The Conversation

In the wake of a devastating fire at the Melbourne Coolaroo recycling facility earlier this month, Victorian environment minister Lily D'Ambrosio has announced a statewide audit of recycling facilities.

The audit is designed to identify other facilities with dangerous stockpiles of paper and plastic, but will also have the benefit of simply telling us how many plants are in Victoria.

It’s currently almost impossible to say how many recycling facilities are in Australia, where they are, and what they’re capable of sorting. And market forces can incentivise stockpiling material, creating the potential for yet more severe fires.

Where does our recycling go?

Australia generates roughly 50 million tonnes of waste a year, around 50-60% of which is recycled.

Some is defined as “construction and demolition” waste and recycled at specialist facilities, while a portion of food and garden waste is composted.

Most of the rest is collected from businesses and households, sorted at a recycling facility and then sent on to another facility to be turned into new products or packaging.

Overall, the volume of waste we generate generating is increasing at an estimated 7-10% per annum – more waste and recyclables that require sorting.

According to a 2013 report from the Department of Environment and Energy there are an estimated 114 facilities in Australia that sort recyclables from the commercial/industrial and household sectors.

However, this tells us very little. We don’t know the true number, as each council licenses the facilities in their area but there’s no central database. Some will manage household recyclables, while some will specialise in materials like paper and cardboard, or glass.

These facilities vary in how much volume they can process, as well as the variety of materials. Some rely totally on human labour to sort the materials, and others are a mix of mechanical and labour.

In light of our growing need for recycling facilities (and events like the Coolaroo fire), it’s clear that we need a national registry, updated with an annual survey.

Private companies recycle for Australia

Across Australia, most recycling is done by private companies. Councils are responsible for collecting household recyclables, but with very few exceptions they pay businesses to do it. Regardless, we are charged for the service through our rates.

Many different materials can be recycled – even plastic shopping bags and polystyrene. But it requires dedicated equipment at the recycling facilities to do so, and well as a market for the sorted product. Installing plastic-bag-recycling equipment is expensive and the markets are volatile, meaning that the expense for collection and sorting may not be repaid.

When prices for material like metal, glass or paper drop, companies may hold on to material waiting for an increase, or simply send them to landfill to reduce costs.

Another issue not often considered is the location of these facilities. As forward planning has been limited, new facilities will need to be placed in rural or regional areas, increasing transport costs and further shrinking the profit margins of the industry.

It also means more emissions as waste is transported from collection, to the sorting facility and then back to industry and shipping locations. At the same time, recyclables from many regional councils are transported to specialist sorting facilities located closer to metropolitan Melbourne, as there are no such facilities close to them.

What we can do to fix it

Fundamentally, Australians want more recycling, less landfill and less overall waste. Fortunately there are a number of process that can help deliver these outcomes.

States and territories can upgrade recycling facilities. New South Wales has been extremely proactive in spending money from its landfill levy to improve waste management, but the Victorian government has a A$500 million sustainability fund that should be used for the same purpose.

Particular attention should be paid to increasing our capacity to sort more materials, diverting them from landfill.

Tax breaks and other financial incentives should be offered to plant operators who upgrade their equipment, and manufacturers who use recyclable material in their products.

At the same time, we should consider penalising businesses who use non-recyclable packaging when alternatives exist, and retailers who sell goods in multi-material packaging (like polystyrene and plastic) without providing an alternative.

It should be possible to buy fruit or vegetables not wrapped in multiple kinds of packaging. ricardo/Flickr, CC BY

Recycling is very different to landfills, which are also generally privately owned. There’s significant government investment in landfill, as well as strict environmental and social restrictions. Importantly, landfills are not subject to the same market forces that cause large price fluctuations.

While the Victorian audit is a positive step, it does not address the basic lack of sorting facilities in the right locations, without policies to encourage development.

Recycling reduces overall greenhouse gas emissions, and energy, water and raw material consumption. Yet, apart from continual policy statements, little is being done.

Of course, it’s a complex issue. Forcing recyclers to sell their product at low rates can cause businesses to collapse; at the same time, less valuable material can end up in clearly dangerous stockpiles or yet more landfill.

Kneejerk reactions are not the answer. First and foremost, we need to find out how many facilities exist across Australia, where they are and what their capacity is. Only then can we usefully plan.

Trevor Thornton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Colonial notions of public and private space are embedded in sewage systems. Elaichi Ohyeah/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Two current global trends are set to make life rather uncomfortable for cities: climate change and the unprecedented rate of urbanisation.

This combination of extreme weather – often involving sudden deluges of water – and high population density will test even the best sewage infrastructure we have today. In the face of such pressures, how adaptable are our sewage systems?

Colonial heritage in our sewage systems

Sewage systems worldwide commonly consist of flush toilets and pipes that rely on a steady supply of water to transport and deposit bodily waste, either to a wastewater treatment plant or, failing that, simply downstream in the nearest river or straight into the ocean.

Many urbanites around the globe are using sewage systems based on a colonial-era template. Initially implemented to cure London’s “Great Stink” of 1858, when a hot summer combined with the excrement-filled River Thames to create an unbearable stench, sewer systems were public health interventions designed to remove pathogens and “miasmatic” offences associated with bodily waste.

They were first transplanted off Britain’s shores in the reconstruction of Paris from 1850–70, and since then have become embedded culture-specific notions of hygiene and sanitation around the globe.

Such colonial infrastructure is now proving increasingly problematic in the face of human-driven global trends (broadly referred to as the Anthropocene).

Using water to flush waste

A paradox of climate change is that there seems to be both more and less water. In South Asia, for example, at least 1.6 billion people struggle to find drinking water despite an abundance of water generally.

A woman siphoning water from a leaky pipe into a bucket on the side of the road during summer. Author provided

For residents of Darjeeling, India, where I am currently conducting my PhD fieldwork, this paradox is very real. Monsoons in Darjeeling last from June through August, sometimes longer, and rain falls frequently throughout the rest of the year. On the face of it, Darjeeling should have plenty of water, but in fact it faces increasingly acute shortages during the summer months from April to June.

The town’s water and waste infrastructure was built by the British in the 1930s, for what was then a population of 10,000. Its population now hovers around the 150,000 mark, and surges to more than 200,000 during peak tourist season from March to May. Despite this, there has been little to no official maintenance or upgrade since Indian independence in 1947.

In town, signs that urbanisation has outpaced infrastructure capacity are everywhere. An impressive number of pipes move water to and from the population. Along with electricity wires, these pipes traverse the city along increasingly bizarre and precarious routes. Ad hoc retrofit attempts to meet rising demand appear to be band-aid solutions and, because the pipes leak, often exacerbate contamination.

A typical open sewer in Darjeeling. Note the pipes on either side are water pipes taking drinking water to homes. Author provided

Darjeeling is instructive because it is a landscape struggling with inadequate infrastructure amid a rapidly urbanising population. In such a landscape, fresh water can be contaminated by sewage outflows, largely because the system is completely dependent on water to function.

Such over-reliance underpins another paradox: modern sewerage systems require water to work and yet, if not context-sensitive nor managed appropriately, can dirty vital waterways.

Closer to home

Australia is not immune to such problems. Our changing climate means we too face more severe droughts along with heavier rainfall events. Under these conditions, our sewage systems are under increasing stress.

Earlier this year Melbourne experienced summer flash floods which strained the city’s sewage systems, contaminating three public beaches. In February a heavy downpour in Western Australia caused concern over sewage contamination in the Swan River.

Such experiences are not isolated, and are likely to increase in incidence across the world. They provide important lessons and act as a catalyst for rethinking our relationship to water and waste, particularly amid concerns over water scarcity and extreme weather conditions in southern Australia.

Alternative futures

Many social scientists are now researching alternative forms of infrastructure that are contextually relevant, embedded in community values, and adaptable to current environmental challenges.

These alternative forms include moves to re-examine our relationship with waste in farming, use dry composting toilets, and install public bio-toilets along India’s main railway corridors.

As for my home town of Adelaide, the capital of the driest state on the driest inhabited continent on Earth, should we really continue to use water to flush bodily waste?

Matt Barlow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

This aerial view shows the catchment of the Makaroro river, in the Ruahine Forest Park. The river was to be dammed for the Ruataniwha irrigation scheme. Peter Scott, CC BY-ND

Earlier this month, New Zealand’s Supreme Court rejected a proposed land swap that would have flooded conservation land for the construction of the country’s largest irrigation dam.

The court was considering whether the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council’s investment arm could build a dam on 22 hectares of the protected Ruahine Forest Park in exchange for 170 hectares of private farm land. The proposed dam is part of the $900 million Ruataniwha water storage and irrigation scheme.

The New Zealand government’s response to the ruling was to consider a law change to make land swaps easier. Such a move flies in the face of good governance.

Natural capital vs development

The Supreme Court ruling has significant implications for the Ruataniwha dam. In addition, it asserts the importance of permanent protection of high-value conservation land.

The ecological value of the Ruahine Forest Park land was never in question. The conservation land includes indigenous forest, a unique braided river and wetlands that would have been destroyed.

The area is home to a dozen plants and animals that are classified as threatened or at risk. The developer’s ecological assessment acknowledged the destruction of ecologically significant land and water bodies. However, it argued that mitigation and offsetting would ensure that any effects of habitat loss were at an acceptable level.

The Mohaka River also flows through the Hawke’s Bay. Christine Cheyne, CC BY-ND Challenge to NZ’s 100% Pure brand

New Zealand’s environmental legislation states that adverse effects are to be avoided, remedied or mitigated. However, no priority is given to avoiding adverse effects. Government guidance on offsetting does not require outcomes with no net loss.

In Pathways to prosperity, policy analyst Marie Brown argues that offsetting is not always appropriate when the affected biodiversity is vulnerable and irreplaceable.

Recent public concern about declining water quality has provided significant momentum to address pollution and over-allocation to irrigation. Similarly, awareness of New Zealand’s loss of indigenous biodiversity is building.

These issues were highlighted in this year’s OECD Environmental Performance Review and a report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment on the parlous state of New Zealand’s native birds.

Both issues damage New Zealand’s 100% Pure branding and pose significant risks to tourism and the export food sector. Indigenous ecosystems are a huge draw card to surging numbers of international tourists.

Battle lines in fight for the environment

Powerful economic arguments have been put forward by business actors, both internationally and in New Zealand. For example, Pure Advantage supports protection of ecosystems and landscapes. Yet, governance mechanisms are limited.

Since 2009, environmental protection and conservation have increasingly become major battle lines as the National government doggedly pursues its business growth agenda. This favours short-term economic growth over environmental protection.

A key principle behind the Supreme Court decision is that protected conservation land cannot be traded off. It follows a High Court case in which environmental organisations argued unsuccessfully that the transfer of land was unlawful.

However, in August 2016, the Court of Appeal ruled against the Director-General of Conservation’s decision to allow the land transfer. It had been supported on the grounds that there would be a net gain to the conservation estate. The court’s ruling said that the intrinsic values of the protected land had been disregarded.

The Supreme Court has reinforced the importance of the permanent protection status recognised by the Court of Appeal.

