Richest 1% produce as many greenhouse gases as the poorest 66%. Climate denialists have a new lyric: ‘sure, it’s happening – so what?’ but Australians are concerned about climate change and want action. No, it’s not OK to shoot a hippo.
Category: Climate
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Leading oil and gas producers plan to keep pumping
USA plans to maintain high levels of oil and gas production until at least 2050 – so it can export freedom. Healthy ecosystems require integrity, not just biodiversity. Endangered slug runs circles around arty rivals.
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Environment: Humans don’t make history – we play host
How germs made history. Greenhouse gas emissions keep rising but USA and Europe are still the major causes of global warming.
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Environment: Government inaction is killing our parrots
Australia’s parrots are increasingly threatened. Coal, gas, wind and solar supply the world’s surging demand for electricity. Methane emissions must be reduced rapidly.
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Humanity’s new era of “global boiling”: Climate’s 2023 annus horribilis
For climate change, 2023 was an “unprecedented” year, “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas” and “scary” and “frightening”. And that was what climate scientists said! The UN Secretary General called it the year in which humanity crossed into a new climate era — an age of “global boiling”. (more…)
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Failure after failure: the first chapter in the sad history of the attempts to introduce a broad-based carbon price in Australia
The January release of the Cabinet papers for 2003 reminds us of the failure of the second attempt to introduce an economy wide carbon price in Australia through an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). It marks the ascendancy of the energy and resource sectors in influencing the Coalitions climate change policies. This decision to reject emission trading set the pattern for the failure to develop a bipartisan consensus on the best way to manage climate change. (more…)
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Environment: 2023 – increased GHG emissions, increased atmospheric GHG levels and record high temperatures
Despite what we have we seen and learnt during 2023, the COP meeting failed again to take strong action on fossil fuels. Is nature for nature or only for humans?
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Abject failure: COP28 is sealing the globe into climate armageddon
Chris Bowen would have us believe that actually mentioning the words ‘fossil fuels’ and a transition away from them was a “turning point” in the history of COP negotiations. What is he smoking? (more…)
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Environment: Not much environmental cheer in the season of goodwill
Exmouth Gulf threatened with industrial development. Africa being forgotten as global economies develop. Australia’s emissions reductions likely to stall long before we get to net zero. Read on for the weekly environment update.
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Environment: Health, budgets and the environment, all damaged by food and plastic waste
Food loss and waste harm the environment, human health and wallets. Chemical recycling of plastic not living up to its promise. Concerns about dead solar modules are unfounded.
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What does climate denialist Abbott think of the monarchy now?
Now what on earth will those staunch monarchists and climate denialists – John Howard and Tony Abbott – say about their new king, Charles III, and his very strongly held environmental views? (more…)
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Amendment of the Climate Change Act will offer a future for young people
Since the industrial revolution, the health damage done to young people by fossil fuels, from the boy chimney sweeps to the household gas cooker amounts to negligence. Do we care? (more…)
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Breakthrough deal on Loss and Damage: What next for COP28?
The Global Stocktake, the report card on climate action for parties (countries), is shaping up to be the fight of COP28.
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Environment: Rich investors make profits from killing leopards, tigers and rhinos
Western financial institutions are funding the extinction of threatened species. Many EV batteries make lights work.
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Analysis exposes big oil disinformation efforts ahead of COP28
“Digital platforms continue to provide vested fossil fuel actors with a cheap and easy way to disinform the public about climate change,” said one campaigner. (more…)
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Environment: 1.5 degrees of warming in 10 years
Not long ago it looked like we’d exceed 1.5oC in 20 years, now it looks like 10. Maybe sooner if politicians keep approving new fossil fuel mines and fields and the logging of native forests. Particulate air pollution kills 9 million a year. (more…)
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What was Parliament doing as the earth boiled?
On the day on which the Earth recorded a global average surface temperature of more than 2 degrees centigrade for the first time since records began what was the Australian Parliament and media doing? (more…)
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Environment: NASA climate scientist criticises colleagues’ reluctance to agitate
James Hansen claims that climate scientists have been too slow to ring the alarm bells. Not so, says Michael Mann. International climate treaties are booming post-Paris. Putting trousers on a starfish.
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Environment: Plants and fungi – abundant and ubiquitous but poorly described
Very few plants and fungi have been scientifically described – many are destined for extinction before we knew they were extant. Australia’s top companies lack transparency and honesty about their climate politics. Australia’s emissions are decreasing but far too slowly.
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Environment: Industrial activities produce a third of emissions
Industrial emissions, many hard-to-abate, are increasing. Norway leads the roll-out of EVs but China dominates the number purchased and the production of steel and EV batteries. 40% of amphibians are threatened with extinction.
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Divide and fool: The Coalition’s misinformation campaign
In a recent Q and A, the opposition’s shadow minister for Climate Change and Energy Ted O’Brien’s improbable aim was to convince Australia that small nuclear reactors (SMRs) could replace our coal fired power plants and lead us to carbon neutrality. If you examine the economics of SMRs the proposition has to be classified as an absurdity with no chance of becoming a reality in the foreseeable future – if ever. (more…)
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Environment: Oceans to the rescue: 7 watery ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Oceans could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by a third. Toxic materials from abandoned and currently operational metal mines are polluting half a million kilometres of rivers and their floodplains. What do you know about Tassie Devils?
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Environment: On track for 2 degrees of warming within 20 years
Based on what’s actually happening rather than unfulfilled promises, the world will exceed 2oC of warming in the early 2040s and it doesn’t look like a comfortable place to be (not even for succulents).
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Environment: Australia labelled a ‘Planet Wrecker’
Wind and solar roll-outs are increasing globally but Australia and other Climate Wreckers are ignoring the science and developing new oil and gas fields.
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Environment: If ‘green growth’ is the answer, humanity needs a new question
‘Green growth’ withers in the heat of evidence. Humanity’s demands are creating a ‘global land squeeze’. Another year of murder for environmental defenders.
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Environment: Rich countries must do more to advance Africa’s economic and climate transition
African leaders and communities call for action to tackle the social and economic damage done by climate change. Warmer oceans lead to warmer conditions over land. UNESCO still looking for more government action to protect the Great Barrier Reef.
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Environment: Governments and fossil fuel subsidies, the infatuation grows
Doesn’t matter how much harm fossil fuels cause, governments have an ‘Everlasting Love’ for subsidising them, so no surprise that coal and oil consumption is increasing. The global love affair with electricity started in 1950.
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Environment: Andrew Forrest’s climate message to Biden, Modi and Xi
Andrew Forrest makes impassioned plea for governments to hold business responsible for climate action. African countries struggle to extract their natural resources without destroying their environments and people.
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Environment: Eat more plants to save the world
Vegans and vegetarians do less damage to the environment than meat-eaters. TotalEnergies and World Rugby team up in Paris to play a dirty game. Tips to become a better recycler.
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Environment: Sleepwalking into our fiery future
Not enough action to preserve our forests and not enough action to prevent bushfires. Less than twelve years before we hit 1.5o of global warming.