend should encourage nobody. Goldman. China’s export growth remained solid in April despite the implementation of US reciprocal tariffs, significantly above the consensus expectations, and import growth also surprised to the upside (exports: +8.1% yoy, imports: -0.2% yoy). The resilient export growth was partly due to a low base last year.

The post China chunders deflation worldwide appeared first on MacroBusiness.

This is amusing. AFR. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned that fixing Australia’s flatlining productivity will require a third term of government, as he ruled out accepting every proposal that will arise from a crisis review into the problem that he commissioned before the election. It will take Treasurer Chalmers an infinite number of terms to

The post Why Jim Chalmers will never fix producitivity appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.

New Zealand’s unemployment rate rose to 5.1% in Q4 2024, up from 4.8% in Q3 2024. In comparison, Australia’s unemployment rate was 3.9% in Q4 2024 (4.1% in March), the widest gap since Q3 2012. The latest SEEK employment also shows that the number of job ads in New Zealand has fallen heavily from the

The post Australia plunders workers from New Zealand appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Throughout this week, and perhaps the next, I will be posting booth maps for interesting seats, or clusters of seats. I will be doing this while also tracking the election results as seats continue to be called. But these maps generally just show the ordinary election day votes, so shouldn’t change much, outside of corrections.

For today’s post I’m starting in the inner north of Melbourne. There are three seats in this area that were Labor vs Greens contests this year: Melbourne, Wills and Cooper.

The Coalition doesn't need to contest an election for while. Being a wrecker of the energy transition is a far easier task - and they might be about to elect a leader with experience.