Yesterday’s announcement that one-third of jobs in the Department of Climate Change will be cut is yet another step back in the ALP’s half-hearted dance with climate change policy. Former Prime Minister…
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Environment + Energy – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 6901 - 6925 of 7555 articles
Just outside my bedroom window a sliver of the Bourke Street Bicycle Route passes by; a slice of Sydney’s network of cycleways which is continuing to grow, branching, meandering and extending throughout…
Plans for conserving Australian species rely on successfully collaborating across regions and across jurisdictions. It makes sense: species don’t recognise state or local government boundaries. But at…
On 28 March the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its full report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). The IPCC’s essential…
The eighth meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission concluded in Guam on Friday 30 March 2012. Five hundred delegates from more than 40 countries argued for a week about how to reduce…
Step changes in warming of a few tenths to 1°C can produce rapid changes in risks such as extreme heat and fire danger. Yet, adaptation-planning that follows the dominant model of smooth climate change…
The rush is on to ramp-up Australia’s coal seam gas (CSG) production and exports at a frantic pace. This is no trivial undertaking. In addition to the huge projected expansion of CSG wells, there are roads…
In justifying their recent abandonment of state-based climate schemes, the governments of Queensland and Victoria have both claimed that the schemes will be redundant under the federal emissions trading…
Australia’s future population is again under the spotlight. The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) has just released a new report on Australian population futures. And focus has sharpened…
After the big wet, spare a thought for the health of your waterways and the substances that wash into them. Bacteria are important to the health of the waterways running through our backyards. As decomposers…
In the past few days we have seen two states, Victoria and Queensland, announce cut-backs on action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They have been able to justify this by pointing out, correctly, that…
Loud, large and lovable, the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo has become a well known inhabitant of Sydney. It has always been present around the fringes of Sydney and west of the Great Dividing Range, but over…
Desalination plants have been controversial, mostly because of their high energy demand and the waste water they produce. But a new desalination technology uses almost no electricity and has the potential…
In NSW the last 12 months has seen a quantum leap in the government focus on coal seam gas (CSG). In December 2010 the then-Labor NSW state government introduced a moratorium on gas well fracking. They…
Environment and energy stories topped the charts as The Conversation’s best-read articles of any section in our first year. Hundreds of thousands of TC readers read and argued about humanity’s often difficult…
A few years ago a friend of mine, Philip Fearnside, feared for his life. Phil had just flown into Manaus, Brazil, where he is a biologist and well-respected critic of illegal loggers and others who threaten…
Despite peak global temperatures in 2005 and 2010 (unprecedented in the instrumental record), a recent sharp plunge in volume of the Arctic Sea ice and a spate of extreme weather events, coal mining, coal…
The first Australians hunted giant kangaroos, rhinoceros-sized marsupials, huge goannas and other megafauna to extinction shortly after arriving in the country more than 40,000 years ago, new research…
Elephants in the room, part one For all our schemes and mantras about making this or that part of our lives environmentally “sustainable”, humanity’s assault on the planet not only continues but expands…
It has been a summer of flooding for farmers in northeast Victoria and NSW. Reporters talk about the effect on crops, pastures and yields. But what about the effect on farming households? How do they cope…
The Tasmanian forests agreement is hanging by a thread. Political parties have reverted to their old adversarial ways, people who should be getting a say have been excluded from the process, and the large…
Australia’s agriculture and forestry - land-based abatement - can make a valuable contribution to lowering Australia’s greenhouse emissions. The scale of contribution has been widely discussed. But the…
2012 is the Australian Year of the Farmer. This initiative aims to increase knowledge and understanding of the role Australian agribusiness plays in food security, technological innovation and the nation’s…
The vulnerability of Pacific Island countries to climate change has been the subject of significant media coverage, including Kiribati’s recent request that its people be moved to Fiji to avoid rising…
Queensland is different from other states in that it only has a lower house. In other states minor parties achieve representation in upper houses — and therefore have a role in government — through proportional…