Around The Web

The National Waste Report 2018 is now available, and provides Australia’s waste and recycling data for the 2016-17 year.

The National Waste Report 2018 is now available, and provides Australia’s waste and recycling data for the 2016-17 year.

Museums including Washington’s Smithsonian have set out to digitally record specimens in their collection.

A global effort to digitally record millions of fossils is set to transform the study of evolution.

100 academics, authors, politicians and campaigners from across the world call for action to address climate change

In our complex, interdependent global ecosystem, life is dying, with species extinction accelerating. The climate crisis is worsening much faster than previously predicted. Every single day 200 species are becoming extinct. This desperate situation can’t continue.

Political leaders worldwide are failing to address the environmental crisis. If global corporate capitalism continues to drive the international economy, global catastrophe is inevitable.

Continue reading...

Environment minister will rule if Tasmanian forest that is home to the critically endangered parrot can be bulldozed

Tasmanian forest considered important for the survival of the critically endangered swift parrot may be bulldozed to build a dam for a fish farm and golf course development.

Glamorgan Spring Bay Council, on Tasmania’s east coast, wants to clear about 40ha of what scientists say is critical swift parrot breeding and foraging habitat to develop a 3,000m-litre-a-year dam near the town of Orford. The environment minister, Melissa Price, will now decide whether the proposal goes ahead.

Continue reading...

The group of 414 institutional investors with $31 trillion under management say governments must take serious steps to cut emissions

The largest ever group of institutional investors has called on governments around the world to urgently increase their efforts to meet the Paris climate change agreement goals.

The 414 global investors - which represent US$31 trillion of assets-under-management - say they are deeply concerned about the “ambition gap” that exists between governments’ commitments and what is needed to limit the global temperature increase to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels.

Continue reading...

Move shocks delegates at UN conference as ministers fly in for final week of climate talks

The US and Russia have thrown climate talks into disarray by allying with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to water down approval of a landmark report on the need to keep global warming below 1.5C.

After a heated two-and-a-half-hour debate on Saturday night, the backwards step by the four major oil producers shocked delegates at the UN climate conference in Katowice as ministers began to fly in for the final week of high-level discussions.

Continue reading...

UNEP is the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, promotes coherent implementation of the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment.

More than 8bn Tetra Paks are sold every year in Vietnam – and only a few percent are recycled. It’s having a devastating effect on the environment

It takes 45 minutes to pick up all the milk cartons that have washed up on Long Hai beach overnight. “I feel like all I do is collect them,” says Nguyen Thi Ngoc Tham, gesturing towards the quiet length of sand that fronts her beach house in the south of Vietnam. “I fill about three or four bags every morning, but then there will be a big wave, and when I look back over my shoulder the sand is covered again.”

Continue reading...

Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator approved 18 new offset projects over the past week amid a minor rush by developers to qualify in time for the coming week’s Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) auction.

Protesters walk from Sydney to Mt Kosciuszko to draw attention to increasing damage feral horses are doing to national park

It is not a precise way to measure public sentiment. But as five seasoned bushwalkers made their way on foot through the New South Wales deputy premier John Barilaro’s electorate of Monaro, taking several days to reach Charlotte Pass before hiking up Mt Kosciuszko itself, they received more words of encouragement and support than opposition to their message.

The walkers were walking in protest against legislation shepherded through the NSW parliament by Barilaro in June that declared feral horses, or brumbies, a protected heritage species in Kosciuszko national park.

Continue reading...

Labor senator Kristina Keneally says the former prime minister can pick a time and place to appear for questioning

Malcolm Turnbull has been offered his pick of time and place to front a Senate inquiry into a controversial $444m grant given to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

While the former prime minister is not obliged to attend, Labor Senator Kristina Keneally wants him to appear for questioning.

Continue reading...

Stories of resurrection and revival. If you could bring an extinct animal alive again what would it be? Should we if we could?

Governments are taking too long to tackle climate change and here's why.

More than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, but only around 2.5 percent is drinkable. In this episode we talk to various scientists engaged in making water out of thin air.

It takes a eucalyptus tree more than a hundred years to develop hollows suitable to shelter Aussie animals, and just moments to cut it down. Madeleine De Gabriele, Deputy Editor: Energy + Environment Wes Mountain, Multimedia Editor Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

It’s only 30 kilometres east of Brisbane but the economic gap between Cleveland and the Queensland capital is massive. Now an influential developer wants to revitalise the coastal town by building a $1.4 billion precinct on the foreshore. There’s just one problem: the region’s wetlands are protected under an international treaty known as the Ramsar convention. So who prevails in a battle between birdlife and business? Steve Cannane investigates.

A major climate conference in Poland has failed to adopt a key report after a dispute over a form of words.