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One of Australia’s biggest shopping centre owners, SCA Property Group, signs 10-year deal to power four sites cross NSW and SA with a combined total of 2.9MW of rooftop PV.

Funnel web, trapdoor and redback spiders: their names alone are enough to provoke a thigh-clenching chill in most of us. A new publication from the CSIRO, A Field Guide to Spiders of Australia, attempts to change this. ‘No one has actually died from a spider bite in Australia for more than 30 years, but plenty of people have been injured panicking at the sight of a huntsman.’

Authors Robert Whyte and Greg Anderson have produced a comprehensive guide, introducing the reader to fabulously named species like sparklemuffins, the alien butt spider, disco mirror ball spiders and dancing peacock spiders. Here are a small selection of the 1,350 photographs from the book.

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Goldwind and Aurora Energy in deal to build $300m, 144MW wind farm in Tasmania's central highlands, as government hints of more projects to follow.

The Australian CSG-to-LNG industry facing crisis, with reduced demand, and high capital and operating costs. Write downs and closures may be imminent.

Queensland government is finally cracking down on one of the most open secrets of the local energy market – the rampant profiteering of its own coal and gas generators. As a result, energy futures prices have already fallen 15 per cent.

Australia's energy market rule maker catches up with solar and storage revolution, proposes "independent 'optimising' function”.

Claxton, Norfolk Every year the house martins check properties for suitable nest sites, even examining our nonexistent eaves

As if minted out of the soil that morning, suddenly house martins were around our garden a fortnight ago. Every year the pairs in the village perform an almost ritualised house inspection, when they check properties for suitable nest sites.

Every time they tantalise me by swooping to examine even our nonexistent eaves. Then they fuss about the gable end to our neighbour’s. Were they ever to choose the last spot, which looks perfect to my unbirdlike eyes, it would bring their distillate of African sunshine to within metres of my office.

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Australia’s electricity market is no longer working and needs substantial reform. Here's a list of six things that should happen.

The proposed low emissions target is not a big vote winner for the Coalition, but doing nothing may well be a vote loser. These considerations may outweigh the risk of alienating its conservative rump and the coal lobby.

The commercial lighting juggernaut rolled on in Victoria across May with installation activity continuing at a rapid pace and VEEC supply actually managing to grow.

It has been argued that the CSIRO’s report was “a stitch up” for renewables, and very obviously designed to downplay the benefits, even though almost every scenario the role of renewables resulted in benefits..

South Australia has reached 57 per cent wind and solar, according to latest data from AER, and will likely hit more than 65 per cent in 2018.

Sunday marked exactly a quarter-century since Australia’s then federal environment minister Ros Kelly signed the world’s first climate treaty, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero.

Eighteen months earlier, Kelly had had to cajole her cabinet colleagues into agreeing an ambitious emissions reduction target. Prime Minister Paul Keating himself wasn’t bothered to attend the Rio Earth Summit (most world leaders did), and in the words of one journalist, was “preoccupied with winning the upcoming election [and] said he wasn’t going all the way to Rio to give a six-minute speech.”

Thanks to a judicious mix of lobbying and “the sky will fall” economic modelling, the coal industry and its allies had persuaded the government to reduce its ambitions. Proposals from within the Ecologically Sustainable Development process and the Industry Commission for some kind of carbon price (either a trading scheme or a straight-up tax) were lobbied out of existence, and at the end of 1992, federal and state governments agreed a purely voluntary National Greenhouse Response Strategy. Later the same month, Australia had ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, one of the first nations to do so.

Trouble was afoot though. Developed nations, including Australia, had agreed under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility” that they should take the lead in emissions reduction. But the Keating government was not keen, with Treasurer Ralph Willis flagging possible withdrawal from the treaty.

At the first Conference of the Parties, held in March and April 1995 and chaired by a young Angela Merkel, Australia lobbied unsuccessfully against this idea of rich countries taking the lead.

The federal government then used economic modelling by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics to argue that Australia deserved special treatment. (The modelling, it emerged, was funded largely by fossil fuel interests). Prime Minister John Howard, who was on the record as saying that Australia should never have signed in Rio, tried to get support for what was called “differentiation”, with limited success.

At the 1997 Kyoto meeting, brinkmanship by Australia secured a sweet deal: its agreed emissions “reduction” target was an 8% increase on 1990 levels by 2012, as well as a loophole to allow it to count reductions in land-clearing towards the target.

