Australians, human and animal, have a good history of adapting to change. But how best to deal with a changing climate is emerging as a significant and often contentious policy challenge. It’s hard to…
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Environment + Energy – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 7376 - 7400 of 7438 articles
Australian science institutions and scientists must retain the confidence of the public and Australian governments. By blurring facts, disrespecting other institutions’ research processes and turning their…
Many people rule out the seemingly extraordinary claims of climate scientists. Are the sceptics fools or is there reason in their madness? The history of science gives grounds for scepticism but not for…
The controversy over the Murray Darling Basin Guide centres on the need to strike a balance between the social, economic and environmental uses of water. The difficulties in undertaking this task are most…
Whether we’re talking about investing in renewable energy, introducing an emissions trading scheme or putting a price on carbon, the climate change discussion has been invariably focused on the cost to…
FOOD SECURITY - You don’t hear about it as much, but global food security is a major issue, probably of more concern than climate change. It is driven by increasing population, changes in diet, increasing…
The Fukushima incident has been upgraded to an INES Level 7 of severity. The Australian Science Media Centre asked three experts what this means. Dr Pradip Deb is a Senior Lecturer in Medical Radiations…
Since the 2004 Sumatra earthquake, there have been several major events, and a large number of magnitude-8 earthquakes – a cluster, it could be said, of large earthquakes. The last time we saw this was…
As we worry about where we will put Australia’s ever-increasing population, urban trees are becoming collateral damage. So how much are our trees worth to us? According to Melbourne City Council, they…
FOOD SECURITY - Soils can help us solve two of the most pressing problems of the coming decades: climate change and food shortage. There is more fresh water in the world’s soils than in all its lakes and…
Independent MP Tony Windsor was right in early March when he called for a debate on carbon pricing in Australia that is “a little bit more advanced than the word ‘lie’ and the word ‘tax’”. The quality…
Some 150 years ago, Charles Darwin proposed a mechanism for evolutionary change; but is there something beyond natural selection driving evolution? My colleagues and I think so, and we believe it has come…
The destruction or modification of habitat is the leading cause of biodiversity loss in Australia and around the world. Letting animals have rights over their habitat could be the answer. Despite 40 years…
FOOD SECURITY - With a global population tipped to exceed 9.2 billion by 2050, the security of the world’s food supplies is more fraught now than ever. But can we do more to protect the food we have? While…
As the US was brought to the brink of a government shutdown this weekend, one of the sticking points was Republican insistence that President Obama curtail the activities of the Environmental Protection…
A prolonged period of hotter-than-average temperatures in the crater lake of New Zealand’s Mt Ruapehu has seen the country’s media questioning whether another eruption is on the cards. Mt Ruapehu (Māori…
Government modelling has given us a rough idea what a carbon tax could cost households, but will the burden be borne fairly? Whether we have a carbon tax or climate change, poor households will likely…
FOOD SECURITY - Agriculture is one of the few industries in the world in which emissions must rise. The carbon footprint of farming will become larger over the next 40 years as we feed a rapidly growing…
Here’s the problem. Going on a carbon diet is hard in the way that going on a calorie diet is not. For the most part, there is good information about the calorie content of food and I can regulate it myself…
Fairfax papers reported this morning that one of the world’s biggest carbon offset firms, located in Sydney, has been “shifting paper certificates instead of saving forests”. Shift2neutral has sold carbon…
FOOD SECURITY - Here’s how things stand. More than 500 million farmers produce crops and livestock that can feed nearly 7 billion people, and yet 1 billion still go hungry. It’s estimated that the world’s…
Innovation is not a topic that attracts much serious political debate in Australia. It improves living standards and the economy, but we’re missing out because of the government’s short-sighted approach…
Sometimes it feels like nature is out to get us. Fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and floods make paranoid types think that the world is coming to an end. Rationalists blame news media for causing us to…
FOOD SECURITY - The World Bank has warned rising food prices have risen 36% in the last year, reaching dangerous levels and pushing millions into poverty. The unrest in the Middle East, Africa and Haiti…
Once a place is heritage listed, it’s protected, right? Wrong. Politics and a flawed statutory regime are undermining the independence of the listing system, and threatening Australia’s national treasures…