Anticipatory governance

In response to the court’s decisions, the government argued that land swaps of protected areas should be allowed. It may seek to amend legislation to facilitate such exchanges.

The Supreme Court made reference to section 2 of the Conservation Act 1987. It defines conservation as “the preservation and protection of natural and historic resources for the purpose of maintaining their intrinsic values, providing for their appreciation and recreational enjoyment by the public, and safeguarding the options of future generations”.

Section 6 of the act states that the Department of Conservation should “promote the benefits to present and future generations of the conservation of natural and historic resources”. As such, the legislation and the department contribute to what is known as “anticipatory governance”.

Anticipatory governance is fundamental to good governance, as Jonathan Boston argues in his recent publication Safeguarding the future: governing in an uncertain world.

It requires protecting long-term public interests. Conservation of our unique ecosystems and landscapes protects their intrinsic values and the services they provide. These include tourism benefits and basic needs such as water, soil and the materials that sustain human life.

The department has correctly recognised that conservation promotes prosperity. However, long-term prosperity is quite different from the short-term exploitation associated with the government’s business growth agenda.

This promotes exploitation in the form of mining on conservation land and increased infrastructure for tourism and other industries, such as the proposed Ruataniwha dam.

Amending the Conservation Act to allow land swaps involves a significant discounting of the future in favour of present day citizens. This is disingenuous and an affront to constitutional democracy. It would weaken one of New Zealand’s few anticipatory governance mechanisms at a time when they are needed more than ever.

Christine Cheyne was a member of the Taranaki-Whanganui Conservation Board for 10 years (2004-2014).

A recent expose by the ABC’s Four Corners has alleged significant illegal extraction of water from the Barwon-Darling river system, one of the major tributaries of the Murray River. The revelations have triggered widespread condemnation of irrigators, the New South Wales government and its officials, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Basin Plan itself.

If the allegations are true that billions of litres of water worth millions of dollars were illegally extracted, this would represent one of the largest thefts in Australian history. It would have social and economic consequences for communities along the entire length of the Murray-Darling river system, and for the river itself, after years of trying to restore its health.

Water is big business, big politics and a big player in our environment. Taxpayers have spent A$13 billion on water reform in the Murray-Darling Basin in the past decade, hundreds of millions of which have gone directly to state governments. Governments have an obligation to ensure that this money is well spent.

The revelations cast doubt on the states’ willingness to do this, and even on their commitment to the entire Murray-Darling Basin Plan. This commitment needs to be reaffirmed urgently.

Basic principles

To work out where to go from here, it helps to understand the principles on which the Basin Plan was conceived. At its foundation, Australian water reform is based on four pillars.

1. Environmental water and fair consumption

The initial driver of water reform in the late 1990s was a widespread recognition that too much water had been allocated from the Murray-Darling system, and that it had suffered ecological damage as a result.

State and Commonwealth governments made a bipartisan commitment to reset the balance between water consumption and environmental water, to help restore the basin’s health and also to ensure that water-dependent industries and communities can be strong and sustainable.

Key to this was the idea that water users along the river would have fair access to water. Upstream users could not take water to the detriment of people downstream. The Four Corners investigation casts doubt on the NSW’s commitment to this principle.

2. Water markets and buybacks

The creation of a water market under the Basin Plan had two purposes: to allow water to be purchased on behalf of the environment, and to allow water permits to be traded between irrigators depending on relative need.

This involved calculating how much water could be taken from the river while ensuring a healthy ecosystem (the Sustainable Diversion Limit). Based on these calculations, state governments developed a water recovery program, which aimed to recover 2,750 gigalitres of water per year from consumptive use, through a A$3 billion water entitlement buyback and a A$9 billion irrigation modernisation program.

This program hinged on the development of water accounting tools that could measure both water availability and consumption. Only through trust in this process can downstream users be confident that they are receiving their fair share.

3. States retain control of water

Control of water was a major stumbling block in negotiating the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, because of a clash between states’ water-management responsibilities and the Commonwealth’s obligations to the environment.

As a result, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority sits outside of both state and Commonwealth governments, and states have to draw up water management plans that are subject to approval by the authority.

The states are responsible for enforcing these plans and ensuring that allocations are not exceeded. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority cannot easily enforce action on the ground – a situation that generates potential for state-level political interference, as alleged by the Four Corners investigation.

4. Trust and transparency

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan was built on a foundation of trust and transparency. The buyback scheme has transformed water into a tradeable commodity worth A$2 billion a year, a sizeable chunk of which is held by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office.

Water trading has also helped to make water use more flexible. In a dry year, farmers with annual crops (such as cotton) can choose not to plant and instead to sell their water to farmers such as horticulturists who must irrigate to keep their trees alive. This flexibility is valuable in Australia’s highly variable climate.

Yet it is also true that water trading has created some big winners. Those with pre-existing water rights have been able to capitalise on that asset and invest heavily in buying further water rights, an outcome highlighted in the Four Corners story.

More than A$20 million in research investment has been devoted to ensuring that the ecological benefits of water are optimised – most notably through the Environmental Water Knowledge and Research and Long Term Intervention Monitoring programs. What is not clear is whether water extractions and their policing have been subjected to a similar degree of review and rigour.

What next for the Murray-Darling Basin?

The public needs to be able to trust that all parties are working honestly and accountably. This is particularly true for the downstream partners, who are the most likely victims of management failures upstream. Without trust in the upstream states, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan will unravel.

State governments urgently need to reaffirm their commitment to the four pillars that underpin the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, and to reassure the public that in retaining control of water they are operating in good faith.

Finally, rigour and transparency are needed in assessing the Basin Plan’s methods and environmental benefits, and the operation of the water market. The Productivity Commission’s review of national water policy, and its specific review of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan next year, will offer a clear opportunity to reassure everyone that the A$13 billion of public money that has gone into water reform in the past decade has been money well spent.

Only then will the fragile trust that underlies the water reform process be maintained and built.

Ross Thompson receives funding from the Australian Research Council, and has previously been contracted to the NSW and Victorian state governments to provide advice on the MDB Plan. He has completed paid external reviews for the Murray Darling Basin Authority, and is a researcher on current projects funded by the Commonwealth Environment Water Holder.

To conserve Earth's remarkable species, such as the violet sabrewing, we must also defend the importance of science. Jeremy Kerr, Author provided

Science is the best method we have for determining what is likely to be true. The knowledge gained from this process benefits society in a multitude of ways, including promoting evidence-based decision-making and management. Nowhere is this more important than conservation, as the intensifying impacts of the Anthropocene increasingly threaten the survival of species.

But truth can be inconvenient: conservation goals sometimes seem at odds with social or economic interests. As a result, scientific evidence may be ignored or suppressed for political reasons. This has led to growing global trends of attacking scientific integrity.

Recent assaults on science and scientists under Donald Trump’s US administration are particularly extreme, but extend far more broadly. Rather than causing scientists to shrink from public discussions, these abuses have spurred them and their professional societies to defend scientific integrity.

Among these efforts was the recent March for Science. The largest pro-science demonstration in history, this event took place in more than 600 locations around the world.

We propose, in a new paper in Conservation Biology, that scientists share their experiences of defending scientific integrity across borders to achieve more lasting success. We summarise eight reforms to protect scientific integrity, drawn from lessons learned in Australia, Canada and the US.

March for science in Melbourne. John Englart (Takver) What is scientific integrity?

Scientific integrity is the ability to perform, use and disseminate scientific findings without censorship or political interference. It requires that government scientists can communicate their research to the public and media. Such outbound scientific communication is threatened by policies limiting scientists’ ability to publish, publicise or even mention their research findings.

Public access to websites or other sources of government scientific data have also been curtailed. Limiting access to taxpayer-funded information in this way undermines citizens’ ability to participate in decisions that affect them, or even to know why decisions are being made.

News of the rediscovery of the shrub Hibbertia fumana (left) in Australia was delayed until a development at the site of rediscovery had been permitted. Political considerations delayed protection of the wolverine (right) in the United States. Wolverine - U.S. National and Park Service. _Hibbertia fumana_ - A. Orme

A recent case of scientific information being suppressed concerns the rediscovery, early in 2017, of the plant Hibbertia fumana in New South Wales. Last seen in 1823, 370 plants were found.

Rather than publicly celebrate the news, the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage was reportedly asked to suppress the news until after a rail freight plan that overlapped with the plants’ location had been approved.

Protecting scientists’ right to speak out

Scientists employed by government agencies often cannot discuss research that might relate to their employer’s policies. While it may not be appropriate for scientists to weigh in on policy recommendations – and, of course, constant media commentaries would be chaos – the balance has tipped too far towards restriction. Many scientists cannot publicly refer to their research, or that of others, let alone explain the significance of the findings.

To counter this, we need policies that support scientific integrity, an environment of transparency and the public’s right to access scientific information. Scientists’ right to speak freely should be included in collective bargaining agreements.

Scientific integrity requires transparency and accountability. Information from non-government scientists, through submitted comments or reviews of draft policies, can inform the policy process.

Although science is only one source of influence on policy, democratic processes are undermined when policymakers limit scrutiny of decision-making processes and the role that evidence plays in them.

Let science inform policy

Independent reviews of new policy are a vital part of making evidence-based decisions. There is room to broaden these reviews, inviting external organisations to give expert advice on proposed or existing policies. This also means transparently acknowledging any perceived or actual vested interests.

Australian governments often invite scientists and others to contribute their thoughts on proposed policy. The Finkel Review, for example, received 390 written submissions. Of course, agencies might not have time to respond individually to each submission. But if a policy is eventually made that seems to contradict the best available science, that agency should be required to account for that decision.

Finally, agencies should be proactively engaging with scientific groups at all stages of the process.

Active advocacy

Strengthening scientific integrity policies when many administrations are publicly hostile to science is challenging. Scientists are stuck reactively defending protective policies. Instead, they should be actively advocating for their expansion.

The goal is to institutionalise a culture of scientific integrity in the development and implementation of conservation policies.

A transnational movement to defend science will improve the odds that good practices will be retained and strengthened under more science-friendly administrations.

The monarch butterfly, now endangered in Canada, and at risk more broadly. Jeremy Kerr

Many regard science as apolitical. Even the suggestion of publicly advocating for integrity or evidence-based policy and management makes some scientists deeply uncomfortable. It is telling that providing factual information for policy decisions and public information can be labelled as partisan. Nevertheless, recent research suggests that public participation by scientists, if properly framed, does not harm their credibility.

Scientists can operate objectively in conducting research, interpreting discoveries and publicly explaining the significance of the results. Recommendations for how to walk such a tricky, but vital, line are readily available.

Scientists and scientific societies must not shrink from their role, which is more important than ever. They have a responsibility to engage broadly with the public to affirm that science is indispensable for evidence-based policies and regulations. These critical roles for scientists help ensure that policy processes unfold in plain sight, and consequently help sustain functioning, democratic societies.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Dr Carlos Carroll, a conservation biologist at the Klamath Center for Conservation Research.

Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Euan Ritchie is a Director (Media Working Group) of the Ecological Society of Australia, and a member of the Australian Mammal Society.

James Watson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jeremy Kerr receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through a Discovery Grant and Discovery Accelerator Supplement.

