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US 'hacked' but Australian politicians 'get' climate change: Gore
Great Barrier Reef under threat despite avoiding UNESCO 'in-danger list'
Delaying action on car emissions will make Australia more vulnerable
We don't know what the car of the future will look like – but that's no excuse to delay transport reform. www.twin-loc.fr/Flickr, CC BY-SAFrance has set its car manufacturers the goal of halting sales of diesel and petrol cars by 2040. The announcement last week came a day after the Swedish manufacturer Volvo declared it will build only hybrid and electric cars from 2019.
Moving away from highly polluting cars is an urgent global priority. Worldwide, transport accounts for 26% of humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions and, of these emissions, 81% comes from road transport.
Our latest research, published in the International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, shows that car ownership and the total distance travelled by cars are both likely to keep growing, globally and in Australia.
But just because there will be more cars, covering more ground, that doesn’t necessarily mean CO₂ emissions will continue to rise. It depends on a complex mix of population trends, income growth and the impacts of new policies and technologies.
It might therefore seem sensible to delay policy decisions until we can see what type of future emerges. However, our research found that a “wait and see” approach will dramatically increase our economic, social and environmental vulnerability.
Lower-income Australians are particularly at risk. This is because transport accounts for a greater proportion of their household income and they tend to live on the urban fringe where daily travel distances are necessarily higher.
Future-proofing our transport policy means we must engage with uncertainty, not ignore it. That means choosing policies that allow us to adapt to a range of technological or social developments.
We modelled different policy options in Western Australia, looking for options that reduced CO₂ emissions without creating social vulnerabilities. The most effective approach requires simultaneously improving fuel standards, making cars more efficient, and increasing city density to reduce both car ownership and the total distance we need to travel in cars.
However, CO₂ emissions alone don’t provide the full picture. Our model found that encouraging biofuels, for example, could mean increasing our agricultural footprint to grow feedstock.
Similarly, electric and hydrogen-fuelled vehicles require energy supplied by the electricity sector. As this sector itself decarbonises, technologies such as solar, hydro and wind will require greater areas of land than coal and gas technologies.
However, managing carbon dioxide emissions and demand on land is not necessarily mutually exclusive. Wind turbines can co-exist with grazing, and decentralised solar panels are already common on existing buildings. Offshore wind farms and solar installed on otherwise unproductive land can lessen impact. Targeted investment in technological efficiency can further reduce this impact.
Using land for both agriculture and energy production could actually give farmers greater economic resilience. Alternative fuels that use waste products or are low-impact (such as biofuel made from algae) are also promising avenues.
The economic case for expensive changesAlthough the implementation of stringent transport policy will be costly – it requires massive changes in capital infrastructure and behaviour – it will open up other benefits and saving.
Vehicle emissions are recognised as the source of more air pollution than any other single human activity. These emissions cause hundreds of preventable deaths in Australia every year. (As well as saving lives, we’d also save billions of dollars in related costs.)
Well-designed, more compact urban spaces encourage more biking and walking. This, in turn, reduces chronic diseases that also cost Australians billions every year.
J G/Flickr, CC BY-NC
Research shows that compact cities reduce infrastructure costs by 11%; a 2015 report found gridlock alone could cost Australia A$53 billion by 2031. Curbing urban sprawl can reduce the clearing of native vegetation, which benefits the rivers and animals that live around our cities.
Changing the type of fuel used by cars, improving vehicle efficiency and increasing city density are all policy levers that can reduce the footprint of urban cars, but these must occur in tandem. To minimise costs and realise the potential savings, policymakers need to collaborate on finding policies that are flexible enough to adapt to an uncertain future.
Should we have the leadership to implement such sophisticated policy, we might accidentally design a future in which we are healthier and happier too.
Bonnie McBain received funding from the Australian Research Council to undertake this research.
Fossil sheds light on bird evolution after asteroid strike
Earth's sixth mass extinction event already under way, scientists warn
Researchers talk of ‘biological annihilation’ as new study reveals that billions of populations of animals have been lost in recent decades
A “biological annihilation” of wildlife in recent decades means a sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history is already well underway and is more severe than previously feared, according to new research.
Scientists analysed both common and rare species and found billions of regional or local populations have been lost. They blame human overpopulation and overconsumption for the crisis and warn that it threatens the survival of human civilisation, although there remains a short window of time in which to act.
