Clive Hamilton is an Australian author and public intellectual. Since 2008 he has been Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, a joint centre of Charles Sturt University and the University of Melbourne. He is based at Charles Sturt University’s Canberra campus.

For 14 years, until February 2008, he was the Executive Director of The Australia Institute, a progressive think tank he founded. He holds an arts degree from the Australian National University and an economics degree from the University of Sydney. He completed a doctorate at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.

Before establishing The Australia Institute, Clive taught in the graduate program in the Economics of Development at the ANU, then joined the Australian Public Service, first with the Bureau of Industry Economics and then at the newly formed Resource Assessment Commission. He also worked as a resource economist in Indonesia.

Clive has held visiting academic positions at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, University College London, and Sciences Po in Paris.

He has published on a wide range of subjects but is best known for his books, a number of which have been bestsellers. They include Growth Fetish (2003), Affluenza (with Richard Denniss, 2005), What’s Left: The death of social democracy (2006), Silencing Dissent (edited with Sarah Maddison, 2007) and Scorcher: The dirty politics of climate change (2007).

His work took a more philosophical turn with the publication of The Freedom Paradox: Towards a post-secular ethics (Allen & Unwin, 2008).

Clive’s 2010 book, titled Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the thruth about climate change, was published by Earthscan and Allen & Unwin and had a wide impact. His most recent book, Earthmasters: The dawn of the age of climate engineering, was published by Yale University Press and Allen & Unwin in 2013.

In 2009 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his contribution to public debate and public policy. Later that year he was the Greens candidate in the by-election for the federal seat of Higgins. In 2012, he was appointed by the Federal Government to the Climate Change Authority.