Martine Maron receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Environmental Science Programme, the Science for Nature and People Partnership, and the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. She is a Director of BirdLife Australia and a Governor of WWF Australia.

Giant African land snails can grow up to 15cm long. Author provided

The giant African land snail is a poster child of a global epidemic: the threat of invasive species. The snails are native to coastal East Africa, but are now found across Asia, the Pacific and the Americas – in fact, almost all tropical mainlands and islands except mainland Australia.

Yet, despite their fearsome reputation, our research on Christmas Island’s invasive snail population suggests the risk they pose to native ecosystems has been greatly exaggerated.

Giant African land snails certainly have the classic characteristics of a successful invader: they can thrive in lots of different places; survive on a broad diet; reach reproductive age quickly; and produce more than 1,000 eggs in a lifetime. Add it all together and you have a species recognised as among the worst invaders in the world.

The snails can eat hundreds of plant species, including vegetable crops (and even calcium-rich plaster and stucco), and have been described as a major threat to agriculture.

They have been intercepted at Australian ports, and the Department of Primary Industries concurs that the snails are a “serious threat”.

Despite all this, there have been no dedicated studies of their environmental impact. Some researchers suggest the risk to agriculture has been exaggerated from accounts of damage in gardens. There are no accounts of giant African land snails destroying natural ecosystems.

Quietly eating leaf litter

In research recently published in the journal Austral Ecology, we tested these assumptions by investigating giant African land snails living in native rainforest on Christmas Island.

Giant African land snails have spread through Christmas Island with the help of another invasive species: the yellow crazy ant.

Until these ants showed up, abundant native red land crabs ate the giant snails before they could gain a foothold in the rainforest. Unfortunately, yellow crazy ants have completely exterminated the crabs in some parts of the island, allowing the snails to flourish.

We predicted that the snails, which eat a broad range of food, would have a significant impact on leaf litter and seedling survival.

Unexpectedly, the snails we observed on Christmas Island confined themselves to eating small amounts of leaf litter. Author provided

However, our evidence didn’t support this at all. Using several different approaches – including a field experiment, lab experiment and observational study – we found giant African land snails were pretty much just eating a few dead leaves and little else.

We almost couldn’t distinguish between leaf litter removal by the snails compared to natural decomposition. They were eating leaf litter, but not a lot of it.

We saw almost no impact on seedling survival, and the snails were almost never seen eating live foliage. In one lab trial, we attempted to feed snails an exclusive diet of fresh leaves, but so many of these snails died that we had to cut the experiment short. Perhaps common Christmas Island plants just aren’t palatable.

It’s possible that the giant African land snails are causing other problems on Christmas Island. In Florida, for example, they carry parasites that are a risk to human health. But for the key ecological processes we investigated, the snails do not create the kind of disturbance we would assume from their large numbers.

We effectively excluded snails from an area by lining a fence with copper tape. Author provided

The assumption that giant African land snails are dangerous to native plants and agriculture comes from an overriding sentiment that invasive species are damaging and must be controlled.

Do we have good data on the ecological impact of all invasive species? Of course not. Should we still try to control all abundant invasive species even if we don’t have evidence they are causing harm? That’s a more difficult question.

The precautionary principle drives much of the thinking behind the management of invasive species, including the giant African land snail. The cost of doing nothing is potentially very high, so it’s safest to assume invasive species are having an effect (especially when they exist in high numbers).

But we should also be working hard to test these assumptions. Proper monitoring and experiments give us a true picture of the risks of action (or inaction).

In reality, the giant African land snail is more the poster child of our own knee-jerk reaction to abundant invaders.

Luke S. O'Loughlin received funding from the Hermon Slade Foundation and the Holsworth Wildlife Endowment Fund

Peter Green receives funding from the Department of Environment and Energy and the Hermon Slade Foundation for this research.

Land plants are absorbing 17% more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere now than 30 years ago, our research published today shows. Equally extraordinarily, our study also shows that the vegetation is hardly using any extra water to do it, suggesting that global change is causing the world’s plants to grow in a more water-efficient way.

Water is the most precious resource needed for plants to grow, and our research suggests that vegetation is becoming much better at using it in a world in which CO₂ levels continue to rise.

The ratio of carbon uptake to water loss by ecosystems is what we call “water use efficiency”, and it is one of the most important variables when studying these ecosystems.

Our confirmation of a global trend of increasing water use efficiency is a rare piece of good news when it comes to the consequences of global environmental change. It will strengthen plants’ vital role as global carbon sinks, improve food production, and might boost water availability for the well-being of society and the natural world.

Yet more efficient water use by the world’s plants will not solve our current or future water scarcity problems.

Changes in global terrestrial uptake of carbon dioxide, water use efficiency and ecosystem evapotranspiration during 1982-2011. Boosting carbon uptake

Plants growing in today’s higher-CO₂ conditions can take up more carbon – the so-called CO₂ fertilisation effect. This is the main reason why the terrestrial biosphere has taken up 17% more carbon over the past 30 years.

The enhanced carbon uptake is consistent with the global greening trend observed by satellites, and the growing global land carbon sink which removes about one-third of all CO₂ emissions generated by human activities.

Increasing carbon uptake typically comes at a cost. To let CO₂ in, plants have to open up pores called stomata in their leaves, which in turn allows water to sneak out. Plants thus need to strike a balance between taking up carbon to build new leaves, stems and roots, while minimising water loss in the process. This has led to sophisticated adaptations that has allowed many plant species to conquer a range of arid environments.

One such adaptation is to close the stomata slightly to allow CO₂ to enter with less water getting out. Under increasing atmospheric CO₂, the overall result is that CO₂ uptake increases while water consumption does not. This is exactly what we have found on a global scale in our new study. In fact, we found that rising CO₂ levels are causing the world’s plants to become more water-wise, almost everywhere, whether in dry places or wet ones.

Growth hotspots

We used a combination of plot-scale water flux and atmospheric measurements, and satellite observations of leaf properties, to develop and test a new water use efficiency model. The model enables us to scale up from leaf water use efficiency anywhere in the world to the entire globe.

We found that across the globe, boreal and tropical forests are particularly good at increasing ecosystem water use efficiency and uptake of CO₂. That is due in large part to the CO₂ fertilisation effect and the increase in the total amount of leaf surface area.

Importantly, both types of forests are critical in limiting the rise in atmospheric CO₂ levels. Intact tropical forest removes more atmospheric CO₂ than any other type of forest, and the boreal forests of the planet’s far north hold vast amounts of carbon particularly in their organic soils.

Meanwhile, for the semi-arid ecosystems of the world, increased water savings are a big deal. We found that Australian ecosystems, for example, are increasing their carbon uptake, especially in the northern savannas. This trend may not have been possible without an increase in ecosystem water use efficiency.

Previous studies have also shown how increased water efficiency is greening semi-arid regions and may have contributed to an increase in carbon capture in semi-arid ecosystems in Australia, Africa and South America.

Trends in water use efficiency over 1982-2011. CREDIT, Author provided It’s not all good news

These trends will have largely positive outcomes for the plants and the animals (and humans) consuming them. Wood production, bioenergy and crop growth are (and will be) less water-intensive under climate change than they would be without increased vegetation water use efficiency.

But despite these trends, water scarcity will nevertheless continue to constrain carbon sinks, food production and socioeconomic development.

Some studies have suggested that the water savings could also lead to increased runoff and therefore excess water availability. For dry Australia, however, more than half (64%) of the rainfall returning to the atmosphere does not go through vegetation, but through direct soil evaporation. This reduces the potential benefit from increased vegetation water use efficiency and the possibility for more water flowing to rivers and reservoirs. In fact, a recent study shows that while semi-arid regions in Australia are greening, they are also consuming more water, causing river flows to fall by 24-28%.

Our research confirms that plants all over the world are likely to benefit from these increased water savings. However, the question of whether this will translate to more water availability for conservation or for human consumption is much less clear, and will probably vary widely from region to region.

Pep Canadell receives funding from the Australian National Environmental Science Program.

Francis Chiew works for CSIRO, which receives funding from the Commonwealth Government.

Lei Cheng works for CSIRO, which receives funding from the Commonwealth Government.

Lu Zhang works for CSIRO, which receives funding from the Commonwealth Government.

Ying-Ping Wang receives funding from the Australian National Environmental Science Program.

Orca family group at the Bremer Canyon off WA's south coast. R. Wellard, Author provided

The federal government’s new draft marine park plans are based on an unsubstantiated premise: that protection of Australia’s ocean wildlife is consistent with activities such as fishing and oil and gas exploration.

Under the proposed plans, there would be no change to the boundaries of existing marine parks, which cover 36% of Commonwealth waters, or almost 2.4 million square kilometres. But many areas inside these boundaries will be rezoned to allow for a range of activities besides conservation.

The plans propose dividing marine parks into three types of zones:

• Green: “National Park Zones” with full conservation protection
• Yellow: “Habitat Protection Zones” where fishing is allowed as long as the seafloor is not harmed
• Blue: “Special Purpose Zones” that allow for specific commercial activities.

Crucially, under the new draft plans, the amount of green zones will be almost halved, from 36% to 20% of the marine park network, whereas yellow zones will almost double from 24% to 43%, compared with when the marine parks were established in 2012.

The government has said that this approach will “allow sustainable activities like commercial fishing while protecting key conservation features”.

But like the courtiers told to admire the Emperor’s non-existent new clothes, we’re being asked to believe something to be true despite strong evidence to the contrary.

The Emperor’s unrobing

The new plans follow on from last year’s release of an independent review, commissioned by the Abbott government after suspending the previous network of marine reserves implemented under Julia Gillard in 2012.

Yet the latest draft plans, which propose to gut the network of green zones, ignore many of the recommendations made in the review, which was itself an erosion of the suspended 2012 plans.

The extent of green zones is crucial, because the science says they are the engine room of conservation. Fully protected marine national parks – with no fishing, no mining, and no oil and gas drilling – deliver far more benefits to biodiversity than other zone types.

The best estimates suggest that 30-40% of the seascape should ideally be fully protected, rather than the 20% proposed under the new plans.

Partially protected areas, such as the yellow zones that allow fishing while protecting the seabed, do not generate conservation benefits equivalent to those of full protection.

While some studies suggest that partial protection is better than nothing, others suggest that these zones offer little to no improvement relative to areas fully open to exploitation.

Frydenberg has pointed out that, under the new plans, the total area zoned as either green or yellow will rise from 60% to 63% compared with the 2012 network. But yellow is not the new green. What’s more, yellow zones have similar management costs to green zones, which means that the government is proposing to spend the same amount of money for far inferior protection. And as any decent sex-ed teacher will tell you, partial protection is a risky business.

What do the draft plans mean?

Let’s take a couple of examples, starting with the Coral Sea Marine Park. This is perhaps the most disappointing rollback in the new draft plan. The green zone, which would have been one of the largest fully protected areas on the planet, has been reduced by half to allow for fishing activity in a significantly expanded yellow zone.