Continue reading...Drilling rig owned by UK fracking firm Cuadrilla 'seriously vandalised'
Derbyshire police say rig was damaged at storage yard in move seemingly intended to slow embryonic shale industry
A drilling rig owned by one of the UK’s most prominent fracking firms has been seriously vandalised, in a move seemingly intended to slow down the country’s embryonic shale industry.
Derbyshire police said that between 18 and 24 May, a person illegally entered a facility near Chesterfield run by PR Marriott, Britain’s largest onshore deep drilling company, which stores and maintains the rig on behalf of shale gas firm Cuadrilla.
When very hungry caterpillars turn into very hungry cannibals
Research shows that defensive chemicals emitted by plants cause armyworms to turn on each other
Caterpillars turn into cannibals and eat each other when plants deploy defensive chemicals to make their foliage less appetising, research has revealed.
While it was already known that caterpillars of many species munch on each other, and that plants have a range of defence mechanisms, it was not clear whether the two were linked.
Continue reading...Shells record West Antarctic glacier retreat
'You helmets, get a life!': Celebrating 25 years of the Dunwich Dynamo
To celebrate the anniversary of the annual 116 mile night ride, here’s how the night unfolded for one distinctly average rider
It was the 25th Dunwich Dynamo this weekend, and the fifth ridden by your correspondent.
Starting from a park in Hackney, the Dynamo is a madcap 116-ish mile dash from London through the night to the sea-covered remains of a medieval town that was once its rival.
Police tactics at fracking protests need urgent review, says MEP
Call for review follows repeated allegations of violence and excessive force by police and security staff at UK sites
Repeated allegations of excessive force by police and security staff against protesters at oil and gas fracking sites across the country have led to a call for an urgent review of police tactics.
Lancashire police are investigating an allegation of assault by a security official at the Cuadrilla site at Preston New Road in Lancashire. At other protest sites – including Surrey and Derbyshire – demonstrators have made complaints about the alleged heavy-handedness of police officers.
Continue reading...Fido's family tree – in pictures
A new series on Sky 1 traces the ancestry and evolution of the 500 million domesticated dogs worldwide, with biologist Patrick Aryee introducing some of the 36 wild species. Dogs: An Amazing Animal Family airs on Thursdays from 13 to 27 July.
All photographs: Offspring Films
Continue reading...Conservatives are again denying the very existence of global warming | Dana Nuccitelli
The best efforts to undermine the established climate science behind the Endangerment Finding are pathetically bad
As we well know, climate myths are like zombies that never seem to die. It’s only a matter of time before they rise from the dead and threaten to eat our brains. And so here we go again – American conservatives are denying the very existence of global warming.
Continue reading...Adani's Carmichael's short operating plan avoids expected legal obligation of $1bn environment bond
Plan details no mining or construction or resulting land disturbance, which would trigger government demand for rehabilitation assurance
Adani has kept an operating plan for its unfunded Queensland mine to just six months, postponing an expected legal obligation to provide a billion-dollar rehabilitation bond before financial backing emerges.
The miner has provided the state government with a plan that covers only up to the end of 2017, which falls before its deadline for securing US$2.5bn in financial backing to execute the first phase of Australia’s largest proposed coal project.
Continue reading...Gorgeous goats – in pictures
Meet Ben, Bella, Sherlock and Sydney – the elegant goats turned into portraits by Kevin Horan. As the American photographer explains, he just treated them ‘like customers in a small-town photo studio’
Continue reading...The Southern Highlands Shale Forest and Woodland of the Sydney Basin Bioregion
Can Elon Musk’s battery storage plant smash Australia’s gas cartel?
Know your NEM: Turnbull, Tesla and falling energy prices
Between two shires – a world of difference
Moonshine Gap, Cambridgeshire I watch a bird, listen to its dainty movements, then walk over into Northamptonshire, into the wood and signs of rural mischief
Moonshine Gap: what does that name say? When I saw it on the map it said something probably over-romantic, definitely nefarious, the sort of feature found in literature of the Kentucky backwoods. Or older, when the transit of and sightlines to stellar objects were watched, noted and sometimes immortalised. Seemed a stretch for this place.
Gap is like col or pass, a place where the ground gives to allow a way between this place and that. All are mountain words, so a strange find in this flat place. This “gap” marks a straddle between Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, so maybe that’s why. It’s not new: there it is on the 1889 map, attached to a wedge of wood amid crackle-glaze fields.
Continue reading...Community retailer Enova lifts solar tariff to 16c/kWh
It’s economics, stupid! Days of “baseload only” power over
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