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The federal government has pledged to bring in legislation that would allow it to restrict gas exports and force Australian producers to reserve supplies for domestic consumers, amid continuing fears of an east coast supply crisis.

The move comes after the apparent failure of crisis talks earlier this month, aimed at easing the forecast price squeeze.

But experts are split on whether domestic gas reservations are a wise move. In a survey of 32 economists by Monash Business School and the Economic Society of Australia, 38% agreed with the following statement, whereas 47% disagreed.

In response to energy shortages around Australia, government policies requiring gas producers to reserve some production for domestic consumption are a good way to ensure that Australian consumers have access to sufficient gas supplies while still allowing for gas exports.

Weighting the scores by confidence pushed the balance even further towards a negative verdict, as shown below.

David Prentice, principal economic adviser at Infrastructure Victoria, who summarised the results, said the forthcoming gas supply problems had “raised a lot of concern” as Australia heads into winter.

Lucrative export contracts have sent huge amounts of Australian gas overseas, meaning it is now cheaper to buy Australian gas in Japan than in Australia.

Western Australia already has a domestic gas reservation policy aimed at holding local prices in check amid a boom in liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. But Prentice said many of the economists arguing against a similar policy for the eastern states feared that it would distort the market, pushing gas prices artificially low.

“A common theme in many of the arguments of those that disagree with the policy is that the appropriate response to rising gas prices overseas is to let the domestic price rise and firms and households work out the best way to adjust to higher prices – that is, let the ‘invisible hand’ work,” he said.

In contrast, several of those who favoured the policy argued that higher prices could pose a risk for many consumers, such as businesses that may struggle to compete internationally if their gas bills are too high.

Read the panel’s full responses below.

The ESA Monash Forum is a joint initiative between Monash Business School and the Economic Society of Australia.

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All of Australia’s big four banks have ruled out funding or withdrawn from Adani’s Queensland coal project, after Westpac said it would not back opening up new coalmining regions.

Westpac, the country’s second-largest bank, released a new climate policy on Friday, saying it would limit lending for new thermal coal projects to “only existing coal producing basins”.

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There’s plenty of sizzle but what exactly is the sausage?

In the 100 days since President Donald Trump took office, his administration has embarked on an all-out assault on the environment. Here's a timeline.

Malaysia-based IOI Group announces further moves to address deforestation and exploitation in its supply chain

Greenpeace has suspended its campaign against one of the world’s largest palm oil traders in recognition of its “significant commitment” to address deforestation and exploitation in its supply chain.

One year after its sustainability certificate was suspended, IOI Group announced further commitments to improve its environmental practice in a nine-month progress report released on Friday.

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CSIRO and network owners say key driver of shift to 100% renewable energy will not be large wind farms or solar parks, but the rooftop solar and battery storage installed in your home or business. This can and should be done, because it will be significantly cheaper and cleaner. But policy, and politics, need to change.

Still from the French documentary Tomorrow. MOVE MOVIE, FRANCE 2 CINÉMA, MARS FILMS, MELY PRODUCTIONS

The Conversation and the Australian French Embassy presented a panel between French and Australian experts at the University of New South Wales in March, opened by the French Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Development Jean-Marc Ayrault.

In his opening remarks, Ayrault celebrated the signing and coming into force of the 2015 Paris Agreement, under which countries agreed to limit warming to well-below 2℃, however he highlighted that more action needs to be taken around the world.

“Some are tempted to slow it down, or worse, to take a step backwards. We can currently see this in the United States.

"Tackling climate change is a democratic fight. Individual actions are like votes: on their own, they seem powerless, but together, they give new meaning to our societies,” he said.

The panel discussion included screenings of clips from the French documentary Tomorrow. View the complete discussion below.

The Conversation asked French and Australian experts what they consider to be the major challenges to overcome in transitioning to a more sustainable world.

Better valuing sustainable development in transport

François Raulin, Researcher, The Territory Development Institute, Normandy Business School

Since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, sustainable development has gradually become a key issue for public policy in many countries. Despite many global efforts - for example - to reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, most small initiatives are being taken at the local level.

Take the example of sustainable mobility in cities. The majority of urban agglomerations have been designed or redeveloped for cars. In order to limit the use of cars, various devices have been put in place, such as the introduction of urban road tolls (for example in Singapore, London and Stockholm), the removal of parking lots in inner city centres, or more recently the installation of eco stickers (road tax) for polluting vehicles in Paris.

In parallel, many French cities have seen a reduction in car use in favour of more sustainable forms of transport. As well as public transport such as trains, buses or trams, bikes and walking are alternative solutions to cars. However, depending on the urban environment, bicycling or walking is not always possible, or is dangerous.

How can these modes of active transport be promoted? Here are three possible solutions:

• First, by promoting their health benefits, including the fight against obesity, the decline in cardiovascular diseases or the preservation of mental health.

• Second, by encouraging their intermodality with other transport system, which would reduce the use of cars over short distances. The development of bike-sharing systems or improved walkability are various solutions proposed to encourage their use in the city.