Coral Sea Marine Park zoning, as recommended by Independent Review (left) and in the new draft plan (right), showing the proposed expansion of partial protection (yellow) vs full protection (green). From http://www.environment.gov.au/marinereservesreview/reports and https://parksaustralia.gov.au/marine/management/draft-plans/

This yellow zone would allow the use of pelagic longlines to fish for tuna. This is despite government statistics showing that around 30% of the catch in the Eastern Tuna and Billfish fishery consists of species that are either overexploited or uncertain in their sustainability, and the government’s own risk assessment that found these types of fishing lines are incompatible with conservation.

What this means, in effect, is that the plans to establish a world-class marine park in the Coral Sea will be significantly undermined for the sake of saving commercial tuna fishers A$4.1 million per year, or 0.3% of the total revenue from Australia’s wild-catch fisheries.

Contrast this with the A$6.4 billion generated by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in 2015-16, the majority of which comes from non-extractive industries.

This same erosion of protection is also proposed in Western Australia, where the government’s draft plan would reduce green zones by 43% across the largest marine parks in the region.

Zoning for the Gascoyne Marine Park as recommended by the Independent Review (left) and the new draft plan (right). http://www.environment.gov.au/marinereservesreview/reports and https://parksaustralia.gov.au/marine/management/draft-plans/

Again, this is despite clear evidence that the fishing activities occurring in these areas are not compatible with conservation. Such proposals also ignore future pressures such as deep-sea mining.

The overall effect is summarised neatly by Frydenberg’s statement that the government’s plans will:

…increase the total area of the reserves open to fishing from 64% to 80% … (and) make 97% of waters within 100 kilometres of the coast open for recreational fishing.

Building ocean resilience

Science shows that full protection creates resilience by supporting intact ecosystems. Fully protected green zones recover faster from flooding and coral bleaching, have reduced rates of disease, and fend off climate invaders more effectively than areas that are open to fishing.

Green zones also contribute indirectly to the blue economy. They help support fisheries and function as “nurseries” for fish larvae. For commercial fisheries, these sanctuaries are more important than ever in view of the declines in global catches since we hit “peak fish” in 1996.

Of course it is important to balance conservation with sustainable economic use of our oceans. Yet the government’s new draft plan leaves a huge majority of Australia’s waters open to business as usual. It’s a brave Emperor who thinks this will protect our oceans.

So let’s put some real clothes on the Emperor and create a network of marine protection that supports our blue economy and is backed by science.

Jessica Meeuwig has received funding from the National Environmental Science Programme and the Ian Potter Foundation in relation to understanding offshore marine protected areas.

David Booth has received funding from the Australia Research Council. He is affiliated with Australian Coral Reef Society and Australian Marine Science Association

Interspecies relationships can help traumatised animals form healthy attachments. Sugarshine animal sactuary, CC BY-SA

Rosie, like a real-life Babe, ran away from an organic piggery when she was only a few days old. She was found wandering in a car park, highly agitated, by a family who took her home and made her their live-in pet. However, after three months they could no longer keep her.

She was relocated to the Sugarshine animal sanctuary, outside Lismore in New South Wales. Kelly Nelder, Sugarshine’s founder and a mental health nurse, described her as “highly strung” and “needy”. It’s not surprising that Rosie, after the loss of two primary care attachments, was unable to bond with the other pigs; she was traumatised.

I met Rosie when I visited Sugarshine, investigating the similarities between human and animal trauma. I spent 20 years as a clinical and forensic psychologist, but as an undergraduate I studied zoology.

My zoology lecturers told us not to anthropomorphise – that is, not to project human qualities, intentions and emotions onto the animals we studied. But now there is a growing recognition of animals’ inner life and their experience of psychopathology, including trauma.

At Sugarshine, traumatised animals are given freedom to find solitude or company as they wish. Interspecies relationships are encouraged, like a baby goat being cared for by a male adult pig, or a rooster who sleeps alongside a goat.

Rosie has been at Sugarshine for a few months now and is more settled, roaming its gullies, farmyards and shelters, although according to Kelly she’s still anxious. She prefers the company of the bobby calves, wedging herself between them as they lie on the ground, getting skin-to-skin contact, falling asleep, and beginning the reattachment process.

Rosie the anxious pig likes to sleep with bobby calves at Sugarshine animal sanctuary. Sugarshine animal sanctuary, CC BY Understanding trauma in animals

I first made the connection between human and animal trauma on a visit to Possumwood Wildlife, a centre outside Canberra that rehabilitates injured kangaroos and abandoned joeys, wallabies and wombats. There I met its founders, economics professor Steve Garlick and his partner Dr Rosemary Austen, a GP.

When joeys were first brought into their care, Steve told me, they were “inconsolable” and “dying in our arms”, even while physically unharmed, with food and shelter available to them.

But this response made sense once they recognised the joey’s symptoms as reminiscent of post-traumatic stress disorder in humans: intrusive symptoms, avoidant behaviour, disturbed emotional states, heightened anxiety and hypervigilance.

Researchers at the University of Western Australia have developed non-invasive means for measuring stress and mood in animals and are now working with sheep farmers to improve the well-being of their animals. PTSD has been identified in elephants, dogs, chimpanzees and baboons, for example.

Safe, calm and caring

To rehabilitate from trauma, humans and animals need to feel safe and away from cues that trigger the individual’s threat response, deactivating the sympathetic nervous system (the fight-flight response). They also need a means of self-soothing, or to gain soothing from another, activating the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest, digest and calm response).

Progress, from then on, requires the development of a secure relationship with at least one other accepting and caring person or animal. Often, this “other” is someone new. In mammals, including us, this activates our affiliative system: our strong desire for close interpersonal relationships for safety, soothing and stability. We enter a calmer, receptive state of being so that the reattachment process can begin.

Possumwood uses three stages for trauma rehabilitation. Young animals are first kept in a dark, quiet environment indoors to reduce noises or sounds that might trigger their fight-flight response. Here they have the opportunity to develop new kin friendships of their own choosing.

Sedatives (Diazepam and Fluphenazine) are judiciously used in the early stages. Then, the principal carer spends as much time as possible feeding and caressing them to build a new bond.

Kangaroos are social animals, unable to survive in the wild unless part of a mob. So joeys are moved next to a large garage, and then finally to an outdoor yard, gradually being exposed to more kangaroos and creating social bonds. Once a mob grows to 30 or so healthy animals, they are released into the wild together.

The fundamentals are the same

The similarity between animal and human trauma is not surprising. Mammalian brains (birds also appear to experience trauma) share the principal architecture involved in experiencing trauma. The primates, and certainly humans, have a greater capacity for cognitive reflection, which in my clinical experience can be both a help and a hindrance.

My observations of trauma rehabilitation at Sugarshine and Possumwood emphasises the universal fundamentals:

• A sense of agency (freedom and control over their choices)
• To feel safe
• To develop a trusting, caring bond with at least one other creature
• Reintegration into the community at the trauma sufferer’s own discretion.

For those experiencing social isolation and shame around their trauma – such as returned soldiers or the victims of domestic violence – these principles could not be more pertinent. And for our non-human cousins, like Rosie, we would do well to remember that they do feel, and they do hurt.

David John Roland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

The recent decision by Australia’s big two supermarkets to phase out free single-use plastic bags within a year is just the latest development in a debate that has been rumbling for decades.

State governments in Queensland and New South Wales have canvassed the idea, which has been implemented right across the retail sector in South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory.

So far, so good. But are there any downsides? Many of you, for instance, face the prospect of paying for bin liners for the first time ever. And while that might sound tongue-in-cheek, it shows the importance of considering the full life-cycle of the plastics we use.

Pros and cons

On a direct level, banning single-use plastic bags will avoid the resource use and negative environmental impacts associated with their manufacture. It will reduce or even eliminate a major contaminant of kerbside recycling. When the ACT banned these bags in 2011 there was a reported 36% decrease in the number of bags reaching landfill.

However, the ACT government also noted an increase in sales of plastic bags designed specifically for waste. These are typically similar in size to single-use shopping bags but heavier and therefore contain more plastic.

Ireland’s tax on plastic shopping bags, implemented in 2002, also resulted in a significant increase in sales of heavier plastic waste bags. These bags are often dyed various colours, which represents another resource and potential environmental contaminant.

Keep Australia Beautiful, in its 2015-16 National Litter Index, reported a 6.2% reduction in the littering of plastic bags relative to the previous year, while also noting that these represent only 1% of litter.

Meanwhile, alternatives such as paper or canvas bags have environmental impacts of their own. According to a UK Environmental Agency report, a paper bag would need to be re-used at least four times, and cotton bags at least 173 times, to have a lower environmental impact than single-use plastic bags in terms of resource use, energy and greenhouse outcomes.

This illustrates the importance of considering the full life cycle of shopping bags to arrive at an evidence-based decision rather than one based on emotion or incomplete data. I am not suggesting this is the case with plastic shopping bags; I’m just pointing out the value of proper analysis.

Simply banning a certain type of bag, while this may be a good idea in itself, could result in other knock-on impacts that are harder to manage. Replacing shopping bags with heavier, more resource-intensive ones may solve some environmental impacts but exacerbate others.

Plastics, not plastic bags

In a 2016 discussion paper, Western Australia’s Association of Local Governments suggested the focus of action should be plastics in general, not just shopping bags.

As the Keep Australia Beautiful data show, plastic bags are just a small part of a much bigger problem. Many other plastic items are entering the litter stream too.

With this in mind, it pays to ask exactly why we are banning plastic shopping bags. Is it the litter issue, the potential impact on wildlife, the resource consumption, all of the above, or something else? Is it because they are plastic, because they are disposable, or because it saves supermarkets money?

The answers to these questions can guide the development of an effective strategy to reduce the environmental (and perhaps economic) burden of taking our shopping home. With that in place, we can then develop an education strategy to help shoppers adapt and make the scheme a success. But this costs money.

The triple bottom line

There should be plenty of money available. The Victorian state government’s Sustainability Fund, for instance, has A$419 million to spend over the next five years on researching alternatives to shopping and household waste management. Developing a shopping bag strategy would consume only a small part of this and would be money well spent.

The concept of the “triple bottom line” – ensuring that decisions are based equally on environmental, social and economic considerations – needs to be applied to decisions about whether to ban single-use plastic bags, and what alternatives will result. The problem with simply announcing a ban is that this leaves it up to shoppers themselves to work out what to do to replace them.

Evidence-based policy is crucial. We first need to find out how many people already use re-usable bags, whether they always take them to the shops, and what items they put in them. Do people generally know how many times each type of bag should be re-used in order to be an environmentally better choice than the current plastic bags? What’s the best material for re-usable bags, taking into account not only their environmental credentials but also their ability to get your shopping home without breaking?

When it comes to environmental impacts, it’s important not to simply exchange one problem for another. If all we’re doing is swapping between different types of plastic, it’s hard to see how we’re solving anything.

Trevor Thornton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

On your way home tonight, you might stop at the supermarket to grab some ingredients for the evening meal. If you’re like many shoppers, you’ll pass through the self-service checkout, scan your items, and hurriedly place them in the conveniently waiting thin, grey plastic bag before finalising the purchase.

At home, the purchases are packed away or lined up for immediate preparation. The plastic bag is scrunched into a little ball and stuffed away with others in your collection, to be used as bin liners or otherwise thrown away. All of these behaviours are, by and large, done without a great deal of thought.