In September 1998 it emerged that the Howard cabinet had agreed not to ratify Kyoto until the US did. In March 2001, President George W. Bush pulled the US out, citing the “national interest”. On World Environment Day 2002, John Howard – to precisely nobody’s surprise – did the same, with the same reasoning.

After Kyoto came into effect (the Russians signed on, in exchange for World Trade Organisation membership) Bush and Howard set up what was regarded as a spoiler organisation, the short-lived and much derided Asia Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate.

The mood music changed in 2007 with the election of Kevin Rudd, who ratified Kyoto as his first act, but declined to set stronger short-term emissions targets at his first UNFCCC meeting, in Bali.

The lack of ambition in Rudd’s signature climate policy enraged environmentalists, with only a slight increase in emissions reductions if there were a global deal. The Copenhagen debacle, in late 2009, seems to have shaken Rudd to his core (according to accounts by Paul Kelly, Philip Chubb and others), and Rudd fatefully tried to kick climate policy into the long grass.

Next came Julia Gillard, who forged ahead with climate policy not for international reasons but because her minority government’s backers insisted upon it.

Then, under Tony Abbott, Australia’s role in UN climate talks plumbed new depths. No minister attended the 2013 summit in Warsaw, with Greg Hunt too busy abolishing Gillard’s carbon price.

Ahead of the crucial 2015 Paris talks, Australia produced a low target of 26-28% reduction for the 2015 Paris meeting, which was attended by Malcolm Turnbull.

Australia has signed up to the Paris Agreement, just as Trump was elected. In theory this means it is committed to keeping global average temperature rise “well below 1.5℃”. In practice, not so much…

Will we always have Paris?

Trump has now sensationally announced plans to withdraw the US from Paris, citing a desire to renegotiate a deal he claims is bad for the US and arguing that he was elected to govern “Pittsburgh, not Paris”.

This is despite the fact that none of the Paris deal’s emissions targets or climate financing commitments are legally binding, and even if the accord could be renegotiated (which it can’t) it is difficult to imagine how the world’s worst cumulative greenhouse polluter could be handed a more favourable outcome.

The Washington Post argued that Trump has already put the brakes on climate action, while Elizabeth Bomberg, writing in the journal Environmental Politics, argues that:

Constitutional checks, societal, local and subnational mobilization, combined with the economic trajectory of low carbon energy, could well offset the President’s moves to dismantle environmental protection and climate policy and action. In the end, Trump’s impact will depend less on what he does, and more on what others do.

Trump was advised by Michaelia Cash not to quit the Paris Agreement, and Australia’s environment minister Josh Frydenberg has said that Australia will stay in.

Opinions vary on the Paris climate deal. On this site Luke Kemp has argued the world would be better off without a recalcitrant US still sitting in the negotiations.

My opinion is that Paris is little more than words anyway – a “pledge and review” retread of the Kyoto Protocol, featuring years of stocktakes while the carbon dioxide relentlessly accumulates in our skies. Where did it all go wrong?

Environmental organisations thought that getting governments to make promises was enough. But it turns out that unless we have monitory democracy, in the words of John Keane, then vested interests can run rings around morality and common sense.

Then again, it’s not clear how we could have built the infrastructure of monitoring, on such a long-term and wicked problem, with marches losing their efficacy and activists burning out as they look into the abyss (and the abyss looks back into them)? With the Great Barrier Reef dying, and the scientists saying even the 2℃ target may now be beyond reach, it will soon be hard to mobilise people because they will believe that there is “nothing left to do but scream”.

Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Adani officially announce the company’s intention to invest in the proposed Galilee basin mega-mine

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has given the “green light” to the Carmichael mine and rail project, but it will still hinge on its Australian arm, Adani Mining, gaining bank backing for the contentious venture.

The Adani group chairman took a dig at “activists who sit in creature comfort and criticise us” while trumpeting the decision to invest in Australia’s largest proposed coalmine.

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The Threatened Species Scientific Committee is seeking comments on the eligibility of Antechinus argentus (silver-headed antechinus) for inclusion on the EPBC Act threatened species list. Comments close 28 July 2017.

The Threatened Species Scientific Committee is seeking comments on the eligibility of Antechinus arktos (black-tailed antechinus) for inclusion on the EPBC Act threatened species list. Comments close 28 July 2017.

Canadian Solar showcased its latest high efficiency poly modules, named Ku Modules at the Intersolar Europe from May 31 to June 2 at Messe Munchen in Munich.

