ABOUT
Julian Cribb AM is an Australian author and science communicator. He is a Fellow of the UK Royal Society for the Arts, the Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering (ATSE) and the Australian National University Emeritus Faculty.
His career includes appointments as scientific editor for The Australian newspaper, director of national awareness for CSIRO, editor of several newspapers including the National Farmer and Sunday Independent, member of numerous scientific boards and advisory panels, and president of national professional bodies for agricultural journalism and science communication.
His published work includes over 9000 articles, 3000 science media releases and 12 books. He has received 32 awards for journalism. He was nominated for ACT Senior Australian of the Year in 2019. He is a co-founder of the Council for the Human Future. He was appointed a Member of the General Division of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2021.
Julian is principal of Julian Cribb & Associates who for twenty years have provided international consultancy in the communication of science, agriculture, food, mining, energy and the environment for over a hundred scientific, government and private organisations.
For the past two decades his main literary focus has been the self-inflicted existential emergency faced by humanity. This is dealt with in six books: The Coming Famine (UCP 2010) explored the question of how we can feed 10 billion humans this century; Poisoned Planet (A&U 2014) is his first book on global contamination by anthropogenic chemicals. Surviving the 21st Century (Springer 2017) tackles the existential crisis now facing humanity from a combination of ten megathreats - and what we can do about it. His book Food or War (Cambridge University Press 2019) explores how food can help prevent human conflict in the C21st. Earth Detox describes the vast question of human chemical emissions, their impact on us and how we can overcome it. His latest book 'How to Fix a Broken Planet' (Cambridge 2023) offers a plan to rescue humanity from the self-created threats that beset it.
As a grandfather, Julian is deeply concerned about the future our descendants will face unless humanity as a whole acts with urgency to overcome all the megarisks.
Radio interview with Alex Sloan, ABC