One of the most challenging tasks for marketers is to bring about changes in consumer behaviours that have become habitual, routine and “low involvement” – why spend time stopping and considering various brands of laundry detergent, for instance, when you can just quickly grab the one you’ve always used?

The very nature of habitual behaviour means that responses to the same situational cues happen automatically and with little conscious thought. Habits are powerfully ingrained. One study estimates that around 45% of our daily actions are habitual, and most of our purchases and consumption is of the low-involvement variety.

Repetitive consumer behaviour is a tough cycle to disrupt. And it is the very nature of these habitual responses that make many standard interventions relatively ineffective.

But this is the task facing supermarkets in taking away customers’ access to free plastic bags.

Banning the bags

The recently announced plans by supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths to ban single-use plastic bags seem admirable enough, but the environmental benefits will only be fully realised if the ban drives a permanent change in shoppers’ behaviour.

Many countries have tried a variety of strategies to get rid of single-use plastic bags, including bans, educational campaigns, and levies. Most have had mixed results. There is no overwhelming evidence to suggest that any of these approaches has fully broken shoppers’ disposable bag habit.

Even where use has been dramatically reduced, the environmental impact has been mitigated by unintended consequences such as a 65% increase in the purchase of bin liners, and the disposal of re-usable bags. And despite a general shift in attitude towards environmentally sustainable consumption, this “intention-behaviour gap” still prevails.

Breaking the habit

Here is where some behavioural psychology can be brought to bear on the problem. We know that habitual behaviours are learned and reinforced through repeated responses to particular situations. Theoretically, if these behaviours are learned, they can be unlearned by providing different situations.

One potentially useful technique is called “nudging”. A nudge gives people a gentle prod to change their behaviour, through encouragement rather than coercion. This sometimes controversial subject is most familiar in terms of behavioural economics – a classic example being the small refunds offered by drink bottle recycling schemes – but nudges can be purely behavioural as well as economic.

Behavioural nudges aim to make people stop and think about what would otherwise be an unconscious behaviour. Often this takes the form of a short, simple message. Electricity providers have been known use this method of nudging. Power usage by their customers will drop when shown the usage rate of a similar sized household with a similar number of occupants is more efficient than their own.

But it can also involve a minor adjustment to the environment in which the behaviour occurs. Such a strategy could be applied in supermarkets where “footprints” could lead to reusable bags which are available for purchase. Repeating this over time, will result in consumers associating the footprints with a reminder to ‘bring’ their bags. Varying the location of the footprints, or even their colour or shape, might encourage shopper curiosity and thus increase the likelihood of consciousness about the plastic bag ban.

Economic nudges can also be used to help shoppers quit plastic bags – as in the case of Toronto, which introduced a 5-cent levy on plastic bags. There are many ways to gently encourage shoppers to make better decisions.

Australia’s big shopping brands

Given that much of the problem involves challenging current behaviours, it stands to reason that the big brands’ responses to this question will hinge on what their customers are already used to.

Retailers such as Bunnings and Aldi have never provided their customers with free, disposable plastic bags. Their customers learned quickly from the outset to use alternatives, such as the stash of old cardboard boxes typically found behind the checkouts at Bunnings.

Woolworths and Coles, on the other hand, face a tougher challenge. They are taking something away from shoppers, and some customers may be resentful and resistant to change as a result.

To avoid a repeat of Target’s aborted effort to remove free bags in 2013, Coles and Woolworths might find that the best way to avoid a similar customer revolt is to use in-store cues as behavioural nudges, alongside the economic incentive of offering durable plastic bags for a price. Many consumers will be willing to pay for plastic bag alternatives during the transition phase. Combining this with gentle reminders via the in-store ‘footprints’ will aim to gradually change those low involvement, highly habitual shopping patterns.

Whether economic or non-economic, messages to shoppers need to be as pervasive and repetitive as the ingrained behaviours they are trying to change.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Since the Finkel review was announced it has been open season for notion building in the energy space. While Malcolm has been spruiking Snowy 2.zero pumped hydro, Craig has been promising death by renewables, quite literally. Josh seems to be for just about everything, besides Labor state governments of course, and reckons we are on track to meet Paris commitments. Barnaby, true to form, is backing coal, and presumably thinks Paris will take care of itself, while Electricity Bill is keeping mum.

The one I like the best, but really hasn’t been nailed quite the way I thought it should, is Tony’s call for nuclear subs. Imagine, our first truly dispatchable power system, capable of delivering a few hundred megawatts just about anywhere you need it. “Float and plug” - just what we need to shore up our fragile energy system. A tour of dispatch last year including Tasmania from January through June, South Australia June through November, and then on to Queensland for the summer would have been a nice little money spinner for the Navy, worth around quarter of a billion dollars on the energy markets. And that doesn’t include offsets, such as the purported $44 million Tasmanian government spent on diesel gensets. Could it be our best notion yet for meeting Paris?

It goes without saying that our political masters don’t need much provocation to indulge in a bit of notion building. After all, it is what they do best.

But, in case you are wondering why this sudden release of energy, it might be useful to reflect on some recent analyses that paint a truly disturbing picture for our energy sector.

The first comes from the European Commission’s latest electricity market update, providing the comparison of wholesale electricity prices shown below.

International wholesale prices as adapted from Figure 33 in the European Commission’s Quarterly report on European electricity markets Q1 2017. Average prices for the 4th quarter of 2014, 3rd quarter 2015, and the first quarter of 2017, are referenced as a percentage of Australian prices. Figure 33, Quarterly report on European electricity markets Q1 2017, https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/quarterly_report_on_european_electricity_markets_q1_2017.pdf

As recently as three years ago our electricity wholesale prices were low by any measure. In fact according to the EC’s analysis,
our market prices then briefly dipped below those in the US. Then, ours were just 20% of the Japanese price.

How times have changed.

According to the EC’s latest analysis our prices tracked pretty closely with the US until the second half of 2015. It seems things to start going awry just about when Josh was received the poison chalice as Minister for Energy and Resources.

Six quarters later and the EC now estimates that for Quarter 1 this year our prices were a staggering 400% higher than in the US.

This last quarter we even managed to top Japan, which is some achievement considering that across the quarter we exported some20 million tonnes of our thermal coal and over half a million tonnes of LNG to help them sure up a power system still reverberating from the shock waves of Fukushima. That’s about half as much thermal coal as used to power our system.

The second comes from BP’s latest Statistical Review of World Energy released in June, which provides national figures for all things related to energy production and consumption, including sector wide emissions.

According to BP’s latest figures, our energy sector produced about 409 million tonnes of CO2 in 2016. That amounts to 16.7 tonnes for every Australian. On a per capita basis, that puts our energy sector a touch above the next most emissions intensive economy in the developed world - the US at 16.5 tonnes. Even Canada, which has a resource based economy more comparable to our own, gets away with only 14.6 tonnes per person.

Trends in per-capita emissions for select countries (in tonnes per person), plotted as a function of GDP (in $US purchasing power parity terms). Emission data from BP’s Statisical review of World Energy. GDP and population data from IMF. Dots show 2009, in the wake of the GFC.

Worryingly, relative to 2005 levels our energy sector emissions are up about 10%, which stands in stark contrast to most other advanced economies, and especially the US, down 12% over the same interval.

National energy sector emissions for select advanced economies, relative to 2005 levels, using data from BP’s latest Statistical Review of World Energy released in June. Australia’s Paris commitment is to reduce national emissions to 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030. Note that for Australia energy sector emissions (including transport and power) account for about 2/3 the total emissions.

So the notion that we are on track to meet Paris is, at best, notional.

To achieve such extraordinary wholesale price outcomes, one might imagine something remarkable had happened to our energy system since 2014. Our Coal-cons such as Craig Kelly would believe it is because our power system is groaning under the weight of renewable production.

But perhaps it the absence of renewables. Or maybe it is both, peskily masked in a cloak of invisibility. Check out the figure below, which shows our electricity production by key fuel group (coal, gas and renewables) over the period since our power prices have risen from the lowest to highest on the international pecking order.

Weekly average production of electricity by three main fuel group types (in gigawatts), dispatched on the National Electricity Market over the last five years. Data sourced from AEMO, using Dylan McConnell’s openNEM. RE (renewables) includes hydro, wind and large scale solar and biomass, but does not include rooftop PV which is not dipsatched onto the market.

Can you determine a trend that could account for anything? I’m damned if I can.

And that in itself is sure to be worry enough to keep it open season on notion building for a long time to come.

For those interested, some more detailed discussion of the crisis besetting the National Electricity Market (NEM) in eastern Australia can be found in my Anatomy of an Energy Crisis series, Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3.

A beached hoodwinker sunfish, the new species described by researchers from Murdoch University. Murdoch University

Sunfish are famous for looking odd. They are the largest bony fish in the world, can grow to over 3 metres in length and weigh up to 2 tonnes, and look a little bit like a suitcase with wings.

But when I began my PhD doing population studies on sunfish off Bali in Indonesia, I didn’t expect to discover an entirely new species. What began as something of a side project turned into a four-year treasure hunt, flying thousands of kilometres to track down evidence with the help of dozens of people.

As part of my PhD research, I analysed more than 150 samples of sunfish DNA. Genetic sequencing turned up four distinct species: Masturus lanceolatus, Mola mola, Mola ramsayi and a fourth that didn’t fit with any known species.

A new species had been hiding in plain sight for centuries, which is why we ended up calling it Mola tecta: the hoodwinker sunfish. But back then, in 2013, we didn’t even know what they looked like; all we had were skin samples containing the mysterious DNA.

The hoodwinker sunfish grows to at least 2.4 metres long, with a distinctive ‘backfold’ of smooth skin separating the back fin into two. Illustration by Michelle Freeborn, Wellington Museum Te Papa Tongarewa. Going on the hunt

The next step was trying to figure out what these fish might look like. Superficially, all sunfish look the same (that is, slightly strange). Their bodies are flat and rigid, except for their fins; they don’t have a tail; and as they grow bigger they usually develop odd bumps on their head, chin and nose.

So I started looking at pictures of sunfish, especially on social media, searching for something different. I also spent a long time establishing a network of people across Australia and New Zealand who could alert me whenever a sunfish was found.

I finally got a break in 2014. Observers from New Zealand and Australian fisheries were sending me pictures of sunfish they found out at sea, usually just a fin in the water. But on one occasion they hauled a tiny fish on board to free it from a fishing line, and got a brilliant photo of the whole thing along with a genetic sample.

This fish had a little structure on its back fin that I’d never seen on a sunfish before. Just as I was wondering if this was a characteristic of the species, I hit the jackpot when four fish were stranded in one go on the same beach in New Zealand.

I flew down to Christchurch, landed at night and drove out on to the beach. I saw my first hoodwinker sunfish in the headlights of the car – it was incredibly exciting. This changed everything, because now we knew what we were looking for.

A hoodwinker sunfish off the coast of Chile. César Villarroel, ExploraSub What is the hoodwinker?

Unravelling this mystery has been a huge puzzle. Sunfish are huge, largely solitary and fairly elusive, so you can’t just go out and sample a heap of them to study. You have to fly thousands of kilometres when there’s a stranding and hope it’s the right puzzle piece you’re looking for.

