While surfing recently in WA’s newly established Ngari Capes Marine Park, one of us was asked several questions by other surfers about the new marine protected areas. These and other questions have been…
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Environment + Energy – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 6676 - 6700 of 7554 articles
The east coast of Australia is a global hotspot for the effects of climate change, especially in the marine realm, where average water temperatures have increased by almost half a degree over the last…
The Margiris “super-trawler” is heading for Australia to catch jack mackerel and associated small surface-dwelling species. It faces a lot of opposition, largely based on assertions that the vessel’s catches…
Mr Abbott has learnt the hard way that the electricity industry is complex and that there is more to rising electricity bills than carbon pricing. Ms Gillard correctly identified rising costs of “poles…
As the final version of the Murray-Darling Plan heads to Parliament there seems little doubt that the debate will continue. The sticking point remains the volume of water to be returned to the environment…
In Australia we are all too familiar with devastating environmental impacts of introduced species such as foxes, rabbits and cane toads. But did you know that some introduced species may have a relatively…
Another critically endangered grey nurse shark has washed up on a northern NSW beach, with its fins removed. Shark fins are valued at more than A$400 per kilogram. This high market value encourages the…
Robert Manne’s important essay in The Monthly (August 2012) laments that in the climate change debate “the denialist campaign has won”, a sharp turn for the worse since 2009. Clearly, Manne’s primary purpose…
Where one stands on “climate change” has been such a vexed and often confusing issue, at dinner parties, over coffee, with the taxi driver, and in terms of media reporting of where the Australian public…
The ACCC has been vigilant about following up the 45 or so carbon price gouging complaints it gets each day. But who can stop the politicians? Their relentless carbon price scare campaigns seek to frighten…
The Prime Minister gave a speech on August 7 entitled Electricity prices: the facts. She explained, correctly, that the costs of transmission and distribution (network costs, otherwise referred to as “poles…
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study recently found that global land-surface temperatures have increased by about 1°C since the 1950s — and 1.5°C since the mid-18th century. These results…
The landing of the explorer Curiosity on Mars is a fantastic affirmation of the extraordinary technical capacities of humans. A series of remote, high risk choreographed moves saw a small mobile laboratory…
Welcome to Part Two of Professor Andrew Campbell’s special report on the troubling plight of irrigation research and development in Australia. In part one, Professor Campbell argued that despite an unprecedented…
The built and natural environments are now changing so rapidly that our language and conceptual frameworks have to work overtime just to keep up. Under the intertwined impacts of global development, rising…
The world catches too many tuna. Thanks to our high levels of fishing, some tuna species are under threat. Everyone involved in the fishing industry agrees that fishing effort needs to be reduced. But…
The sad reality of human-dingo relations is that blood will be shed, as Brad Purcell recently reminded us in these pages with his article about non-violent co-existence, The Australian Dingo: to be respected…
I sometimes wonder what planet this country of ours is on. The environmental debate we are having seems to be in a parallel universe to the rest of the world. Having spent the last four years running one…
Settler Australians have a long history of trying to harness the continent’s great rivers to water the dead heart of the country. Schemes such as those of Bradfield and Idriess in the 1930s and 1940s sought…
Welcome to a two-part special on the troubling plight of irrigation R&D, by Professor Andrew Campbell of Charles Darwin University. Research into the smartest, most efficient and sustainable ways to…
To paraphrase George Orwell: “All electricity is created equal, but some of its generating technologies are more equal than others”. This is a crucial point – emphasised but typically overlooked – in the…
Those who follow the Wild Rivers debates in Queensland probably know better than to trust the headlines. When, in January 2010, Tony Abbott announced a federal intervention into the state’s environmental…
Amidst all the heat and noise of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, the release of WWF’s Ecological Footprint analysis for Australia in May went largely unheralded in the general media…
Not so long ago, things were looking good. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had announced on the 5th of July that the FAO food price index had been falling for the third consecutive month…
Over the past several decades, scientists have studied the climate of the world and how that is changing. These studies have built on the recognition, made over 150 years ago by John Tindall, that certain…