The latest accident at the Ranger uranium mine is a timely reminder of the environmental risks of operating a heavy industry facility: especially a uranium mine on Indigenous land, surrounded by the World…
Beautiful one day … a quarry the next?
Underwater Earth / Catlin Seaview Survey - www.catlinseaviewsurvey.com
Few of us remember that the declaration of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and its subsequent World Heritage status was born out a 12-year popular struggle to prevent the most wondrous coral reef in…
Vesk’s Plant-louse lives only on a single species of wattle.
Melinda Moir
Vesk’s Plant-louse (Acizzia veski) was discovered in 2007 within the Stirling Range National Park, a biodiversity hotspot of southwestern Australia. It is not a true “louse” but is a species of Hemiptera…
Great White Sharks will be one of the species targeted under Western Australia’s new shark plan.
Flickr/Mshai
After a spate of fatal shark attacks over the past two years, Western Australia has released a radical new shark plan that will see large sharks removed and destroyed from designated “safe zones”. The…
Eroded beaches in Surfers Paradise on Queensland’s Gold Coast, May 2013.
John Reid, Environment Studio, ANU School of Art
As the science on the coastal impacts of climate change gets stronger, the protections for Australia’s coastal communities are getting weaker. If that continues, everyone will pay. Along the eastern seaboard…
Lack of information and advice on climate change isn’t the problem.
Steve Easterbrook
In closing the Climate Commission, and introducing legislation to abolish the Climate Change Authority, the government has said it can instead rely on information from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology…
Protesters decry the weak outcomes of the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil last year.
Wikimedia Commons/Aliencow
After a lifetime promoting sustainability – sadly, with limited success – last year I sat down to consider what will happen to my beloved world over the next 40 years. The main question I asked myself…
Thick haze has shrouded Shanghai for the past week, in the latest instance of extreme air pollution.
Wikimediacommons/Galaxyharrylion
The current “airpocolypse” emergency in Shanghai - which has seen schoolchildren ordered indoors to protect them from the polluted air, flights grounded and companies ordered to cut production - comes…
As the end of the Parliamentary year draws to a close, and we mark the Coalition’s first few months in power, I thought it would be useful to provide a comprehensive list of climate change and science…
Faced with abandoned mines, let’s show some ambition: we could be building wetlands and rainforests.
Parks Australia
Last Saturday, toxic material leaked from the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory. The mine ceased operation in 2011 after more than 30 years in action, raising the question of what happens to…
Firefighters battle a bushfire close to homes in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, in October this year.
AAP/Dan Himbrechts
Australians have always had to live with bushfires - but climate change is driving that fire danger even higher. And we’re not talking about a distant threat to future generations. According to real observations…
Old buildings are standing in the way of improving our cities.
Flickr/Becky EnVérité
Making Australian cities truly resilient to extreme events is being held back by archaic planning. The majority of buildings don’t fall under new sustainability and resilience regulations, meaning private…
Drought is part of life in Australia.
Flickr/Schilling 2
While much of Australia has received average to above average rainfall over recent months, parts of Australia such as western Queensland are in the middle of a drought. Drought has been a feature of the…
Insect predators such as this ladybird can control pests just as well as pesticides.
Nancy Schellhorn
More than A$17 billion worth of crops grown in Australia annually is attributed to agricultural pesticides. That’s a staggering 68% of the A$26 billion industry, according to a recent Deloitte report commissioned…
Where doe outbreaks of avian influenza come from?
Flickr/cskk
While Hong Kong has just reported its first case of the deadly H7N9 bird flu indicating that the virus may be spreading across China, Australia is reporting an egg shortage over Christmas as a result of…
We’ve known for some time where our emissions behaviour is leading us.
Guilherme Jófili
“Erratic”, “inconsistent”, “highly political” and “lacking in direction”. That’s the unvarnished verdict on Australia’s climate policy, according to experts within our own Parliament House. It wasn’t a…
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation is supporting industry - like the world-leading Sundrop Farms - in a way no other body does.
Sundrop Farms
John Mathews, Macquarie Graduate School of Management
This week, the Australian Senate is considering the government’s package of “carbon tax” abolition bills – bills abolishing the carbon tax, the Climate Change Authority (CCA) and the Clean Energy Finance…
Scrapping climate programs may meet short-term budget goals but will cause long-term pain.
EPA/Horacio Villalobos
SECURING AUSTRALIA’S FUTURE: As the Commission of Audit reviews government activity and spending, The Conversation’s experts take a closer look at key policy areas tied to this funding – what’s working…
Brisbane cyclists have to keep their helmets on after all, including on bike paths.
AAP/Dan Peled
For a few hours, late last week, it looked like Queensland could become the first Australian state to start relaxing its strict bicycle helmet laws. After months of careful review of the evidence, a state…
Maria Island’s protected waters have given us insight into how species respond to warmer temperatures.
Paul Benjamin
Southeast Australia is an ocean warming “hotspot” – a region where temperature at the ocean’s surface is increasing more rapidly than elsewhere. That means this part of Australia is like an outdoor laboratory…
A saltwater crocodile lurks in the Northern Territory’s Mary River, a popular fishing destination.
Erin Britton
Crocodiles have a rather off-putting character trait: they bite. It’s fair to say few people like being bitten. We like being eaten even less, and reserve our most morbid fears for creatures that dare…
A scuba diving tourist feeds a giant potato cod in the Great Barrier Reef.
Pete Niesen/Shutterstock.com
After decades of work, A$200 million in taxpayer funding and even more from farmers’ pockets, we finally have a rare good news story to tell about the Great Barrier Reef. Thanks to an extraordinary effort…
Western Australia’s three-year trial found electric cars are a good fit for Australian cities.
Luke Stearns
Australia’s first electric vehicle trial has been completed. It ran from early 2010 to the end of 2012 with 11 electric Ford Focus and 23 fast-AC charging bays (Level-2). We found few technological barriers…
Sydney’s September was warmer than its November, a very unusual occurence.
Stilgherrian/Flickr
The spring of 2013 has been Australia’s warmest on record. Mean temperatures for the season were 1.57C above the 1961-1990 average, surpassing the previous record of 1.43C (set in 2006) by 0.14C. Daytime…
Instead of developing a northern foodbowl to feed our neighbours, Australia could help them feed themselves.
Neils Photography/Flickr
A nation that destroys its soils, destroys itself — Franklin Roosevelt It is a worthy objective to sell more food to Asia, but we should not conflate pursuing export income with improving regional food…