However, by looking at stranded specimens, photos and museum collections, and by verifying specimens genetically, we have been able to describe this species very accurately.

We found enough fish to describe this species on a size spectrum of 50cm to nearly 2.5m. Unlike the other species, they don’t develop lumps and bumps as they grow; instead their body dimensions stay pretty much the same between juveniles and adults. Their back fin is separated into an upper and lower part, with a small flexible piece of skin, which we have termed the “back-fold”, connecting the halves.

We don’t know exactly what their range is, but it seems to be the colder parts of the Southern Hemisphere. We’ve found them all around New Zealand (mostly around the South Island), off Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales (Australia), South Africa and southern Chile.

Sunfish aren’t particularly rare, but it’s tricky to study them as they simply live in parts of the ocean most humans don’t go. They dive hundreds of metres to feed, and then rise to the surface to bask in the sun on their sides (hence their name).

This habit of diving and rising throughout the day means they can be caught by a range of fishing gear, including tuna longlines or in drift gillnets and midwater trawls. Fishers have been turning them up for centuries. When we looked back through the literature to see if this species had been described before, we found sunfish in books that included mermen and unicorns, and one of the first written mentions comes from Pliny the Elder.

This Chilean video identifies the fish as the common sunfish (Mola mola), but they have the separated back fin of the hoodwinker sunfish (Mola tecta). A sunny community

Of course, this discovery didn’t happen in isolation. A group of researchers from Japan first identified the possibility of a new species from a single skin sample about 10 years ago. We were able to work with two sunfish experts from the University of Tokyo and the University of Hiroshima to describe the hoodwinker, and to compare it in detail with the other two Mola species.

We also collaborated with geneticists from the Gemmell Lab at the University of Otago and expert taxonomists from the Wellington Museum Te Papa Tongarewa, who prepared and now house the “holotype”, which is the name-bearing specimen and official representative of Mola tecta.

Fisheries observers from the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and the New Zealand Ministry of Primary Industries have sent me around 120 samples from sunfish they sampled while on patrols, which was the basis for the initial study.

Finally, we’ve had invaluable support from the public. On one occasion, a gentleman and his young daughter even drove out on a quad bike to a remote beach just to gather samples. (I do believe sunfish bring out the best in people.)

After four years of work – and the help of many people – it’s great to be able to finally share the hoodwinker sunfish with the world!

Marianne Nyegaard has received funding from the following bodies for her PhD research: The Systematics Research Fund (Linnean Society of London and the Systematics Association), Graduate Women (WA) inc, The PADI Foundation, and the Sea World Research and Rescue Foundation.

As atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rise, so too does the number of books telling us what the consequences are, and what we can do. Two more have been released in the past few weeks – Anna Krien’s brilliant Quarterly Essay The Long Goodbye: Coal, Coral and Australia’s Climate Deadlock, and the worthy Climate Wars by Labor’s shadow environment minister Mark Butler. Both deserve a wide audience.

Krien, author of Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania’s Forests has a sharp eye for the right anecdote and a brilliant turn of phrase. Her reportage can be spoken of in the same breath as Elizabeth Kolbert’s seminal Field Notes from a Catastrophe. She has read extensively (I for one was not familiar with the Myxocene – the age of slime) and in researching her latest essay has clocked up thousands of miles as she dives on the Great Barrier Reef and travels inland to areas that will be affected by the proposed coal mine developments in the Galilee Basin.

Krien offers valuable insights into issues such as coal firm Adani’s negotiations with traditional owners, the battles over coal seam gas, and Port Augusta’s rocky transition from coal to – possibly – renewables. She talks to “ordinary” people, weaving their perspectives into the story while not losing sight of the climate deadlock in her title – the ongoing fight within the Liberal and National parties over climate and energy policy.

In one of many telling phrases she writes of the “Stockholm syndrome built on donations, royalties, taxes and threats” that bedevils Australian politics, pointing out that the fate that befell Kevin Rudd still looms large in the collective political memory. In the end, she returns to the Great Barrier Reef, and her final paragraphs pack an emotional punch that will stay with the reader for a long time.

My only quibble with Krien’s fastidious reporting is that, unlike previous Quarterly Essays, there are no footnotes. But maybe that’s only really an issue for nerds like me.

This is Quarterly Essay 66. Number 33 was Guy Pearse’s equally alarming Quarry Vision. In years to come, perhaps Quarterly Essay 99 might explain how we continued not to take action, as the consequences of climate change piled ever higher around us. Or how – alongside unexpected technological breakthroughs – we began finally to race against our nemesis, our own hubris. Time will tell.

Mark Butler is aiming to do something else besides just telling us about climate politics: as a shadow minister he is setting out Labor’s stall for the next federal election, whenever that might be.

Butler was climate minister in Rudd’s second, brief, government. In 2015-16 he undertook extensive consultations with business, community groups, academics and other “stakeholders” (surely everyone in the world is a stakeholder when it comes to the climate?). His book is essentially an extended advert for that process and its outcomes.

Butler’s prose is solid, and occasionally stolid, as he throws fact after report after statistic at the reader. However, he generally seeks to strike a constructive balance between “problem” and “solution”. There are only a few short chapters on the climate policy mess, with the bulk of the book concentrating on what a future Labor government proposes to do about it.

Inevitably, Butler is more critical of his political rivals, the Liberals and the Greens, than of his own party. You wouldn’t know from reading this book that it was Paul Keating’s Labor government who first began to use economic modelling to argue against emissions reductions, or that it was a Labor government who, in 1995, refused to institute a small carbon tax that would fund renewable energy.

Butler is also, oddly, flat-out wrong when he writes that former Labor minister Graham Richardson persuaded Prime Minister Bob Hawke to agree a 20% emissions reduction target before the 1990 federal election. It was actually his colleague Ros Kelly, in October 1990, and the “commitment” was carefully hedged.

These historical details matter, because we need to be able to hold politicians (and even ex-politicians) to account over their climate pledges. But many readers will nevertheless be more interested in what Butler says a Labor government will do, rather than what previous Labor governments didn’t.

Butler obliges, giving us chapters on “Labor’s clean power plan”, “Manufacturing and mining in a low-carbon world”, and “Low-carbon communities”. Occasionally he raises thorny problems (refugees, the coal industry) without really grappling with them. Given the ugly history around these issues (and the political Stockholm Syndrome identified by Krien), this is perhaps unsurprising.

Curiously, both books make a similar omission: they contain very little on the failures of policymakers and social movement organisations in the period from 2006 to 2012. In 2015, at the Labor Party’s national conference, I asked panellists – Butler was one – what had gone wrong during this time, which encompassed Kevin Rudd’s first prime ministership – in light of the fact that we had known about climate change since the late 1980s.

The other panellists gave thoughtful, sometimes self-critical answers. Butler kept schtum. Yet the question is worth asking if we are to avoid history repeating itself, this time as farce. We need smart people – and Krien and Butler are among them – to be asking how citizens can exert sustained pressure on existing governments and to build capacity to keep holding governments’ feet to the fire until they really and truly take climate policy seriously instead of just using it to score points and kill careers.

Ultimately, anyone interested in the future of Australia – and the future of climate policy – should read both of these books carefully. While Krien’s has some immediate use, its greater function will be something we can pull out of a time capsule to explain to young people 20 years hence that we knew exactly what was coming and what we had to do. It will help them understand why we didn’t do it.

Butler’s book will serve well over the next five years, as citizens try to hold a putative Labor government to its fine (if still inadequate) promises on the great moral challenge of our generation.

The City of Sydney is aiming to get 50% of its electricity from renewables by 2030. HjalmarGerbig/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Imagine a future in which every one of Australia’s 537 local government areas, including all our capital cities and major regional centres, achieve net zero greenhouse emissions. It might sound like a pipe dream, but it could be closer than you think.

A new Climate Council report, released today, tracks the climate action being taken at the local government level. It gives myriad examples of cities, towns and local shires, in Australia and abroad, setting and achieving ambitious goals for renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainable transport.

In a 2016 Climate Institute survey of attitudes to climate change, 90% of respondents indicated that the federal government should shoulder the bulk of responsibility for action, with 67% saying Canberra should take a leading role. Yet given the current policy paralysis at Commonwealth level it is little wonder that some states seem determined to go it alone on setting ambitious clean energy targets.

Meanwhile, it’s at the local government level where enthusiastic action to embrace a more sustainable future is really taking off.

For some, the inspiration for action was a pledge by more than 1,000 mayors, local representatives and community leaders to move to 100% renewable energy. The promise was made on the sidelines of the 2015 Paris climate negotiations, at an event called the Climate Summit for Local Leaders.

Since then, US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement seems simply to have strengthened this resolve. More than 350 US mayors responded to Trump’s decision by pledging to reach 100% renewable energy for their communities by 2035.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated that transforming the way energy is used and generated in cities and towns worldwide has the potential to deliver 70% of the total emissions reductions needed to stay on track for the 2℃ global warming limit set by the Paris Agreement. The IEA has described cities as the key to decarbonisation.

The leaders of some of Australia’s own major cities are certainly no slouches when it comes to climate aspiration:

• Canberra is on track to source 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, with zero net emissions by 2050 at the latest.
• The City of Adelaide is aiming to be carbon-neutral by 2020
• The City of Sydney aims to source 50% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and to reach net zero emissions by 2030
• The City of Melbourne is aiming for 25% renewable electricity by 2018 and net zero emissions by 2020
• The City of Brisbane aims to make council operations carbon-neutral by 2017.

Ambitions are also high at regional and local council levels. One in five councils surveyed by Beyond Zero Emissions indicated they were aiming for “100% renewable energy” or “zero emissions”. Examples detailed in the Climate Council report include, among others:

• Yackandandah, Vic: 100% renewable energy by 2022
• Lismore, NSW: 100% renewable energy by 2023
• Uralla, NSW: 100% renewable energy in 5-10 years
• Newstead, Qld: 100% renewable energy by 2017
• Darebin, Melbourne: zero net emissions by 2020.

Power to cities

To coincide with the report, the Climate Council is also today launching its Cities Power Partnership, a free nationwide program that aims to transform Australia’s energy future from the ground up.

Thirty-five councils, representing more than 3 million Australians (12% of the population), signed up to the program even before it was launched. To join, councils identify five items in the “Power Partners pledge” that they will strive to achieve. These items include increasing the proportion of renewable energy generated within the local area; improving energy efficiency; providing sustainable transport options; building community sustainability partnerships; and engaging in climate advocacy.

The new Cities Power Partnership.

Participants will then complete a six-monthly online survey on progress. In return, the Cities Power Partnership will provide incentives for councils to deliver on their selected targets and to work together to help each other. Members of the partnership will have access to a national knowledge hub and an online analytical tool to measure energy, cost and emissions savings of projects. They will also be buddied with other councils to share knowledge; receive visits from domestic and international experts; be connected to community energy groups; and be celebrated at events with other local leaders.

Ultimately, the CPP is designed to help local communities sidestep the political roadblocks at national level, and just get on with the job of implementing climate policies.

