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Climate
As Australia campaigns for Cop31 hosting rights, it’s time to stop talking and start doing | Bill Hare
The 43% emission reduction target is not aligned with the Paris agreement – it should be at least 59%
Australian officials are gearing up for next week’s mid-year climate talks in Bonn where they’ll be going full tilt lobbying other governments to support the bid to host next year’s COP31 negotiations. But can the government claim enough climate leadership?
Our latest Climate Action Tracker shows the government’s efforts to cut emissions are still rated “insufficient”. Australia is not on track to meet its renewable energy target, its flagship industrial emissions policy is deficient, and its support for the fossil fuel industry – especially exports – remains unwavering.
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Continue reading...How will history judge Anthony Albanese? And what will he leave behind? | Fiona Katauskas
Future generations might not be kind
Continue reading...Monash staff say Woodside-backed climate conference highlights concerns about energy giant partnership
Senior lecturer says staff and students have struggled to get answers from university leadership about arrangement
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Monash University is under fire for an event at its Italian campus jointly organised with Woodside Energy, as staff criticise the institution for hosting “shadowy conferences paid for by fossil fuel corporations” and a lack of transparency around the relationship.
Monash co-hosted a “climate change and energy transition” conference with the gas giant at the university’s Prato campus in June 2024. The conference website, no longer directly available but accessible via the Wayback Machine, shows speakers were invited to submit papers on “the role of climate activism/nimbyism” in “thwarting emissions reductions” and how “activism”, “lawfare” and “cancel culture” were harmful to the energy transition.
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Continue reading...E.P.A. Axes Biden’s Climate and Pollution Limits on Power Plants
World Bank Ends Its Ban on Funding Nuclear Power Projects
Trump’s Budget: Supercharged ICE, School Vouchers and a Warming Planet
Funds to tackle Europe’s forest fires poorly targeted, says EU watchdog
Report raises concerns that money allocated to combat fires not reaching areas where it could make biggest difference
European funds to prevent forest fires have been poorly targeted and sometimes distributed in a hurry, according to a report from the EU’s spending watchdog.
The number of forest fires in EU countries has increased dramatically over the last two decades as the climate crisis fuels ever bigger conflagrations. An area twice the size of Luxembourg has been consumed by flames in an average recent year, killing people, destroying homes and wildlife and sending megatonnes of planet-heating emissions into the air.
Continue reading...Cost of net zero by 2050 may determine whether Coalition abandons emissions goal, shadow minister says
Dan Tehan says Coalition’s position on the Paris agreement and gas reservation scheme are also up for debate
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The financial cost to reach net zero by 2050 may shape the Coalition’s decision on whether to retain or abandon the target, the new shadow minister, Dan Tehan, says, as he prepares to lead a heavily contested internal review of the policy.
The opposition is poised for a protracted brawl over climate targets after the new Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, put all of its policies up for debate after the Coalition’s federal election defeat.
Continue reading...Major US climate website likely to be shut down after almost all staff fired
Exclusive: Climate.gov, which supports public education on climate science, will soon no longer publish new content
A major US government website supporting public education on climate science looks likely to be shuttered after almost all of its staff were fired, the Guardian has learned.
Climate.gov, the gateway website for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa)’s Climate Program Office, will imminently no longer publish new content, according to multiple former staff responsible for the site’s content whose contracts were recently terminated.
Continue reading...Why Rooftop Solar Could Crash Under the Republican Tax-Cut Bill
‘Win-win’: new maps reveal best opportunities for global reforestation
New study shows regions with best potential to regrow trees and suck climate-heating CO2 from the air
New maps have revealed the best “win-win” opportunities across the world to regrow forests and tackle the climate crisis, without harming people or wildlife.
The places range from the eastern US and western Canada, to Brazil and Columbia, and across Europe, adding up to 195 million hectares (482 million acres). If reforested, this would remove 2.2bn tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, about the same as all the nations in the European Union.
Continue reading...Something in the water: how kelp is helping Maine’s mussels boom
When a US firm saw the seaweed was making their shellfish the ‘biggest and best’ scientists realised they’d hit upon a natural way to combat ocean acidification
Photographs by Greta Rybus
More on this story: A drop in the ocean: does experimental technology hold the key to saving the world’s seas?
