Coal closures announced this week in South Australia will cause employment pain, but could also help pave the way for the state to go 100% renewable - something that modelling suggests is eminently possible.
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Environment + Energy – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 4876 - 4900 of 7449 articles
The mid year Bonn negotiations for the proposed new global agreement to tackle climate change have just concluded. They will be finalised at the end of the year in Paris. What progress is being made? What are the challenging issues that may end up being a focus of negotiations in Paris? What does the roadmap from here look like?
Research published this week shows saving wildlife is much more complicated than killing introduced predators. Killing predators often doesn’t work, and is sometimes actually worse for native wildlife.
From the perspective of conservation scientists, the government’s inquiry into the tax-deductible status of environmental groups is a bad idea wrapped in naïveté.
People are complaining of a range of health related problems and are attributing them to wind turbines. The question is: what is the cause of these health problems?
It’s now five years since the International Year of Biodiversity, and nearly 15% of Earth’s land surface is protected in parks and reserves. By 2020, we should reach the agreed global target of 17%. This…
G7 leaders have pledged to help end the world’s fossil fuel use by the end of the century. It’s a laudable aim, but decarbonisation can and should be done by the middle, not the end, of this century.
After falling victim to disease, there seems to be little hope left for Australia’s most endangered parrot.
Could developed countries’ ageing populations help clean up the climate? New research suggests that a 1% increase in the proportion of over-65s delivers a 1.5% cut in carbon dioxide emissions.
Climate warming is predicted to intensify rainfall patterns. But new research suggests this could even happen within individual storms, as warmer weather makes them more likely to contain short intense bursts.
What if you could grow biofuels on land nobody wants, using just seawater and sunlight, and produce food at the same time?
Australia’s grilling by other major nations at this week’s climate talks in Bonn show that it still has serious questions to answer over the scope of its greenhouse emissions-reduction targets.
The outcry over the government’s plan to allow wood burning from native forests under the revamped Renewable Energy Target belies the fact that woodchips can be useful and sustainable if harvested responsibly.
Queensland will create a new statutory body to oversee the integrity of the racing industry, but it will only work with enough resources.
Climate models have been criticised because observations could not find the predicted “hot spot” of strong warming in the troposphere. But analyses now show that the tropospheric hot spot is indeed real.
Among the plaudits for Joan Kirner it is also worth noting her pivotal role in the development of landcare in Australia.
The advent of battery storage heralds an even deeper embrace of electric cars and renewable energy. But amid the green tech revolution, we should be wary of creating new pollution problems.
Tree vandals after better sea views or with political goals deprive everyone of the benefits trees provide. Despite costing local councils thousands in replacement trees, they are rarely caught.
Big oil companies are moving to exploit new resources such as the Arctic or the Great Australian Bight. But are they worth the risk?
Whether it’s on the official “in danger” list or not, the Great Barrier Reef is clearly under threat. UNESCO has placed its faith in Australia, but without urgent action the problems will not go away.
UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee has spared Australia’s blushes by opting not to list the Great Barrier Reef as ‘in danger’. But it has also demanded that Australia make good on its plans to save it.
The coast alongside the Great Barrier Reef is home to ports, farms, holiday resorts, and more than a million people. It all puts pressure on the Reef, and it’s time for some firms plans to manage it.
The latest heatwaves in India have claimed at least 1,100 lives.
Climate change is one of the biggest threats to the world’s wildlife, but recent projects provide hope that we’ll be able to help species adapt.
Economic studies on the costs of climate action share a common message: action on climate change is cheap, and delaying it will be costly.