These may be only small projects when considered individually, but the idea is to link them into a network that, together, can make a big difference to one of our most significant challenges. After all, the only way to eat an elephant is to take one bite at a time.

Lesley Hughes is a Councillor with the Climate Council of Australia and one of the authors of the report "Local Leadership: Tracking Local Government Progress on Climate Change".

Eco-houses at Scotland’s Housing Expo, Inverness. What is it like to live in a house like this? via Wikipedia, CC BY-SA

Household energy use is a significant contributor to global carbon emissions. International policy is firmly moving towards technology-rich, low- and near-zero-energy homes. That is, buildings designed to reduce the need for additional heating, cooling and lighting. They use efficient or renewable energy technology to reduce the remaining energy use.

But what about the experiences of people who live in homes of this standard? Are these homes comfortable, easy to operate, and affordable? Do people feel confident using so-called smart energy technology designed for low energy use? What support systems do we need to help people live in low-energy, low-carbon houses?

We worked with other Australian and UK researchers to understand what it’s like to live in purpose-built low-energy housing. As part of this project, researchers from Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Salford in the UK visited South Australia to collect data from Lochiel Park Green Village, one of the world’s most valuable living laboratories of near-zero energy homes.

Lochiel Park’s 103 homes were built in the mid-2000s to achieve a minimum of 7.5 energy efficiency stars. They’re purpose-built to be a comfortable temperature year-round, and are packed with a solar photovoltaic system, solar hot water, a live feedback display to show households their energy use, plus a range of water- and energy-efficient appliances and equipment. Combined, these systems reduce both annual and peak energy demand, and supply much of that energy at a net zero-carbon impact.

To reciprocate, we spent several weeks investigating similar examples of niche low-energy housing developments in the Midlands and the North of England. We listened to the stories of people living in low energy homes, who experience the difference on a daily basis, and from season to season. They help us look beyond the dollars saved or percentage of emissions reduced; for them the impact of low-energy homes is personal.

This research provides new insights into the relationship between people, energy technologies and low-carbon buildings. For example, one elderly householder told us that moving into a dry and warm low-energy home allowed their grandchildren to come and stay, completely changing their life, and the life of their family.

Low-energy homes create a wide range of physical and mental changes. Several households spoke about health improvements from higher indoor air quality. Even the idea of living in a healthier and more environmentally sustainable home can prompt lifestyle changes – one woman in her mid-50s told us she gave up smoking after moving into her low-energy house because she felt her behaviour should match the building’s environmental design. She also shortened the length of her showers, reduced her food wastage, and lowered her transport use by visiting the supermarket less often.

Purpose-built low-energy homes also give economic empowerment to low-income households. One household told us that savings on energy bills let them afford annual family holidays, even overseas. This economic benefit matches our findings in other Australian examples.

As researchers, we might dismiss this as a macro-economic rebound effect, voiding many of the energy and environmental benefits. But to that household the result was a closer and stronger family unit, able to make the types of choices available to others in their community. The benefits in mental and physical wellbeing are real, and more important to that family than net carbon emission reductions.

Although international policy is firmly moving towards technology-rich, low-energy homes, our research shows that not all technology is user-friendly or easy to understand. For example, some households were frustrated by not knowing if their solar hot water system was efficiently using free solar energy, or just relying on gas or electric boosting. Design improvements with better user feedback will be critically important if we are to meet people’s real needs.

This research highlights the importance, in the transition to low-energy and low-carbon homes, of not forgetting the people themselves. Improving real quality of life should be the central focus of carbon-reducing housing policies.

Stephen Berry has received research funding from various organisations including the Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living and the Government of South Australia.

Dr David Michael Whaley has previously received funding from various organisation including the Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living and Government of South Australia.

Trivess Moore has received funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council.

The same beach on Henderson Island, in 1992 and 2015.

A few weeks ago, the world woke to the story of Henderson Island, the “South Pacific island of rubbish”. Our research revealed it as a place littered with plastic garbage, washed there by ocean currents.

This was a story we had been waiting to tell for more than a year, keeping our discoveries under wraps while we worked our way through mountains of data and photographs.

Our May 2017 video story detailing the rubbish on Henderson Island.

Everyone wanted to know how the plastic got there, and fortunately that is a question that our understanding of ocean currents can help us answer. But the question we couldn’t answer was: when did it all start to go so wrong?

This is the million-dollar question for so many wild species and spaces – all too often we only notice a problem once it’s too big to deny, or perhaps even solve. So when did Henderson’s sad story start? The answer is: surprisingly recently.

An eloquent photo

During our research we had reached out to those who had previously worked on Henderson Island or in nearby areas, to gain a better understanding of what forces contributed to the enormous piles of rubbish that have floated to Henderson’s sandy beaches.

Then, after our research was published and the world was busy reading about 37 million plastic items washed up on a remote south Pacific island, we received an email from Professor Marshall Weisler from the University of Queensland, who had seen the news and got in touch.

In 1992, he had done archaeological surveys on Henderson Island. The photos he shared from that expedition provided a rare glimpse into the beginning of this chapter of Henderson Island’s story, before it became known as “garbage island”.

Henderson Island in happier times. Marshall Weisler, Author provided The same stretch of beach in 2015. Jennifer Lavers, Author provided

There are only 23 years between these two photos, and the transformation is terrifying – from pristine South Pacific gem to the final resting place for enormous quantities of the world’s waste.

Remember, this is not waste that was dumped directly by human hands. It was washed here on ocean currents, meaning that this is not just about one beach – it shows how much the pollution problem has grown in the entire ocean system in little more than two decades.

To us, Henderson Island was a brutal wake-up call, and there are undoubtedly other garbage islands out there, inundated and overwhelmed by the waste generated in the name of progress. Although the amount of trash on Henderson is staggering – an average of 3,570 new pieces arrive each day on one beach alone – it represents a minute fraction of the rubbish produced around the globe.

Cleanup confounded

In the wake of the story, the other big question we received (and one we should have seen coming) was: can I help you clean up Henderson Island? The answer is no, for a very long list of reasons – some obvious, some not.

To quote a brilliant colleague, what matters is this: if all we ever do is clean up, that is all we will ever do. With thousands of new plastic items washing up on Henderson Island every day, the answer is clear.

The solution doesn’t require travel to a remote island, only the courage to look within. We need to change our behaviour, to turn off the tap and stem the tide of trash in the ocean. Our oceans, our islands, and our planet demand, and deserve it.

However difficult those changes may be, what choice do we have?

Prevention, not cure

While grappling with the scale of the plastics issue can at times be overwhelming, there are simple things you can do to make a difference. The solutions aren’t always perfect, but each success will keep you, your family, and your community motivated to reduce plastic use.

First, ask yourself this: when did it become acceptable for something created from non-renewable petrochemicals, extracted from the depths of the Earth and shipped around the globe, to be referred to as “single use” or “disposable”? Your relationship with plastic begins with the language you use.

But don’t stop there: here are a couple of facts illustrating how you can challenge yourself and make a difference.

• Australians throw away an estimated 30 million plastic toothbrushes every year.

Challenge: switch to bamboo toothbrushes, which cost just a few dollars each and are available from a range of online retailers or wholefood shops.

• A single bottle of typical exfoliating face or body scrub contains 300,000 plastic microbeads.

Challenge: switch to products that use crushed apricot kernels, coconut shell, coffee grounds, or sea salts as natural exfoliants.

These are only small changes, and you can undoubtedly think of many more. But we need to start turning the tide if we are to stop more pristine places being deluged with our garbage.

Jennifer Lavers receives funding from Detached Foundation and RACAT Foundation.

Alexander Bond receives funding from The David & Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Darwin Initiative.

Mosquitoes are the main vectors for dengue and zika. Insecticides are our best weapon against them. Anja Jonsson/Flickr

Chemical pesticides have been used for many years to control insect populations and remain the most important method of managing diseases carried by pests, including mosquitoes. However, insects have fought back by evolving resistance to many pesticides. There are now thousands of instances of evolved resistance, which make some chemical classes completely ineffective.

The Aedes mosquito, largely responsible for the spread of viruses like dengue and zika, has globally developed resistance to commonly used chemicals, including pyrethroids. Pyrethroids are the most used insecticides in the world, which includes the control of dengue outbreaks and quarantine breaches at air and sea ports.

In Asia and the Americas, pyrethroid resistance in Aedes mosquitoes is now widespread. In Australia, our mosquitoes have not developed these defences and pyrethroids are still very effective.

The difference lies in our stringent and careful protocols for chemical use. As the global community fights zika and other mosquito-borne diseases, there are lessons to be learned from Australia’s success.

Developing resistance

Mosquitoes usually become resistant to pyrethroids through the mutation of a sodium channel gene that controls the movement of ions across cell membranes. Mutations in a single gene are enough to make mosquitoes almost completely resistant to the level of pyrethroids used in insecticides.

The mutations first arises in a population by chance, and are rare. However, they rapidly spread as resistant females breed. The more times a mosquito population is exposed to the same chemical, the more the natural selection process favours their impervious offspring.

Eventually, when many individuals in a population carry the resistance mutation, the chemical becomes ineffective. This can happen where insecticide “fogging” is common practice. Overseas, fogging is sometimes undertaken across entire neighbourhoods, several times a month, despite concerns about its effectiveness as well as its environmental and health impacts.

A pest exterminator carries out insecticide fogging in an apartment block in Singapore. EPA, Wallace Woon/AAP

Once resistance develops, it can spread to non-resistant mosquito populations in other areas. Pest species, including mosquitoes, are often highly mobile because they fly or are carried passively (in vehicles, ships and planes) at any stage of their life cycle. Their mobility means mutations spread quickly, crossing borders and possibly seas.

We can still control Australian mosquitoes

Despite this, Australian populations of Aedes mosquitoes remain susceptible to pyrethroids. Aedes aegypti (the yellow fever mosquito) is the main disease-carrying mosquito in Australia. Its population is restricted to urban areas of northern Queensland, where dengue can occur.

Recent research found that all Australian populations of this species are still vulnerable to pyrethroids. None of the hundreds of mosquitoes tested had any mutations in the sodium channel gene, despite the high incidence of such mutations in mosquito populations of South-East Asia.

A female Aedes aegypti mosquito during a feed. James Gathany, CDC Prof Frank Hadley Collins/Wikimedia

We believe these mosquitoes remain vulnerable to pyrethroids because in Australia pressure to select for resistance has been low.

Australia does not carry out routine fogging. If dengue is detected in an area, pyrethoids are used in highly regimented and limited fashion. Spraying is restricted to the insides of premises within selected house blocks, and then only for a short period.

Importantly, water-filled artificial containers, which can serve as a habitat for larvae, are treated with insect growth regulators, which do not select for the pyrethroid resistance mutations.

Exporting resistance

With chemical resistance growing around the world, it is more urgent than ever that we co-ordinate action to control and reduce risk of resistance. Unfortunately, no global guidelines exist to minimise the evolution of resistance in mosquitoes.

Adopting pesticide resistance management strategies has proven to be effective against other pests – for example, the corn earworm (Helicoverpa armigera). Guidelines include rotating different class of pesticides to deny pests the chance to develop resistance, and investing in non-chemical options such as natural predators of target pests.

