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Big four banks distance themselves from Adani coalmine as Westpac rules out loan
Coalition frontbencher calls for Queenslanders to boycott Australia’s second-largest bank after it says it will now only lend to mines in established coalfields
All of Australia’s big four banks have ruled out funding or withdrawn from Adani’s Queensland coal project, after Westpac said it would not back opening up new coalmining regions.
Westpac, the country’s second-largest bank, released a new climate policy on Friday, saying it would limit lending for new thermal coal projects to “only existing coal producing basins”.
Continue reading...Battery storage: What am I buying, apples or oranges?
Trump’s 100 days of trashing climate and clean energy policies
Greenpeace halts campaign against palm oil trader that has 'come a long way'
Malaysia-based IOI Group announces further moves to address deforestation and exploitation in its supply chain
Greenpeace has suspended its campaign against one of the world’s largest palm oil traders in recognition of its “significant commitment” to address deforestation and exploitation in its supply chain.
One year after its sustainability certificate was suspended, IOI Group announced further commitments to improve its environmental practice in a nine-month progress report released on Friday.
Continue reading...Households will be at centre of Australia’s transition to 100% renewables
French and Australian experts on solving the world's sustainability challenge
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The Conversation and the Australian French Embassy presented a panel between French and Australian experts at the University of New South Wales in March, opened by the French Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Development Jean-Marc Ayrault.
In his opening remarks, Ayrault celebrated the signing and coming into force of the 2015 Paris Agreement, under which countries agreed to limit warming to well-below 2℃, however he highlighted that more action needs to be taken around the world.
“Some are tempted to slow it down, or worse, to take a step backwards. We can currently see this in the United States.
"Tackling climate change is a democratic fight. Individual actions are like votes: on their own, they seem powerless, but together, they give new meaning to our societies,” he said.
The panel discussion included screenings of clips from the French documentary Tomorrow. View the complete discussion below.
The Conversation asked French and Australian experts what they consider to be the major challenges to overcome in transitioning to a more sustainable world.
Better valuing sustainable development in transportFrançois Raulin, Researcher, The Territory Development Institute, Normandy Business School
Since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, sustainable development has gradually become a key issue for public policy in many countries. Despite many global efforts - for example - to reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, most small initiatives are being taken at the local level.
Take the example of sustainable mobility in cities. The majority of urban agglomerations have been designed or redeveloped for cars. In order to limit the use of cars, various devices have been put in place, such as the introduction of urban road tolls (for example in Singapore, London and Stockholm), the removal of parking lots in inner city centres, or more recently the installation of eco stickers (road tax) for polluting vehicles in Paris.
In parallel, many French cities have seen a reduction in car use in favour of more sustainable forms of transport. As well as public transport such as trains, buses or trams, bikes and walking are alternative solutions to cars. However, depending on the urban environment, bicycling or walking is not always possible, or is dangerous.
How can these modes of active transport be promoted? Here are three possible solutions:
First, by promoting their health benefits, including the fight against obesity, the decline in cardiovascular diseases or the preservation of mental health.
Second, by encouraging their intermodality with other transport system, which would reduce the use of cars over short distances. The development of bike-sharing systems or improved walkability are various solutions proposed to encourage their use in the city.
Third, by increasing the ground area dedicated to cycling (bike paths) and walking (footpaths) while decreasing that of cars.
Beyond environmental issues, the development of sustainable mobility in cities also improves the quality of life of the inhabitants (less pollution, less noise, and so on) and make it more attractive, especially among young people.
Overcoming inertia in the energy systemDani Alexander, Research principal, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney
Overcoming inertia, both culturally and technologically, will be the key to unlocking our clean energy transition.
Power has been shifting to the energy consumers with the rapid rise of rooftop solar and falling costs of battery storage. However, with this has come discontent with the large electricity businesses that were built in the traditional model of “big energy” to “small consumer”.
As Belgian historian David Van Reybrouck argues in the film Tomorrow, there is an “increasing sense of theft” among consumers, which can drive action against the system such as “going off-grid”. The majority of Australians are ready to move to a renewable energy system despite the political inertia.
Our researchers at the Institute for Sustainable Futures have investigated the risk of a “death spiral” where, as more people leave the grid, the shared cost of our electricity infrastructure becomes more concentrated among fewer people, leading in turn to yet more people leaving the grid.
Unfortunately, it is often those who are more vulnerable (such as those who cannot afford a personal energy system) that pay the highest price. There are options to improve the way that our energy market works to provide a fairer deal for everyone, but regulatory inertia seems to be strong as well.
But what about technically? Can we move to a renewable energy system without risking the system or soaring electricity bills? Or is a rapid transition irresponsible, as some in our federal government would have us believe? Can renewables provide the same reliable services?
Moving towards more local generation, such as more rooftop solar, does make managing electricity more complex, for example in keeping network voltage in check. Luckily, renewable technologies have already advanced and have the capability to provide the network support services we need. Solar panels with storage will be able to moderate voltage at the source of the problem. Wind turbines already have the ability to provide the “synthetic” inertia to keep the grid stable – if the market allows and promotes it.
