Feed aggregator

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Sun Metals solar farm, the largest in the country, will begin commissioning in a few weeks and will supply 30% of electricity needs for major refinery.

Kim and Amanda are dedicated to educating women about plastic-free reusable period products.

Projects that facilitate the use of bicycles in developing nations, including installing bike lanes and parking lots and implementing bike-sharing programmes, now qualify for carbon credits, a UN panel has decided.

Environmental campaigner and founder of 350.org says the financial sector has picked up on the future of energy much quicker than politicians
• Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

After almost three decades of environmental activism, Bill McKibben has become the Earth’s investment broker.

“There’s no way at this point to solve [climate change] one person at a time,” McKibben told Guardian Australia.

Continue reading...

Researchers in Australia and Saudi Arabia say baby reef fish appear to have learnt how to switch off certain genes to allow them to cope with heat stress.

Water supplies in western US will become more precarious amid warming climate

Los Angeles should not exist. The explorer John Wesley Powell warned the US Congress 140 years ago that the American west was a harsh arid land and settlements should be limited to conserve scarce water supplies. The politicians rejected his advice and launched a massive programme of dam and canal construction for irrigation and settlements.

In a gruelling expedition across North America, Powell had seen a dramatic transition from the lush green prairies in the east to the dry lands of the west, and the frontier of this transition was the 100th meridian, an invisible line of longitude passing north-south through North America.

Continue reading...

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan has been politically fraught and mired in scandal. But environmental monitoring suggests that the health of the rivers is indeed improving - even if it will take decades. Angus Webb, Senior Lecturer and quantitative ecologist, University of Melbourne Darren Ryder, Professor of Aquatic Ecology and Restoration, University of New England Fiona Dyer, Associate professor, University of Canberra Michael Stewardson, Environmental Hydrology and Water Resources, Melbourne School of Engineering, University of Melbourne Mike Grace, Associate Professor, Monash University Nick Bond, Professor, La Trobe University Paul Frazier, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, University of New England Qifeng Ye, Principal Scientist, Inland Waters and Catchment Ecology Program Rick Stoffels, Senior Scientist, CSIRO Robyn J Watts, Professor of Ecology, Charles Sturt University Samantha Capon, Research Fellow in Ecology, Griffith University Skye Wassens, Associate Professor in Ecology, Charles Sturt University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

A combination of existing provincial carbon pricing schemes along with the federal ‘backstop’ would significantly reduce Canada's GHG emissions through 2022 while slowing GDP growth less than recent estimates, according to a new report.

Tree-felling helped trigger ‘hidden collapse’ of mountain ash forests, ecologists say

• Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

Melbourne’s water supply is at risk because decades of logging and forest loss from large bushfires has triggered the imminent collapse of the mountain ash forests in Victoria’s central highlands, ecologists have said.

The Victorian government was warned of the likelihood of ecosystem collapse by Australian National University researches in 2015. New research led by Prof David Lindenmayer of ANU, published in PNAS journal on Tuesday, has found the ecosystem has already begun to undergo a “hidden collapse”.

Continue reading...

Lacking buyers for their carbon credits, African nations are appealing to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and other institutions to finance their carbon-cutting activities as Paris Agreement rulebook talks drag on.

EU carbon prices barely budged on Monday in trade muted by tomorrow's European public holiday as observers grew wary over whether the market could sustain recent gains with the annual compliance season now over.

A California-based consultant has rejoined IETA to work on the emissions trading association’s growing US and international research efforts.

Plan for fund combining taxpayers’ cash and private investment significantly behind schedule, it has emerged

A £400m government plan to build electric car charging points looks likely to be significantly delayed, in a blow to car manufacturers and efforts to tackle air pollution in UK cities.

The Treasury pledged last year to support the switch to zero-emission vehicles with a £400m fund for charging infrastructure. Half of the money was to come from the taxpayer, with the rest matched by the private sector, according to an announcement in the autumn budget.

Continue reading...

The share of German carbon allowances bought by big emitters rose for a second straight month in March, with operators taking more than half of the 17.44 million sold.

We want to hear from those who have seen tree felling along tracks and what they think its affect may be on the environment and wildlife

One witness called tree cutting along a track near him as “total mass destruction” as it was revealed that Network Rail launched a secretive felling operation putting millions of trees at risk.

Ray Walton, who saw hundreds of trees being chopped down along the length of track between Christchurch and Bournemouth said: “These trees were mature 30-foot-high trees which have been there for 50 years in some cases and never caused a problem. This went far beyond reasonable management of the trees.”

Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific concepts

More than 42,000 deer are killed in collisions on the UK’s roads every year, according to the AA. But where? I’ve never seen a deer near a road.

Simon Harrison

Continue reading...

British and American scientists will assess the stability of one of Antarctica's biggest ice streams.

The Republican Party values polluter wealth over public health

Like Donald Trump and the rest of his administration, Scott Pruitt has been caught up in so many scandals that it becomes impossible to focus on any single act of corruption. It’s difficult to focus on the damage Pruitt is doing to the environment and public health when seemingly every day there’s a new scandal related to his illegal $43,000 phone booth, or use of Safe Water Drinking Act funds to give two staffers a total of $85,000 in raises (and lying about it), or his sweetheart deal on a condo rental from a lobbyist’s wife (and lying about having met with that lobbyist), or wasting taxpayer funds on first class air travel and military jets, and a nearly $3m per year security detail, and bulletproof car seat covers, and a bulletproof desk, and so on.

Number of federal investigations into Scott Pruitt has now risen to 11. Reps. Beyer & Lieu say EPA inspector general will take up an inquiry into the $50-a-night condo rental from the wife of an energy lobbyist.

Continue reading...

British and US scientists are to examine the melting Thwaites glacier responsible for 4% rise in sea levels

British and US scientists are to collaborate on a £20m project to examine the Thwaites glacier in west Antarctica, a major glacier that drains an area about the size of the UK.

Continue reading...