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Last year’s national Climate Action Summit was groundbreaking. It set a national grassroots movement on its feet, something I haven’t seen on such a scale in my two decades of activism. A new ongoing network has been set up, with more than 100 groups now signed onto the initial structure.

Sex sells. So this year’s Mardi Gras flaunted itself. Its cod-piece was the python-esque parade snaking up Oxford Street, a ribald, risque body of bodies-politic. Marchers fed off a frenzied live street audience of more than 100,000 with even more watching on TV. It’s a show with a capital S, buoying pink-dollar tourism and state coffers by $30 million.

On February 18, Niger’s President Mamadou Tandja was overthrown in a military coup. A military junta calling itself the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy, headed by Major Salou Djibo, took power.

Changes to Aboriginal employment, infrastructure and welfare programs have stripped remote Aboriginal communities of resources and left many Aboriginal people, in effect, working for rations.

When it comes to avoiding the most catastrophic impacts of global warming then whatever the financial cost, the price is still worth paying. But new research by Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE) shows Australia could meet 100% of its stationary energy needs from renewables in a decade and stimulate the economy at the same time.