AGL has received a development permit from the Queensland Government to build up to 115 turbines for the Coopers Gap Wind Farm.

In Australia animal testing is currently required for some potentially toxic new cosmetic ingredients. Understanding Animal Research/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Last week, a bill was put before the House of Representatives that would ban animal testing of industrial chemicals intended solely for use in cosmetics.

The proposed bill would affect a wide variety of products: “cosmetics” are legally defined as any substance used on the body, or in the mouth to change its appearance, cleanse it, perfume it or protect it. This includes soaps, shampoos, moisturiser, hair dye, perfumes and deodorants.

It’s difficult to know exactly how many animals will be affected by this ban, as companies do not advertise their use of animal testing and results are often unpublished. It’s likely to be relatively small, but this ban will both improve their lives and be an important international signal.

Cosmetic testing commonly measures the reaction of animals’ skin, eyes and respiratory tracts to high concentrations of certain chemicals. Other tests determine a product’s potential to cause foetal abnormalities, cancer or genetic mutations.

The global move away from animal testing

As a practice, it has had a turbulent history. It’s increasingly opposed by the public but many governments – including Australia’s – require animal tests to be conducted for some potentially hazardous new cosmetic ingredients.

Most prominent in this arena is the European Union. After animal testing was first banned in Germany in 1986, it was extended to the entire Union in 2004. In 2009 the ban was expanded to include ingredients, not just the finished product. Then imports came under scrutiny, as Japan and the United States are major exporters to the EU, and imports of cosmetic products tested on animals were banned in 2013.

Since that time Israel, India, Norway, New Zealand, South Korea, Turkey, Taiwan and parts of Brazil have all banned testing of cosmetics on animals. However, the Humane Society International estimates that globally around 100,000-200,000 animals are still used annually for this purpose.

The US is considering a ban, which would drastically diminish the market for any manufacturers still using animal testing. Until recently China required all cosmetics to be tested on animals, although this requirement has [now been relaxed for non-specialised cosmetics such as hair, skin and nail care products, perfumes and make-up.

Australia’s situation

Until July 2018, animal testing will still be required in Australia for some cosmetic ingredients, as it is considered by the Department of Health to be the best means of testing for potential toxicity. After this time industrial chemicals scheduled for use only in cosmetics may not be tested on animals. Chemicals used for other purposes may still be tested on animals, providing a potential loophole for manufacturers.

However, many ingredients have already been extensively tested on animals, and there is no need to repeat this. For others, alternative means of testing are being developed, such as clinical trials on humans and use of skin samples from cosmetic surgery to test penetration levels.

There have been major advances in alternative testing methods in recent years. As well as clinical studies and skin tests, we can, for example, use hen’s eggs to test if a product is likely to irritate human eyes. In future differentiated stem cells may be used as well.

Australia already has in place a code of practice for the care and use of animals for scientific purposes. This requires research using animals to be licensed by an authority, usually associated with a university or government services. The committee evaluating applications has to be satisfied that the benefit to humans outweighs the harm to animals.

In the case of cosmetics, the harm to animals is often major and benefit to humans minor. However, my experience is that committees are likely to be persuaded that any government requirement for animal testing should be honoured.

The proposed bill will save animals from the suffering often associated with testing. Although Australia’s cosmetic industry is not large by international standards, it is growing rapidly, particularly in body and hair products, cosmeceuticals, sunscreen and anti-ageing products.

Once this ban passes, it will be noted internationally. This, together with the increasing number of other countries banning all animal testing of cosmetics, suggests an international accord could be possible.

Over the past decade the international World Animal Health Organisation – which primarily promotes animal disease control – has assumed responsibility for animal welfare standards worldwide. With 180 member states, it is in a good position to spearhead movement towards an international agreement. It already has a Code of Practice for Use of Animals in Research and Education, which recognises that:

Animals should only be used when ethically justified and when no other alternative methods are available.

This Code includes “harm versus benefit” ethical review, similarly to the existing Australian system, but without the government imperative to encourage or require animal testing. This could be used to deny companies the opportunity to conduct animal trials with cosmetics in countries still using them.

Eventually, it is clear, cosmetics will not be tested on animals anywhere in the world. Australia’s new regulations will be a small but valuable step towards this future.

Clive Phillips is on the Scientific Panel for Voiceless. He is a director of Minding Animals International.

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