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Green Magazine

Green is the tri-annual magazine of the Australian Greens. This page provides details of the current issue, e-copies of past issues, information on how to subscribe and how to submit articles.

Issue 25 - Water

Who would have thought, twenty years ago, that ‘water’ would become one of the hottest topics in debates and conversations about global futures. The warning signs had been there all the time – in particular the increasingly parlous condition of sub-Saharan lands. But generally ‘water’ was not splashed over the front pages of newspapers, did not stream from our TV screens in anxious documentaries and did not bubble away in conversations around the proverbial photocopier or water cooler.

Water – and especially the perennial challenge of drought – had always been on the lips of those Australians struggling to farm and graze on sometimes heartbreaking land ... and on the minds of all the regional citizens dependent on healthy rural economies. But for most Australians, living in the built-up areas of this highly urbanised continent, water was plentiful, cheap and unremarkable.

This edition of Green magazine acknowledges how things have changed, especially in this country. Water has become a universal concern, brought into sharp relief by increasing awareness of the effects of climate change. This concern manifests itself in settings as diverse as domestic bathrooms (where the four-minute shower timer is almost de rigueur) and meetings of the Council of Australian Governments (where the survival of the Murray-Darling runs up against familiar struggles around federalism).

Brian Hoepper and Drew Hutton

See Article by Jeff Angel: Bottled water or bottled environmental damage?

Issue 21 - Energy Futures

Climate change is real, urgent and greatest threat facing our world today. But the Howard government’s overwhelming concern is that cutting greenhouse gas emissions will negatively impact on the economy.

Australia is well placed to combine energy efficiency and renewable energy to create a more sustainable future. Australia has a choice; it can maintain its coal dependence, flirt dangerously with nuclear and become unsustainable, unhealthy, unsafe and unstable.

Or it can start to seriously explore pathways to become a sustainable energy powerhouse. Green issue 21 articles explore this choice. They describe the perils of nuclear, the prospect of peak oil, the question of geosequestration and the promise of alternatives.

Read Issue 21