Australians love to travel. About 9 million Australians travelled overseas last year, 60% of them on holiday. For most tourists, sustainable development and climate change were probably not high on their…
The UN’s proposed sustainability targets are riddled with conflicts that could make them ineffective or outright harmful. In theory, there is nothing wrong with such targets. After all, the Millennium…
It’s Nobel Prize week, with awards for Medicine and Physiology, Physics, Chemistry, Peace and Economics being announced over the next seven days. We will discover who will win the literature prize later…
What does genuine economic progress look like? The orthodox answer is that a bigger economy is always better, but this idea is increasingly strained by the knowledge that, on a finite planet, the economy…
If measured by political will and rhetoric, Australia’s relationship with Southeast Asia would undeniably be in fine shape. Prime ministers as diverse as Paul Keating, Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard have…
Across the globe, we are experiencing rapid changes to our environment and social structures. Climate change, population growth, and social unrest are causing ever increasing problems. The rate of change…
Next year will be critical in environmental diplomacy. World governments will be negotiating important global agreements in two areas that will have a major impact on our well-being in coming decades…
The electric car trend is still to take off in the UK, with drivers largely put off by up-front costs, according to a survey by the Department for Transport. A measly 5% of respondents were thinking about…
The UK government’s senior adviser on science has made an entirely sensible call for researchers and policy makers to move the climate change debate towards workable strategies and solutions. The trouble…
The European policies designed to encourage a more biodiverse environment that is better able to support wildlife and plants are failing. In fact, our analysis of the reforms designed to “green” the EU…
Footage of Google’s prototype driverless car has got people talking about the potential for self-driving vehicles. While this seems like an exciting new technological advance, in fact the idea is not so…
Imagine your smartphone’s screen gets smashed, or your bike wheel gets buckled, or your favourite boots get a hole in them. What do you do? You could buy a replacement. Or you could join the worldwide…
In the industrial era, economic growth has become equated with human progress, with a fundamental assumption that material growth and consumption inevitably leads to improvements in our well-being. Over…
How did you get to where you need to be today? Car, bike, public transport, or perhaps walking? Transport is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, globally and in Australia. The latest…
Ten themes shape the dilemmas, challenges and opportunities for the 21st-century city. Each relates to how we live and shape our places. The tradition of urban living, of urbanity, focuses both on the…
We read a lot these days about corruption, self-interest and personal tragedies. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the first time explicitly considers climate change…
Australia is allegedly in the midst of a “green building revolution”, powered by the awarding of ratings to developers who build sustainable buildings. But this brave new world is only a reality in the…
The political fallout over the ill-fated Home Insulation Program continues, with former prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard now having been summoned to appear before the Abbott government’s royal…
When it comes to expectations for power price rises in the year ahead, the short answer is on average we can expect them to be less severe in 2014 than in recent years. The long answer, driven by electricity…
Stop press! Actress Julia Roberts has been spotted in a Prius and is reportedly into reusable coffee cups and solar panels. According to media reports, it was the birth of her twins, rather than her Oscar-winning…