The conclusions published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this week provide a wake-up call about the importance of teaching kids about sustainability. The IPCC’s…
Nationals MP George Christensen told Parliament that the hot temperatures of 1896 have been “wiped from the official record”. It’s a bit more complicated than that.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
“How could it be getting hotter … if it was really hotter 118 years ago? It’s relatively simple: the early years are simply wiped from the official record.” – Nationals MP George Christensen, House of…
By addressing climate change, Charlie Baker bolstered his image as a pragmatic problem solver.
Charlie Baker 2014 campaign
On an urgent mission to shift the political debate over climate change, environmental groups spent an unprecedented $85 million in the 2014 U.S. midterm elections, focusing their efforts on a handful of…
As both a word and an idea, ‘medieval’ carries centuries of connotation of a murky and brutal pre-scientific age.
US Fish & Wildlife Service/Swanson Scott
“Medieval” has become the accusation du jour in Australian domestic politics, used with equal conviction across the spectrum to discredit opponents’ views. One debate where this accusation has taken centre…
Climate change is one of the few scientific theories that makes us examine the whole basis of modern society. It is a challenge that has politicians arguing, sets nations against each other, queries individual…
Ambassador for the Environment Peter Woolcott, as president of the final UN conference on the Arms Trade Treaty.
Twitter
Australia has a new ambassador to lead its negotiations for the December 2015 United Nations climate change conference in Paris, which is tasked with hammering out an international agreement for post-2020…
The IPCC’s latest report sets the record straight on science (again), but could be stronger on the economic case for climate action.
EPA/Niels Ahlmann Olesen/AAP
The headline statements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s new Synthesis Report – unequivocal climate change, almost certainly driven largely by humans, and an urgent need to cut emissions…
Members of the public photograph an ice art installation outside the Copenhagen building where the IPCC met to finalise its latest report.
EPA/Soeren Bidstrup/AAP
Members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say they are confident their latest report, released in Copenhagen today, will help give politicians the impetus to commit to the deep emissions…
The Earth is finite - so are there limits to growth?
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center/Flickr
“But who do you think’s right, Prof? The optimists or the pessimists?” At the end of my sustainability economics course in 2007, students were challenging me to end 20 years of professional fence-sitting…
Many people around the world, in certain locations, have asked, “where is global warming?” This is because they have experienced very cold wintry conditions and weird weather that they do not associate…
Flying over Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef.
Kiyo/Flickr
The Great Barrier Reef is in trouble, and a draft government plan to ensure its survival does not go far enough. A number of submissions including those from the Australian Academy of Science and Environmental…
Greens senator Scott Ludlam’s prophecy that environment minister Greg Hunt has been directed to play solitaire for an entire term of office is so far holding up to scrutiny. It is looking increasingly…
A great butterfly fish enjoys the reef view off Waialae, Hawaii.
Steve Palumbi
Reef historian Iain McCalman, in Sydney, and reef scientist Stephen Palumbi, in California, are monitoring reef degradation from opposite sides of the planet. They compared notes. Iain McCalman: A recent…
Apollo Bay in Victoria. Australia’s coastal towns are vulnerable to changes in the surrounding seas.
ccdoh1/Flickr
Australia’s coastal towns, many built around fisheries and tourism, are particularly vulnerable to climate change. South east and south west Australia are marine hotspots — they are warming much faster…
When it gets hot in the city, where’s the best place to go?
Alpha/Flickr
Heatwaves — Australia’s biggest natural killers — are getting more frequent and hotter thanks to climate change. One day cities such as Melbourne may see unprecedented heat, perhaps 48C or higher. But…
Starting earlier, lasting longer: the challenge of managing the New South Wales bushfire season is getting harder.
AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts
In New South Wales in 2013, bushfires in January and October collectively burned 768,000 hectares of bushland and destroyed 279 homes. Tragically, two people lost their lives and the damage was estimated…
Is anyone listening, and does it matter?
Adrees Latif/Reuters
Humans have so much influence over the global environment today that we have crossed a major threshold in Earth’s long history, entering a new stage in geological time which some scientists call the Anthropocene…
Enjoy the color while you can before climate change makes a mess of this too.
chensiyuan
One of nature’s most spectacular events occurs every autumn, when the leaves of hardwood trees burst into brilliant color before falling to the ground. These autumnal displays in the eastern United States…
How much more glacial melting can the planet stand?
NASA
Industrial civilization must become technologically, economically, politically, and morally sustainable to hold the earth’s temperature below 2°C (3.6°F) higher than its preindustrial average. The problem…
Opening a mine in Queensland this week, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said coal was “good for humanity”.
Dan Peled/AAP
News emerging from Washington last week suggests climate change may amount to more than an FAQ in the appendices of this November’s G20 leaders’ summit agenda. President Obama’s deputy national security…