Resistance management strategies are particularly critical for new pesticides that have different modes of attack, such as preventing juvenile insects from moulting, or attacking various chemical receptors.

To prolong the effectiveness of pesticides, we must develop these strategies before resistance begins to develop. North Queensland may be an example to the rest of the world on the best path forward.

Ary Hoffmann receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and the Grains Research and Development Corporation.

Nancy Margaret Endersby-Harshman receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Scott Ritchie receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, US Dept. of Defence, and USAid.

A single, national market that supplies all of Australia's electricty is looking dangerously outdated – and politically impossible. Shutterstock

The Finkel Review was a valiant attempt to find a path towards a 21st century energy market model for Australia. But political infighting and powerful interests have blocked one of its core proposals, a Clean Energy Target (CET). Despite the creation of a new Energy Security Board to try to hold regulators and policy makers to account, the ability of the present structure to deliver is uncertain.

State energy ministers, who have gathered today for the COAG Energy Council meeting, are now threatening to go it alone if the Commonwealth government does not commit to a CET. But the problem and opportunity is much broader. It’s time to step back and rethink energy policy.

The national model is failing

The National Electricity Market (NEM) was established in a context of an energy system comprised of large generators and large energy utilities, with energy flowing in one direction: from power station to consumer. Things have moved on. Most of the activity now is behind the meter, local, or within regions, although interstate energy flows are still very important.

State governments now recognise that their voters will blame or reward them for “keeping the lights on”, and are not prepared to suffer to help supply other states. Forward-thinking politicians also know they will win votes, and create jobs, by driving clean energy solutions.

The NEM has failed. Its very narrow economic objective was to provide low prices, reliable and safe energy, and to act in the long term interests of consumers. Many would score it zero out of three.

Despite the government’s acceptance of 49 recommendations of the Finkel Review that aim to fix many of the problems, few observers are confident that the deep cultural problems and powerful vested interests can be overcome – let alone the impact of a small number of conservative politicians within the Commonwealth government, who are holding energy policy hostage.

The COAG Energy Council is unworkable. It requires consensus to act, but differing state-level agendas block this on key issues. Indeed, the government has just proposed to go over the heads of the Council, and COAG, to remove the right of energy businesses to appeal against regulatory decisions after years of internal disagreement. Overriding the COAG Energy Council is an extreme tactic that cannot work for many other problematic issues.

The “top-down” nature of the NEM is out of date. Repeated criticisms of the lack of discipline of state governments by federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg merely confirm that this model won’t work.

Importantly, a large proportion of the real energy industry is not acknowledged as a formal part of the NEM structure. The NEM framework defines the electricity industry as licensed generators, network operators and retailers. While NEM reports talk about consumer choice and rights, they ignore the emerging industries such as renewable energy, storage, demand management, energy efficiency, businesses with new financial models, and so on. These businesses simply do not have a seat at the table.

The scale of change needed to make the present NEM model work is simply beyond our political system. In any case, there is an emerging alternative that can evolve in parallel with the NEM.

A real 21st century energy model

In practice, the NEM has functioned in parallel with several other mechanisms for years.

The Renewable Energy Target has operated since 2001. It was introduced to address the failure of the NEM to support renewable energy development. This market is quite separate, and operates on an annual basis, using trading of certificates and obligations on energy retailers.

Several states and the ACT now operate energy efficiency obligation schemes. These also operate through obligations on energy retailers, and most use tradable certificates. These schemes drive the installation of a range of energy efficiency measures.

At the industrial level, increasing numbers of businesses are investing in large renewable energy systems “behind the meter”, so they can insulate themselves from the chaos of the NEM. They need the price stability and reliability the NEM can’t deliver.

Several states and the ACT now have aggressive renewable energy targets – which have repeatedly been criticised by Frydenberg. The ACT has demonstrated that these schemes can work very well. They can reduce electricity prices, create local jobs, reinvigorate rural and regional economies – and win votes.

Because they involve long term contracts, their output is predictable. Other states (and consortia of councils, businesses, universities and others) are copying this model. State governments also still have significant powers to regulate network operators and retailers.

The future is distributed

If we look to the future, we see enormous growth in a diverse range of distributed energy solutions. These have many advantages over centralised solutions. Further, we see astounding diversity emerging in the energy system.

These trends cannot be managed by “command and control”, top-down mechanisms. Although national standards and coordination can be useful, they are not essential, and can easily block innovation.

Slide from ‘Our efficient, smart, flexible, distributed and diverse energy future’ presentation to APEC energy ministers conference. Author provided, Author provided

A practical energy model involves states and territories working with businesses, councils and communities. They would use existing powers over network operators and energy retailers, and would implement their own strategies for security and emissions reduction.

In this scenario, AEMO would monitor their policies and rates of implementation of demand-side and supply side energy services, and use its modelling capabilities to identify emerging imbalances. It would warn states where issues such as gaps between supply and demand and grid instability were emerging. Where states failed to act, AEMO would have power to intervene.

The NEM would continue to operate as a wholesale market for the “big guys” – large generators, industrial sites and transmission line operators. It would also provide performance information and advice to AEMO to inform its modelling and analysis.

The national RET effectively finishes in 2020: it can easily be replaced by state level strategies.

Thanks Dr Finkel. The reactions to your Review have demonstrated conclusively that we need a real 21st century energy system, and that a national approach based on the existing NEM simply won’t work.

Disclosure

Alan Pears has worked for government, business, industry associations public interest groups and at universities on energy efficiency, climate response and sustainability issues since the late 1970s. He is now an honorary Senior Industry Fellow at RMIT University and a consultant, as well as an adviser to a range of industry associations and public interest groups. His investments in managed funds include firms that benefit from growth in clean energy. He has shares in Hepburn Wind.

Al Gore has been visiting Australia this week – partly because he has a new film to promote, but also because he and Australian climate policy have had a surprisingly long entanglement. Given that this year is likely to be a bloody one as far as climate policy goes, don’t be surprised if he’s back again before 2017 is out.

Gore has a long and honourable record on climate change, although ironically his weakest period on climate coincided with the peak of his political power, as US Vice President.

As he says in his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, he was first alerted to climate change by Roger Revelle, who can justly be called the (American) father of climate science. On becoming a Congressman, Gore was part of the move by Democrats to sustain momentum on climate policy that had stalled with the arrival of Ronald Reagan as President.

Gore organised Congressional hearings in 1981, and 1982 (NASA climatologist James Hansen’s first congressional testimony).

Even back then, the familiar political narrative around climate change had already formed, as journalism academic David Sachsman recalls:

The CBS Evening News for March 25, 1982, included a two minute and 50 second story by David Culhane on the greenhouse effect. Chemist Melvin Calvin raised the threat of global warming, Representative Al Gore called for further research, and James Kane of the Energy Department said there was no need for haste.

This report from the following year tells a similar tale, noting the political difficulty of solving the climate problem:

A youthful Gore in 1983.

By the time of the seminal Villach conference of October 1985, Gore was a Senator, and helped to organise the first Senate hearings since 1979. Gore’s colleague, Republican Senator David Durenberger remarked that “grappling with this problem [of climate change] is going to be just about as easy as nailing Jello to the wall”.

The following year, as Joshua Howe notes in his excellent book on the politics and science of climate change, Behind the Curve (2014), the then Senator Joe Biden introduced an initiative mandating that the president commission an executive-level task force to devise a strategy for responding to global warming – a strategy the president was meant to deliver to Congress within one year.

Gore scored another political victory on May 8, 1989, when Hansen testified that George H. W. Bush’s administration had ordered him to change the conclusions in written testimony regarding the seriousness of global warming

From Vice President to movie star

However, as Vice President to Bill Clinton, Gore disappointed environmentalists. An energy tax was defeated by industry lobbyists in 1993, and the Clinton administration (perhaps wisely) opted not to try and pass the Kyoto Protocol through a defiant Senate.

After leaving the West Wing he embraced Hollywood, where his budding movie career attracted derision in some quarters, despite the hefty policy achievements earlier in Gore’s career.

Besides an Inconvenient Truth (see here for an account of its impact in Australia), Gore “starred” in another movie, the 1990 philosophy-based talkie Mindwalk, starring Sam Waterston as Senator Jack Edwards, a thinly veiled version of Gore.

Former Australian industry minister Ian Macfarlane certainly considered Gore more entertainer than policymaker when speculating on his reasons for visiting in 2006:

Well, Al Gore’s here to sell tickets to a movie, and no one can begrudge him that. It’s just entertainment, and really that’s all it is.

Gore and Australia

Gore has been on these shores many times. During his May 2003 visit Gore urged the then Prime Minister John Howard to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. He met with the then New South Wales Premier Bob Carr, and also with former Liberal leader and current climate hawk John Hewson. He spoke at an event co-hosted by the Business Council of Australia to advocate sustainable development.

After a controversial visit in 2005, Gore visited twice in 2006. As Joan Staples notes in her PhD, he teamed up with the Australian Conservation Foundation to launch his Climate Project:

Having reached out to the wider NGO sector, to doctors, unions, and the corporate sector, this initiative then moved ACF’s efforts towards influencing individual citizens. Gore’s organisation aimed to harness the power of mass mobilisation by expanding the message of his film An Inconvenient Truth.

Gore returned in 2007 and spoke at a A$1,000-a-plate event on the Sustainability and Cleantech Investment Market, with Carr introducing him while clutching a copy of Gore’s 1992 book Earth in the Balance.

He had his share of Australian critics too. On a frosty morning in July 2009 Gore’s launch speech of the Safe Climate Australia initiative attracted around 30 members of the newly formed Climate Sceptics Party, who handed out leaflets and wore t-shirts bearing their slogan: “Carbon Really Ain’t Pollution – CRAP”.

Gore also offered an opinion on Kevin Rudd’s proposed climate legislation:

It’s not what I would have written, I would have written it as a stronger bill, but I’m realistic about what can be accomplished in the political system as it is.

Gore seems to have (wisely) eschewed direct involvement during the tumultuous Julia Gillard years, but pitched in in October 2013 when the new Prime Minister Tony Abbott refused to link bushfires with climate change.

The Palmer moment

Perhaps the most bizarre, rub-my-eyes-did-that-just-happen moment came in June 2014, when Gore stood alongside Clive Palmer in a deal to save some of Gillard’s carbon policy package from Tony Abbott’s axe.

In July 2015, with the Paris climate conference approaching, Gore visited on a whistlestop tour that included meetings with senior business figures (BHP, National Australia Bank, Qantas, and Victorian state government ministers) to try and build momentum ahead of the crucial summit.

Looking into the crystal ball

Despite his Nobel Prize shared with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, not everyone is a fan, with Canadian journalism academic Chris Russill arguing that Gore’s approach “narrows our understanding of climate change discourse”.

And just because some climate sceptics think he’s a very naughty boy – and can change the weather by his mere presence – that doesn’t mean he’s the messiah.

Ultimately, we all need to find new and better ways of exerting more sustained pressure, not only on policymakers but also other institutions and norm-makers in our society, to change the trajectory we’re currently on.

Gore will keep banging on about climate change. He will turn up to give speeches, and will be both praised and derided. What matters is not what he does the same, but what we all do differently.