A senior Charles Sturt University (CSU) academic has been appointed to a national board to advise the federal government on climate change policy in Australia.

 

Professor Clive Hamilton, AM, who is the CSU Vice-Chancellor’s Chair and is Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, was yesterday appointed to the board of the Climate Change Authority by the federal Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, the Hon. Greg Combet, AM.

 

An authority on climate change policy, Professor Hamilton joins eight other experts on economics, business, public policy and climate science on the board.

 

“The Climate Change Authority will be the principal source of advice to the federal government on climate change policy, so I am pleased to be able to play a part,” Professor Hamilton said.

 

“Climate scientists have been telling us for some time that global warming represents a severe threat to the future of Australia and the world, and their warnings have had a deep impact on my thinking.

 

“Around the world the gap between the science of climate change and the policy response to it has been widening, but in Australia at least policy is moving in the right direction.”

 

Professor Hamilton was the Executive Director of The Australia Institute, a progressive think-tank, for 14 years. He holds an arts degree from the Australian National University (ANU) and an economics degree from the University of Sydney. He completed his doctorate at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK.

 

Before establishing The Australia Institute, Professor Hamilton taught in the ANU’s Graduate Program in the Economics of Development then joined the Australian Public Service, where he was the head of research at the Resource Assessment Commission. He also worked as a resource economist in Indonesia.

 

Professor Hamilton is a member of the Royal Society’s Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative in the UK. He recently returned from the University of Oxford where he delivered lectures on climate change policy and geo-engineering.