Fossil fuel companies gain access to children through education sponsorships, Barclays eyes opportunities from El Niño, while climate change brings increasingly destructive consequences to communities from the Himalayas to islands. (more…)
Peter Sainsbury
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It’s too late for 1.5°C. That doesn’t mean we give up
The UN now accepts that global warming is going to exceed 1.5°C but it’s unlikely that this will change anything governments or corporations do. It’s now too late to avoid catastrophic global warming. The task now is to limit further damage and prepare honestly for what follows. (more…)
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The world is living beyond its water means
Humanity is living beyond its means as wetlands disappear and World Heritage sites face growing water risks – while one company plans to illuminate the night from space. (more…)
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Environment: Australia’s diesel use increasing despite the harm it causes
Australia is subsidising rising diesel use, personal carbon footprints distract from systemic change, forest loss is accelerating and feral cats are killing even more native wildlife than we thought.
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Environment: Shoddy impact assessments satisfy fossil fuel companies and governments
Oil and gas risks in the Arafura and Timor Seas are being underplayed, small bushland remnants deserve protection, and solar’s rapid growth still has not displaced fossil fuels.
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Environment: Six revolutions and four billion years made today’s biosphere
This week’s environment round-up looks at the metabolic revolutions that remade Earth, China’s simultaneous coal and renewables boom, habitat gardens and Australia’s Cape Grim climate monitoring. (more…)
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Environment: sustainability is about redefining what makes a good life, not sacrifice
This week’s environment round-up looks at the search for sustainable wellbeing, the vast fungal networks keeping ecosystems alive, and the likelihood of warming exceeding 1.5°C before 2030.
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Environment: Governments must use the evidence to encourage low-carbon lifestyles
Encouraging people to adopt low-carbon lifestyles is useful but no silver bullet for climate change. Plus, deep sea mining of thermal vents may look commercially attractive but will lead to the extinction of many unique animals. (more…)
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Environment: UN says 2050 before greenhouse gas emissions fall
Despite all the talk, emissions will be almost 50 per cent higher in 2050, speeding up global warming and bringing tipping points closer. The US’s coercive neocolonialism trades medicines for minerals. And Australian mammals’ eyes, ears and noses help them enjoy the night. (more…)
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Environment: El Niño spells trouble for Aussies this spring
A new El Niño will likely bring heatwaves, droughts and health problems to southern Australia. In the UK, it’s already too hot for a warm beer. Wealthy nations are making very slow progress on emissions reductions. (more…)
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Environment: a smaller global population won’t reduce climate change
Reducing the global population won’t stop global warming and, after temporarily overshooting 1.5oC, the world won’t return to what it was but we can still act to save our flora. (more…)
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Environment: Cities swelter as global warming speeds up
Global warming is accelerating, extreme heat is already endangering lives in India, and Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism is failing to deliver meaningful emissions cuts from the country’s biggest industrial polluters.
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Environment: Atlantic currents are slowing so let’s dam the Bering Strait
When you’ve run out of options to solve the climate problem sensibly, do something ludicrous like damming the Bering Strait. All Norway’s new cars are EVs. Greenhouse gas emissions are up 50 per cent since nations decided to control them. (more…)
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Environment: Air pollution still kills almost eight million each year
Outdoor and indoor air pollution cause one in eight deaths, mainly in low income countries, climate change is bringing heatwaves and droughts together in hot-dry extremes, and the market has no incentive to save humanity.
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Environment: Australia’s expanding urban fringes at high risk of catastrophic bushfires
Urban fire risk, failing carbon markets, rising energy demand and accelerating polar change highlight the growing scale and complexity of environmental pressures.
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Environment: Class and race fuel climate collapse in Northern Territory
From devastating floods in the Northern Territory to the global failure to curb fossil fuels and the human cost of shipbreaking, environmental damage is accelerating – and hitting the most vulnerable hardest. (more…)
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Environment: Nature is in decline – and we are funding the damage
Glaciers are disappearing, biodiversity loss is accelerating, and governments continue to spend far more destroying nature than protecting it. (more…)
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Environment: Industry’s carbon capture fantasy is climate action’s nightmare
Carbon capture and storage continues to fail for the climate but keeps fossil fuels and profits flowing. Renewables are taking over the US power system despite Trump.
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Environment: If people like Grace Tame can’t be ‘difficult’, who can? – speaking up as ecosystems reach breaking point
Human demand is pushing ecosystems beyond safe limits – while weak policy, unrealistic emissions targets and the silencing of dissenting voices make the crisis harder to confront. (more…)
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Environment: Carbon credit markets benefit the participants but not the climate
Carbon markets still promise big but deliver little, the Global North’s economic development path will not work for the Global South, an uncontrolled sale of rat poison is needlessly killing native wildlife. (more…)
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Environment: warming oceans, sinking coasts and Covid’s impact on birds
New research shows oceans warming to depths of 2,000 metres, human-driven land subsidence intensifying sea level risks in China, and pandemic lockdowns altering bird evolution in Los Angeles.
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Environment: A hotter Middle East, a warming Arctic and heatwaves that won’t retreat
Arab nations face a very hot future, more severe heatwaves will continue for 1,000 years after we reach net zero, and changing land use has contributed to global warming, now global warming is damaging the land. (more…)
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Environment: State-owned fossil fuel companies dominate CO2 emissions
16 state-owned fossil fuel companies top the CO2 emission charts, nations need to be rich to electrify and need to electrify to get rich, and Norway drives the EV boom.
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Environment: The energy transition is underway – nuclear is not part of it
Nuclear is going nowhere, fossils are facing a bleak future and renewables are surging to the future. A Rich Polluter Profit Tax and an Excess Profit Tax would raise over US$1 trillion each year. (more…)
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Environment: Small-bodied and short-lived, tiny freshwater fish play big roles in ecosystems
A threatened Aussie tiddler flashes a fin for tiny freshwater fish worldwide, toxic PFAS chemicals are all around us and deep inside us and never go away, and illegal gold mining in Congo destroys the environment and communities. (more…)
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Environment: Agricultural emissions are roasting the planet
Together, 45 global livestock companies produce more greenhouse gases than all but eight countries. Plus, crimes against nature are big business that rely on criminal networks, corrupt officials and eager customers, and global warming marches on. (more…)
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Environment: It’s official – Australia’s extreme weather events will get more severe
Australia’s first Climate Risk Assessment confirms we’re in for more frequent and more extreme climate hazards. Ten years on from the Paris Agreement, Australia and governments around the world are still kicking the climate action can down the road. (more…)
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Environment: More good recycling is needed – emphasis on good
Low levels of plastic recycling are bad for human health and the environment. For lead, high levels of dangerous recycling are doing the damage. Northern Australia’s vast, ecologically relatively intact savannas are undervalued. (more…)
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Degrowing the economy for people and planet
Imperialism, colonialism, racism and ecocide: the four horsemen of capitalism’s apocalypse? Climate change threatens the survival of migratory species, and China continues to dominate the supply of rare earth elements. (more…)
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Bill Gates knows the climate and poverty facts but misses the politics
Bill Gates downplays climate catastrophe, wolves are blamed – or credited – for ecosystem repair, and China’s energy surge defies Western narratives.