Feed aggregator

The 86-year-old social scientist says accepting the impending end of most life on Earth might be the very thing needed to help us prolong it

“We’re doomed,” says Mayer Hillman with such a beaming smile that it takes a moment for the words to sink in. “The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so.”

Hillman, an 86-year-old social scientist and senior fellow emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute, does say so. His bleak forecast of the consequence of runaway climate change, he says without fanfare, is his “last will and testament”. His last intervention in public life. “I’m not going to write anymore because there’s nothing more that can be said,” he says when I first hear him speak to a stunned audience at the University of East Anglia late last year.

Continue reading...

Legendary ice cream makers Ben & Jerry’s and climate activism group 350.org Australia, have today launched a campaign to freeze fossil fuels by encouraging Australians to lobby their local Councils to divest from coal, oil and gas.

In response to growing demand from Australian institutional investors for environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment options, State Street Global Advisors, the asset management arm of State Street Corporation (NYSE:STT), in partnership with MSCI, has created a low carbon, high ESG international equities fund.

The leaders and North and South Korea meet for the first time in over a decade on Friday, is this a step on the road to peace or a path we've been down before?

Goldwind Australia today announced it has made another step forward towards construction of the 150 megawatt (MW) Moorabool North Wind Farm (The Project), located in Victoria. Moorabool North Wind Farm project is the northern section of the 321 MW Moorabool Wind Farm.

Staunch combustion engine purist Ferrari is changing its tune, testing a hyrbid sports EV, and promising a "world's fastest" hybrid SUV in 2020.

This achieves a new world record for the highest power 120-cell half-cut monocrystalline PERC module, adding to LONGi's world record for 60-cell monocrystalline PERC module for power and conversion efficiency.

Westpac joins growing corporate push into wind and solar with a tender for 150GWh of renewable energy. It's cleaner, and cheaper!

For a Queensland household electricity bill with network charges of $1,000, the Queensland government profits from the networks amounts to $470.

Record-breaking dive in Antarctic waters emerges after scientists accidentally tagged wrong emperor penguins

Scientists in Antarctica have recorded the world’s longest penguin dive, an astounding 32.2 minutes under the water; a full five minutes longer than the previous record.

Emperor penguins, which live only in Antartica, are the tallest and heaviest penguins in the world, and have the best diving ability. They can dive as much as 500 metres down in some of the world’s harshest and coldest seas.

Continue reading...

Europe's latest Earth observation satellite will focus on the behaviour and health of oceans.

20MW solar farm that will produce power for crypto-currencies approved for the coal town of Collie in Western Australia.

The customised robot is part of a study looking at how technology can help those in rural areas.

More than 40 firms including Coca-Cola have promised to reduce harmful packaging.

EU carbon prices are set to double from current levels by 2021 and could quadruple to €55 before 2030 if lawmakers align the ETS’ emissions reduction trajectory with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Critics say retailers can pick and choose whether to sign up to Plastics Pact, a series of pledges that have no enforcement mechanism

UK supermarkets and food companies launched a new voluntary pledge to cut plastic packaging on Thursday as ministers consider forcing them to pay more towards collecting and recycling the waste they produce.

In a first response to a growing public backlash against the huge volumes of plastic rubbish, most of the UK’s largest supermarkets signed up to support the UK Plastics Pact – an industry-wide initiative which says it aims to transform packaging and reduce avoidable plastic waste.

Continue reading...

Lava has risen above the crater floor in Hawaii's Kilauea volcano for the first time since 2016.

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

California regulator ARB doled out just over 275,500 California Carbon Offsets (CCOs) this week following the zero issuance recorded earlier this month, with normally high-yielding forestry projects not receiving any credits for the first time since December.

Turkish bank Garanti outlined its shadow carbon pricing strategy on Wednesday, though the partial approach may fall short of addressing the company's ongoing investments in coal plants.