Perihelia 2030
And so on this 5th of January 2030, John and I set out not long after dawn on a long long long ride, more than two hours, out past the new airport to see what was nothing more than very deep hole in the ground, but looks to be – whenever it’s done – the first grid-scale nuclear power plant in Australia.
We arrived around 9 am, but still need to be careful. Temperatures out here are expected to top 40° today. And we’ve both decided that we’re going to put our bikes on the train for the ride home. Spare ourselves the heat stroke. It’s another heat wave they say but it’s always another heatwave. These days.
Read More »Perihelia 2040
Standing in the blazing hot sun of the 4th of January 2040, too close to another old man softly muttering something about offending the Sun gods. But we both stare in some mixture of admiration and horror at the gigantic concrete cooling stacks that even in this heat gave off traces of vapour, high above us.
Here it was, at long last: The long-promised nuclear power that would make energy too cheap to meter and free us all from the dominion of energy mined and burnt – entering the air to vex us.
Read More »Perihelia 2050
It’s just past 9am on this 3rd of January, 2050. The temperature is already in the mid-30s with a high of somewhere north of 43º expected by mid-arvo.
This is the fourth heatwave of the summer, expected to last another three to four days, and it won’t be the last. Likely it won’t even be the worst, as another, more intense heat dome over the central desert looks to be headed our way for early next week….
Read More »Perihelia 2023 – Day Three
Three years on from the January when Australia burned, it’s time once again to celebrate ‘Perihelia’ – so named because it marks the three days when Earth makes its closest approach to the Sun. (Which we did this morning, at 3.17 AM Sydney time.)
Today – January 5 – is the third and final day of Perihelia, a day of:
Public promises and commitments made for the coming year by government and business leaders, by local communities, by families and individuals, and a revision of goals – ever upward!
On this day, Perihelia looks forward: how can we do better in the next year than in the one just past? I can not speak for the government, nor for business, and while I am a member of my community, I could not claim to speak for them. I can only speak for myself.
Read More »Perihelia 2023 – Day Two
Today – January 4 – marks the second day of Perihelia, dedicated to:
Congratulations and celebrations of Australia’s successes in meeting or exceeding the challenges presented by the Climate Crisis. Awarding of AOEMs – Australian Order of the Environmental Merit – for those individuals whose actions demonstrated exceptional commitment.
Read More »Perihelia 2023 – Day One
In early January 2020, Australia burned. It had already burned for months. It would burn for another month – until some of the heaviest rains ever seen doused the flames. In the middle of those fires, with no…
Read More »Twenty-five years ago today: VRML
The winter of 1993/94 saw Tony Parisi (recently moved to San Francisco) and I working away feverishly on the very first version of a 3D Web browser. ‘Labyrinth’, over the course of 1994, would evolve into VRML. By…
Read More »Goalposts: Property Investment over the Next Billion Seconds
GOALPOSTS: Property Investment over the Next Billion Seconds INTRODUCTION The seeds of the future are already in the present. William Gibson put this more poetically when he said, “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly…
Read More »Touring 2050
TOURING 2050 A billion seconds is 31 years and 251 days. There’s exactly billion seconds between where we are today and the last day of January 2050. That’s a whole generation. I myself still plan to be here…
Read More »Touring 2050 (audio / slides)
Keynote for the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration – basically all the leading justices in Australia & NZ. And the slides: Touring 2050
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