Feed aggregator

Emissions Reduction Fund Land and sea transport method variation released for public consultation. Consultation period closes 21 November 2016

You may have heard the statistic that we waste about a third of the food we buy. What you might not have heard is that there are now many animals that actually depend on this food waste.

Geoff Cousins is a former Howard government advisor and president of the Australian Conservation Foundation and says all Australians should be able to have their day in court over the country's natural resources.

The Prime Minister has expressed concern over 'systematic, well-funded' environmental campaigns targeting developments such as the Adani coal mine in Queensland.

Farmers markets are one way to find local produce. Farmers market image from www.shutterstock.com

Being a “locavore” means choosing food that is grown locally, and is one way that you can help ensure there is more food to go around.

To feed the predicted nine billion people in the world in 2050, the world will need to produce 70-100% more food. This unprecedented increase in food production will require substantial changes in soil management, land cultivation, and crop production.

This cannot be achieved without technological advances that increase crop yield and reduce the need to use nitrogen-based fertilisers. The question is how this can be achieved sustainably, while also tackling climate change.

This is where “eating local” comes in.

What is eating local?

The primary reason why eating local is good for the planet is the reduction in energy resources required for transport and storage. Generally, the further a food has travelled from “paddock to plate”, the greater its impact on the environment. This is because of fuel used in transport and increased greenhouse gas emissions used for refrigerated storage.

The mode of transport matters too. Transporting food by air generates 177 times more greenhouse gases than shipping it.

The global food system lets us eat food from all over the world, all year round. But food miles impact adversely on the nutritional quality of fresh foods, and on the environment.

Yet while eating foods grown close to where we live makes planetary sense, farmers markets and foods grown more sustainably (organically) often carry a price premium, and seem to be targeted to a trendy and wealthy demographic.

The lack of a definition of “eating locally” also raises questions of how to incorporate organic and fair trade produce within the larger sustainability movement, and how to support developing nations.

Global supply chains place great demands on ecosystems and natural resources, and large distances between where food is produced and consumed is often seen as evidence of an unsustainable food system. However, this is not always as straightforward as it appears.

Take the case of seafood. Australia is in the enviable position of having been ranked in the top five countries for fisheries management and the majority of commercial fish stocks in Australia are assessed as sustainable.

However, 72% of seafood consumed in Australia is imported. Surprisingly, there is little difference between the carbon footprint of meals made using imported seafood compared with those of three domestic wild-caught fish.

10 tips for eating local

So given that eating local can be tricky, here are 10 tips:

1: Become familiar with foods that are grown or produced locally and what time of the year they are available. Seasonal food guides are available from some fruit markets and online such as one developed for south-east Queensland.

2: Look for local farmers markets, community gardens, food co-operatives and community supported agriculture schemes. Green Connect is one example of a community-supported agriculture scheme operating in the Illawarra region of New South Wales. In some states such as Tasmania, a thriving food tourism culture may encourage consumers to eat locally but this concept has not been replicated in other parts of the country.

3: Grow your own fruit and vegetables and keep chickens in your own backyard, or get involved in your local community garden, and trade produce with neighbours.

4: Read the labels of packaged foods. The new “Made in Australia” labelling on foods makes it easier to determine where the food (and its individual components) has been grown, processed and packaged.

Australia’s origin labelling can help choose food produced closer to home. Australia government

5: Choose less processed foods. Generally, the more processed a food is, the more energy and water it requires in the production process. Replace junk food with fresh fruit, nuts and vegetables.

6: Take the Eco Friendly Food Challenge and get some friends to join you.

7: Cook meals using fresh ingredients rather than purchasing ready-made meals.

8: Ask your food retailers and manufacturers about the origin of the food you are buying. Locate fruit and vegetable retailers, butchers, delicatessens and fishmongers who sell food produced locally.

9: Limit your intake of alcohol and purchase locally-grown alcohol with the lowest food miles possible. If you enjoy a particular beer or wine, contact the manufacturer to learn about their environmental policies and to advocate for more environmentally friendly production methods.

10: The Fair Food Forager app allows you to search for food outlets that adhere to fair and sustainable practices.

Creating consumer demand for more locally and sustainably produced food is being led not only by food champion Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, but also by our very own Australian Youth Food Movement, whose organisers are passionate about improving the food supply for future generations.

Karen Charlton receives funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, University of Wollongong, Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute, and has completed consultancies for the Australian Meals on Wheels Organization.

Amy Carrad receives PhD funding support from University of Wollongong. Amy is a volunteer for the Youth Food Movement.

Australian radio hosts broadcasts show critical of climate ‘alarmists’ from Cairns before launching the Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef website

A new Great Barrier Reef conservation site has been launched by the Australian broadcaster Alan Jones, who has declared that climate change was a hoax and said the reef was “fine”.

Experts, including the federal government, agree that climate change is the biggest threat facing the reef.

