FOOD SECURITY - Soils can help us solve two of the most pressing problems of the coming decades: climate change and food shortage. There is more fresh water in the world’s soils than in all its lakes and…
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Environment + Energy – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 7501 - 7525 of 7554 articles
Independent MP Tony Windsor was right in early March when he called for a debate on carbon pricing in Australia that is “a little bit more advanced than the word ‘lie’ and the word ‘tax’”. The quality…
Some 150 years ago, Charles Darwin proposed a mechanism for evolutionary change; but is there something beyond natural selection driving evolution? My colleagues and I think so, and we believe it has come…
The destruction or modification of habitat is the leading cause of biodiversity loss in Australia and around the world. Letting animals have rights over their habitat could be the answer. Despite 40 years…
FOOD SECURITY - With a global population tipped to exceed 9.2 billion by 2050, the security of the world’s food supplies is more fraught now than ever. But can we do more to protect the food we have? While…
As the US was brought to the brink of a government shutdown this weekend, one of the sticking points was Republican insistence that President Obama curtail the activities of the Environmental Protection…
A prolonged period of hotter-than-average temperatures in the crater lake of New Zealand’s Mt Ruapehu has seen the country’s media questioning whether another eruption is on the cards. Mt Ruapehu (Māori…
Government modelling has given us a rough idea what a carbon tax could cost households, but will the burden be borne fairly? Whether we have a carbon tax or climate change, poor households will likely…
FOOD SECURITY - Agriculture is one of the few industries in the world in which emissions must rise. The carbon footprint of farming will become larger over the next 40 years as we feed a rapidly growing…
Here’s the problem. Going on a carbon diet is hard in the way that going on a calorie diet is not. For the most part, there is good information about the calorie content of food and I can regulate it myself…
Fairfax papers reported this morning that one of the world’s biggest carbon offset firms, located in Sydney, has been “shifting paper certificates instead of saving forests”. Shift2neutral has sold carbon…
FOOD SECURITY - Here’s how things stand. More than 500 million farmers produce crops and livestock that can feed nearly 7 billion people, and yet 1 billion still go hungry. It’s estimated that the world’s…
Innovation is not a topic that attracts much serious political debate in Australia. It improves living standards and the economy, but we’re missing out because of the government’s short-sighted approach…
Sometimes it feels like nature is out to get us. Fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and floods make paranoid types think that the world is coming to an end. Rationalists blame news media for causing us to…
FOOD SECURITY - The World Bank has warned rising food prices have risen 36% in the last year, reaching dangerous levels and pushing millions into poverty. The unrest in the Middle East, Africa and Haiti…
Once a place is heritage listed, it’s protected, right? Wrong. Politics and a flawed statutory regime are undermining the independence of the listing system, and threatening Australia’s national treasures…
While global warming deniers have been effective in their aim of sowing doubt in the public mind, the most powerful argument used over and over has been that cutting emissions will cut growth, and that…
When we read that a carbon tax will hit the average hip pocket, should we worry? Will the ETS push us all into penury? And will it make any difference to our emissions at all? Can we know the cost to households…
The body of evidence on the unhealthy effects of traffic pollution is now longer than a stretch limo. Our recent Queensland study found pregnant women exposed to greater levels of traffic pollution had…
We are entering an era of massive population transfer - a rural exodus of unprecedented proportions. In Asia and Africa farmers and peasants are being lured to mega-cities. This brings myriad benefits…
As our physical understanding of climate change has become more and more robust, public debate has become progressively more disconnected from the scientific literature. It’s unsurprising, then, that Hans…
News of a new bus route will most likely be greeted with indifferent silence, but lobbying for a new train line can keep thousands of potential commuters busy for years on end. It seems that everyone loves…
Before the Fukushima reactor was swamped by a tsunami, there had been a wave of enthusiasm for nuclear power. The problems in Japan have probably ended the risk of Australia going down the nuclear path…
GREENHOUSE 2011 - People’s belief or scepticism when it comes to climate change may not be as important as we think. What matters is how we behave. A lot of fuss has been made about whether people believe…
There are several reasons why Australians should welcome the imminent demise of Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. But none of them relate to the triumphal claims recently expressed by the likes of…