On a glimmering May morning, Tom Briggs pilots a 45ft aluminium barge through the waters of Casco Bay for one of the final days of the annual kelp harvest. Motoring past Clapboard Island, he points to a floating wooden platform where mussels have been seeded alongside ribbons of edible seaweed.
“This is our most productive mussel site,” says Briggs, the farm manager for Bangs Island Mussels, a Portland sea farm that grows, harvests and sells hundreds of thousands of pounds of shellfish and seaweed each year. “When we come here, we get the biggest, fastest-growing mussels with the thickest shells and the best quality. To my mind, unscientifically, it’s because of the kelp.”
Zoe Benisek, oyster lead at Bangs Island Mussels, harvesting kelp. The seaweed changes water chemistry enough to lower the levels of carbon dioxide to nourish the mussels
Continue reading...Parts of Australia are suffering another devastating drought, but you wouldn’t know it in the cities | Van Badham
It’s not so much that rural and metro communities hold different opinions about climate change but rather they are holding completely different conversations
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We got some rain in rural Victoria over the weekend, and that’s headline-worthy news.
There’s been a record-breaking drought that’s been afflicting the states of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and parts of New South Wales for over a year, but depending where you live – and how you get your news – you may not know much about it.
Continue reading...Drought fears in Europe amid reports May was world’s second hottest ever
Copernicus data shows month was 1.4C above estimated 1850-1900 average used to define pre-industrial level
It has been an exceptionally dry spring in north-western Europe and the second warmest May ever globally, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
Countries across Europe, including the UK, have been hit by drought conditions in recent months, with water shortages feared unless significant rain comes this summer, and crop failures beginning to be reported by farmers.
Continue reading...Against the grain: as prices and temperatures rise, can Japan learn to love imported rice?
The political and cultural insulation of Japan’s beloved grain is falling apart, and experts warn the country’s relationship with the staple will have to adapt
It’s cheap, filling and a time-honoured way for office workers to calm their hunger pangs. Lunchtime diners at fast-food restaurants in central Tokyo are here for one thing: gyudon – thinly sliced beef and onions on rice. The topping is rich and moreish, but it’s the stickiness of the plump japonica grains beneath that make this one of Japan’s best-loved comfort foods.
Rice cultivation in Japan stretches back thousands of years. In the Edo period (1603-1868), a meal for most people meant a simple bowl of unpolished grain, while members of the samurai class measured their wealth in rice bales.
Continue reading...Carbon Capture Comes Back Down to Earth
Document Shows E.P.A. Plans to Loosen Limits on Mercury From Power Plants
As Energy Costs Surge, Eastern Governors Blame a Grid Manager
A drop in the ocean: does experimental technology hold the key to saving the world’s seas?
Investment is pouring into companies promising to geoengineer a rapid change in the pH of our waters – but critics are concerned at the speed at which unproven methods are being adopted
In October 2024, a US company called Ebb Carbon announced the world’s largest marine carbon removal deal to date, signing a multimillion-dollar agreement with Microsoft to try to help fix a very real problem in the world’s seas: ocean acidification.
Ebb plans to use a method called electrochemical ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) to mimic the natural process of ocean alkalisation – in other words, it wants to add huge amounts of alkaline materials to ocean waters that scientists now know are acidifying at an alarming rate.
Continue reading...Dead elephants and feral sea lions: how poisonous algal blooms harm the planet
As the Earth heats up, the amount of algae in our waterways is rapidly increasing, transforming the colour of lakes and killing entire ecosystems
Before the elephants collapsed, they walked in aimless circles. Some fell head first, dying where they stood moments earlier; their carcasses scattered near watering holes across the Okavango delta. The unexplained deaths in May 2020 alarmed conservationists. By July, at least 350 elephants had died and nobody knew why.
“The animals all had their tusks, so poaching was unlikely. A lot of them had obviously died relatively suddenly: they had dropped on to their sternums, which was indicating a sudden loss of muscle function or neural capacity,” says Niall McCann, director of the conservation group National Park Rescue.
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