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Fin whales | Weighing passengers | Traffic | Quakers | Angela Carter

In the report on the stranding of a fin whale on Holkham Beach (Rare fin whale washed up on Norfolk beach, 22 October), Dr Ben Garrod of Anglia Ruskin University states that “you never get [fin whales] in the North Sea”. I certainly saw one six miles off Hartlepool in about 1978. There was flat calm and hot sun, and there were great rafts of seabirds. The whale jumped clear of the water six or seven times, mostly through the rafts of birds. I estimated the whale to be as long as our 12 metre yacht. Later I mentioned this to a fisherman at Hartlepool, who told me that this only happened on days like I described. He was obviously familiar with the sight.
John Lart
Great Smeaton, North Yorkshire

• Hawaiian Airways’ plan to weigh their passengers (Report, 24 October) is a good idea. Skybus planes from Cornwall to the Scilly Isles have always done so. As you board the eight-seater Islander, they tell each passenger (by name) where to sit so the weight is evenly distributed. The process is very discreet; the check-in desk incorporates scales. On one occasion, our combined weight was so great that the luggage had to travel separately on the next flight. They never divulged who had caused the overload, but we knew!
Melanie White
Reading, Berkshire

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Annual funding for local air quality management in England has been restored to previous levels, reversing a chronic decline, reports The ENDS Report

The government has stumped up £3m to fund English local authorities’ work to monitor and improve air quality.

The air quality grant for 2016/17 was announced on 6 October and is six times greater than the amount allocated for the current financial year. It is the first funding round to be managed by DEFRA and the Department for Transport’s Joint Air Quality Unit.

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Carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million on average during 2016 and will not dip below that mark for many generations, experts say

The world is in a new era of “climate change reality”, with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reaching a symbolic threshold which it will not fall below for many generations, scientists have said.

In 2015, for the first time, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were at 400 parts per million (ppm) on average across the year as a whole, the World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) annual greenhouse gas bulletin reveals.

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To paraphrase Donald Trump, this is radical atmospheric change and Republicans won’t even mention the words

Climate change’s impacts on extreme weather and society are becoming increasingly clear and undeniable. While we are making progress in solving the problem, we’re still moving too slowly, and one of the two political parties governing the world’s strongest superpower continues to deny the science. This led astrophysicist Katie Mack to make the following suggestion, related to a common refrain from Donald Trump and Republican Party leaders:

Maybe governments will actually listen if we stop saying "extreme weather" & "climate change" & just say the atmosphere is being radicalized

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2016 is likely to be the first year in recorded history in which levels of CO2 in the atmosphere remain above the symbolically important threshold of 400 parts per million.

Environmental artist J Henry Fair captures the beauty and destruction of industrial sites to illustrate the hidden impacts of the things we buy – the polluted air, destroyed habitats and the invisible carbon heating the planet

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John Vidal takes to the skies with US photographer J Henry Fair on an aerial toxic tour of south Wales

The small Cessna plane banks steeply and J Henry Fair of Charleston, South Carolina, hangs his camera out of the small window to film straight down the chimneys of the Lafarge Tarmac cement plant in Aberthaw, south Wales.

“Man, look at the gunk coming out of that guy. He’s burning rubber as fuel! That’s really environmental, huh?” he shouts as the 25-knot, force six wind whips off the sea and tosses the light aircraft around.

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A selection of prizewinning images from the Take a View 2016 photography awards

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The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder David Papps today announced his intention to redirect oxygenated water through Murray Irrigation infrastructure to create local refuges for endangered Murray Cod and Murray cray and other native fish...

Car industry successfully lobbied for loopholes to dilute EU laws limiting toxic particulates emissions for new cars, the Guardian has learned

New European cars with petrol engines will be allowed to overshoot a limit on toxic particulates emissions by 50% under a draft EU regulation backed by the UK and most other EU states.

Campaigners say that a simple €25 (£22) filter could drastically cut the pollution, but the Guardian has learned that car-makers have instead mounted a successful push for loopholes and legislative delay.

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Barnack Hills and Holes, Cambridgeshire The quarrying has left a strange, toy landscape of ridges and valleys not a kilometre square. Nature has taken it back

Hills and Holes. A name like that, it had to be a manufactured place for kids and dog walkers, I thought. On hearing what locals called it – Hills and Hollows – I decided to look closer at the funny space on the edge of this village near Stamford.

Turns out it was manufactured, but not by anyone we knew. The place with the playground name once built cathedrals. A Jurassic seabed turned medieval quarry, its limestone was used in the extravagant churches of Ely and Peterborough. Now it’s a meadow, and important again.

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An innovative high tech South Australian firm will use $50,000 in State Government funding to develop ground breaking technology.

Gas prices are still way head of last year, while Genex underlines economics of its big solar project.

The low-profile Australian group Sunrise Project hits back at coal lobby after being criticised over funding sources shown in hacked US Democratic emails

The head of a usually quiet environmental group in Australia has hit back against News Corp and coal lobby attacks after hacked emails revealed it was partly funded from overseas.

Two emails forwarded to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta – and published by WikiLeaks – show that one of the funders of the Sunrise Project is a large US-based charitable trust, the Sandler Foundation.

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