So what we need now is a new momentum. Strong enough to overcome the inertia and fast enough to divert our path away from irreversible climate change.
Working from the ground upJoachim Claudet, Researcher, CNRS/PSL University
Global change is a major challenge for human societies. It is modifying ecosystems all over the world, hence threatening our wellbeing through alterations to the flow of ecosystem services. However, global change is not affecting societies everywhere in the same way. Global drivers interact with local drivers.
They can combine with local stresses, such as overfishing or land clearing, creating additive or even multiplicative impacts. Understanding and predicting global change impacts thus requires strong knowledge of local social-ecological systems, of human-nature interactions (such as human use of the environment, natural disturbance history).
Global drivers also emerge from local processes. Hence, attempts to minimise the magnitude of global drivers or strategies to mitigate their impacts require local interventions. These can include incentives to modify human uses or adaptive management to foster resilience of social-ecological systems.
The latter requires a deep understanding of local world views as effective strategies in a place can be culturally inappropriate in another. This is particularly true in some Pacific Island countries – those countries being some of the most vulnerable to climate change – where wellbeing is strongly tied to the connectedness of people and places and where there is no distinction between nature and culture.
![The Conversation](https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/74374/count.gif)
Dani Alexander is a member of the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF), which undertakes paid sustainability research for a wide range of government, NGO and corporate clients, including energy businesses.
François Raulin and Joachim Claudet do 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.
Government bid to delay air pollution plan fails
Harvard 'pausing' investments in some fossil fuels
University stops short of fully divesting its $36bn endowment from coal, oil and gas but green groups welcome the breakthrough after a five-year campaign
Harvard University is “pausing” investments in some fossil fuel interests following a five-year campaign by some students and environment groups to pressure the university to divest itself from coal, oil and gas.
Continue reading...Air pollution plan would be election campaign bomb, court hears
Government’s advocate applies to delay publishing proposals until 30 June, saying controversy might be seen as ‘Tory plan’
The government wants to delay publishing its plan to tackle air pollution in England and Wales because it would be like dropping a bomb into the election campaign, the high court has heard.
James Eadie QC, representing the government, said it would be better to put the publication on hold until after the general election to avoid the controversy over how to tackle the air quality crisis being seen as a “Tory plan”.
Continue reading...The other cane toad invasion
The Republicans who care about climate change: 'They are done with the denial'
As despair intensifies over Trump’s agenda, the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus brings Democrats and Republicans together to break the deadlock
The failure of American politics to deal with, or even coherently discuss, climate change was perhaps best illustrated when James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, took to the floor of the US senate with a ziploc bag and a mischievous grin in February 2015.
Related: March against madness - denial has pushed scientists out into the streets | Dana Nuccitelli
Continue reading...New study: global warming keeps on keeping on | John Abraham
A new paper finds no statistical evidence that global warming slowed down in recent years or that it’s sped up just yet
As humans continue to dump heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the Earth continues to warm. In fact, it has been warming for decades and we now routinely hit temperatures that are 1°C (about 2°F) above the temperatures from 100 years ago.
But despite what we may expect, temperatures across the globe don’t rise little by little each year in a straight line. Rather, temperature changes are a bit bumpy. They go up and they go down somewhat randomly as they increase. Think of a wiggly line superimposed on a straight rising line.
Dr Jane Goodall on empathy, conservation and women in science
Look, no cars! Riding the closed-road Etape Loch Ness
Peter Walker takes in stunning views and steep climbs on one of an increasing number of UK cycling sportives that take place on routes shut to motor traffic
If there is one single activity most responsible for the recent mini-boom in Britons taking up road biking, it is arguably the sportive.
These organised, entry-only mass cycling events have sprung up around the UK in ever-increasing numbers. For various legal and insurance reasons they are not races but instead challenge riders only against the clock.
Continue reading...French tourist survives rare shark attack in New Zealand
Tourist survives, suffering only moderate injuries, after rare attack at Curio Bay in the South Island
A French tourist survived a rare shark attack in New Zealand on Thursday, suffering only moderate injuries, rescuers and locals said.
The woman, aged in her 20s, was bodyboarding in the afternoon at Curio Bay in the South Island when the shark attacked her leg, St John Ambulance said.
Continue reading...Victoria seeks two 20MW large scale batteries to be installed by January
British Veterinary Association slams designer cat breeding
Santos: Doing the bare minimum on climate change
Turnbull’s gas changes will lift cost of capital, but won’t relieve prices
Cobalt gems luminous in the bright light
Sandy, Bedfordshire Two kingfishers, with daggers of beaks and undercarriages of deep orange, were engaged in a chase
In the days before we gave names to storms, an anonymous blow laid low a riverside tree. Years later, leafless and lifeless, its branches bare of bark, the tree still lay across the water, an antlered jetty.
That gale had heaved the tree over, root plate and all, taking a giant’s bite out of the riverbank. The tree’s sheared and weathered anchors stuck out like pirates’ bones from the caked soil at the base of the trunk. A long-ago flood had wrapped a silt-stained shred of black plastic around one of the protruding roots.
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