Percentage change in Australia carbon emissions, by sector, since year to March 1990. Graphic: Department of the Environment and Energy

Australia greenhouse emissions set new seven-year highs on natural gas boom – “Australia is on a collision course with climate catastrophe”

By Peter Hannam 30 August 2019 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen to the highest annual rate since the 2012-13 financial year, driven higher by surging gas production that has made the country the world’s biggest exporter of the fossil fuel. Greenhouse gas figures [pdf] for the March quarter of 2019, […]

Impact of the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) pledges. To keep global warming within 1.5 °C of pre-industrial levels, there needs to be a substantial decline in the use of coal power by 2030 and in most scenarios, complete cessation by 2050. Graphic: Jewell, et al., 2019 / Nature Climate Change

Current coal phase-out pledges are insufficient to hit Paris climate goal

27 June 2019 (Chalmers University of Technology) – ​The Powering Past Coal Alliance, or PPCA, is a coalition of 30 countries and 22 cities and states that aims to phase out unabated coal power. But analysis led by Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, published in Nature Climate Change, shows that members mainly pledge to close […]

A kangaroo is seen stuck in drying mud in the drainage canal of lake Cawndilla, one of the four main lakes of the Menindee Lakes in New South Wales, Australia, 10 January 2019. Photo: Getty

Australia towns close to reaching “day zero” as drought dries up water supplies – “We could be looking at anything from $500,000 to $1.5 million per month to transport the water”

By Lucy Barbour 14 July 2019 (ABC News) – Across New South Wales and Queensland’s southern downs, country towns are approaching their own ‘day zero’, as water supplies dry up in the drought. Ten towns, including major centres, are considered to be at high risk of running out within six months, if it doesn’t rain […]

Comparison of living and dead mangroves at two sites along the Gulf of Carpentaria in 2016. Photo: Norman Duke

Unexpected consequences from catastrophic mangrove dieback – “What was concerning was that the dead mangrove forest emitted about eight times more methane than the living forest”

4 July 2019 (Southern Cross University) – When swathes of mangrove forests died along a 1000 kilometre stretch of coastline in northern Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria, there was widespread shock. But the impacts of the catastrophic climate-induced mangrove dieback didn’t end there. In a world first, researchers from Southern Cross University have found that the […]

Map of the 105,000 square miles of coal-rich outback land known as the Galilee Basin in Queensland, Australia. Graphic: The Times

Australia approves vast coal mine near Great Barrier Reef – “An act of climate vandalism that represents everything that has gone wrong with politics in Australia”

By Andrew Beatty 13 June 2019 (AFP) – Australia approved Thursday the construction of a controversial coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef, paving the way for a dramatic and unfashionable increase in coal exports. Queensland’s government said it had accepted a groundwater management plan for the Indian-owned Adani Carmichael mine—the last major legal hurdle […]

The Chilean crocus, Tecophilaea cyanocrocus. Photo: Richard Wilford

Almost 600 plant species have already gone extinct – “Plant extinction is bad news for all species”

By Amanda Gonzalez Bengtsson 11 June 2019 (Stockholm University) – For the first time ever, scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Stockholm University, have compiled a global analysis of all plant extinction records documented from across the world. This unique dataset published today in leading journal, Nature Ecology & Evolution, brings together data […]

Map of the 105,000 square miles of coal-rich outback land known as the Galilee Basin in Queensland, Australia. Graphic: The Times

Australia plans coalfield the size of Britain in climate change U-turn

By Bernard Lagan 25 May 2019 SYDNEY (The Times) – Climate change was supposed to have won the Labor Party the Australian election. But yesterday, after having been routed by voters, its panicked leaders backed the mining of a coalfield bigger than the UK. Fearing a wipeout in state elections next year amid a rise in […]

Only one-third of the world’s longest rivers remain free-flowing – Nearly 60,000 large dams exist worldwide, with more than 3,700 planned

Only one-third of the world’s longest rivers remain free-flowing – Nearly 60,000 large dams exist worldwide, with more than 3,700 planned

8 May 2019 (McGill University) – Just over one-third (37%) of the world’s 246 longest rivers remain free-flowing, according to a new study published in the scientific journal Nature. Dams and reservoirs are drastically reducing the diverse benefits that healthy rivers provide to people and nature across the globe. A team of 34 international researchers from McGill University, […]

Global debt soars to $169 trillion, along with fears of crisis ahead – “We were supposed to correct a debt bubble. What we did instead was create more debt.”

By David J. Lynch 3 September 2018 (The Washington Post) – Ten years after the worst financial panic since the 1930s, growing debt burdens in key developing economies are fueling fears of a new crisis that could spread far beyond the disruption sweeping Turkey. The loss of investor confidence in the Turkish lira, which has […]

How the 2008 financial crash made cities unaffordable worldwide – Property markets in the world’s major cities have “synchronised”, leaving behind nations and citizens

By Nathan Brooker 14 March 2018 (Financial Times) –  In the stormy spring of 2008, the UK’s worsening property downturn was yet to hit Sloane Street in central London. A full year after the start of the credit crunch and the run on Northern Rock — which started a slide that would see more than 20 […]

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