In the 1960s, with the phosphate boom over and Nauru’s economy in ruins, Australia offered to move the entire nation to Queensland’s Curtis Island. But with no sovereignty on offer, the deal collapsed.
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Environment + Energy – Articles, Analysis, Comment
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Australia’s energy watchdog has warned that closing coal power stations could leave us vulnerable to supply problems. But not if we help take the pressure off the grid.
A groundbreaking new economic study has found that investing A$8.2 billion would get us very close to hitting targets to cut water pollution into the Great Barrier Reef by 2025.
Here’s another reason to stop land clearing: it’s making Australia hotter and drier.
One Nation Senator-elect Malcolm Roberts lauds Galileo as a hero who turned scientific consensus on its head. But the ‘Galileo gambit’ is just one weapon in the climate conspiracists’ arsenal.
Climate change gets a lot of the spotlight when it comes to saving wildlife. But bigger threats remain.
Most people in Australia’s southeast are familiar with the stormy weather known as East Coast Lows. But they might not realise how much scientific progress has been made in understanding them.
In coming decades many oil and gas platforms will have to be retired. Rather than being dismantled, they could be given a new lease of life as artificial reefs, helping industry and the environment.
Moves to tighten land-clearing laws in Queensland and New South Wales have been met with outrage from farmers. So how can we get regulation right?
Dingoes are being used to kill feral goats in Queensland, but is this just another form of cruelty?
Current land-use patterns could see the value of ‘ecosystem services’ – the natural processes that sustain life – plummet by mid-century. But with the right policies we can turn this trend around.
2015 was the world’s hottest year on record. The US State of the Climate report has rounded up the litany of temperature and other records that were broken all over the globe.
Ethicist Peter Singer told Q&A that climate change-related sea level rises are “estimated to cause something like 750 million refugees just moving away from that flooding”. Is that accurate?
Science Minister Greg Hunt’s call for CSIRO to do a U-turn on climate research is a welcome move after months of criticism, at home and abroad, of the agency’s previous direction.
South Australia’s recent electricity price spike has seen calls for more gas. But Australia already has plenty.
Australia is among the world’s top ten users of electronic and electrical products. But our systems for recycling the resulting ‘e-waste’ fall a long way short of other rich nations.
Since the 1960s, environmentalism in Australia has largely focused on defending “wilderness”. However, protected areas in themselves are not stemming the destruction of biodiversity.
The electricity market that covers most of Australia is designed to have periods of high prices, to attract new generators. But there may be better ways to encourage electricity investment.
Ever since British settlement, water rights in Australia’s north have favoured landowners over traditional owners, effectively locking Aboriginal people out of agricultural development.
How do you choose local produce when buying fish, which is caught in vast oceans by a globalised industry? Answer: with great difficulty.
The Nullarbor is an arid, treeless expanse today. But several hundred thousand years ago it was home to a menagerie of species, including two newly discovered giant cuckoo-like birds.
You might worry that people care more about what’s on their smartphone than what’s in their local wildlife park. But what if we could get them to care about both at the same time?
The Indian Ocean Dipole may be El Nino’s less famous cousin, but that hasn’t stopped it having a profound effect on Australia’s weather since it flipped into a “strong negative phase” two months ago.
When temperatures dipped between 1500 and 1750, the world’s landscapes responded by storing more carbon. Now, with temperatures climbing, it’s possible they will do the opposite and release even more.
South Australia’s electricity price spikes during this month’s calm weather have been blamed on its reliance on wind turbines. But a bigger problem is the rising price of gas-fired power.