• Third, by increasing the ground area dedicated to cycling (bike paths) and walking (footpaths) while decreasing that of cars.

Beyond environmental issues, the development of sustainable mobility in cities also improves the quality of life of the inhabitants (less pollution, less noise, and so on) and make it more attractive, especially among young people.

Overcoming inertia in the energy system

Dani Alexander, Research principal, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

Overcoming inertia, both culturally and technologically, will be the key to unlocking our clean energy transition.

Power has been shifting to the energy consumers with the rapid rise of rooftop solar and falling costs of battery storage. However, with this has come discontent with the large electricity businesses that were built in the traditional model of “big energy” to “small consumer”.

As Belgian historian David Van Reybrouck argues in the film Tomorrow, there is an “increasing sense of theft” among consumers, which can drive action against the system such as “going off-grid”. The majority of Australians are ready to move to a renewable energy system despite the political inertia.

Our researchers at the Institute for Sustainable Futures have investigated the risk of a “death spiral” where, as more people leave the grid, the shared cost of our electricity infrastructure becomes more concentrated among fewer people, leading in turn to yet more people leaving the grid.

Unfortunately, it is often those who are more vulnerable (such as those who cannot afford a personal energy system) that pay the highest price. There are options to improve the way that our energy market works to provide a fairer deal for everyone, but regulatory inertia seems to be strong as well.

But what about technically? Can we move to a renewable energy system without risking the system or soaring electricity bills? Or is a rapid transition irresponsible, as some in our federal government would have us believe? Can renewables provide the same reliable services?

Moving towards more local generation, such as more rooftop solar, does make managing electricity more complex, for example in keeping network voltage in check. Luckily, renewable technologies have already advanced and have the capability to provide the network support services we need. Solar panels with storage will be able to moderate voltage at the source of the problem. Wind turbines already have the ability to provide the “synthetic” inertia to keep the grid stable – if the market allows and promotes it.

So what we need now is a new momentum. Strong enough to overcome the inertia and fast enough to divert our path away from irreversible climate change.

Working from the ground up

Joachim Claudet, Researcher, CNRS/PSL University

Global change is a major challenge for human societies. It is modifying ecosystems all over the world, hence threatening our wellbeing through alterations to the flow of ecosystem services. However, global change is not affecting societies everywhere in the same way. Global drivers interact with local drivers.

They can combine with local stresses, such as overfishing or land clearing, creating additive or even multiplicative impacts. Understanding and predicting global change impacts thus requires strong knowledge of local social-ecological systems, of human-nature interactions (such as human use of the environment, natural disturbance history).

Global drivers also emerge from local processes. Hence, attempts to minimise the magnitude of global drivers or strategies to mitigate their impacts require local interventions. These can include incentives to modify human uses or adaptive management to foster resilience of social-ecological systems.

The latter requires a deep understanding of local world views as effective strategies in a place can be culturally inappropriate in another. This is particularly true in some Pacific Island countries – those countries being some of the most vulnerable to climate change – where wellbeing is strongly tied to the connectedness of people and places and where there is no distinction between nature and culture.

Dani Alexander is a member of the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF), which undertakes paid sustainability research for a wide range of government, NGO and corporate clients, including energy businesses.

François Raulin and Joachim Claudet do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

The UK Government has lost a court bid to delay publication of its air pollution strategy.

University stops short of fully divesting its $36bn endowment from coal, oil and gas but green groups welcome the breakthrough after a five-year campaign

Harvard University is “pausing” investments in some fossil fuel interests following a five-year campaign by some students and environment groups to pressure the university to divest itself from coal, oil and gas.

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Government’s advocate applies to delay publishing proposals until 30 June, saying controversy might be seen as ‘Tory plan’

The government wants to delay publishing its plan to tackle air pollution in England and Wales because it would be like dropping a bomb into the election campaign, the high court has heard.

James Eadie QC, representing the government, said it would be better to put the publication on hold until after the general election to avoid the controversy over how to tackle the air quality crisis being seen as a “Tory plan”.

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Australians like to think they have sole ownership of the cane toad problem, but the US has a toad invasion of its own.

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The failure of American politics to deal with, or even coherently discuss, climate change was perhaps best illustrated when James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, took to the floor of the US senate with a ziploc bag and a mischievous grin in February 2015.

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A new paper finds no statistical evidence that global warming slowed down in recent years or that it’s sped up just yet

As humans continue to dump heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the Earth continues to warm. In fact, it has been warming for decades and we now routinely hit temperatures that are 1°C (about 2°F) above the temperatures from 100 years ago.

But despite what we may expect, temperatures across the globe don’t rise little by little each year in a straight line. Rather, temperature changes are a bit bumpy. They go up and they go down somewhat randomly as they increase. Think of a wiggly line superimposed on a straight rising line.

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She is credited with revolutionising the way we think about animals and humans through her work studying the chimpanzee.

Peter Walker takes in stunning views and steep climbs on one of an increasing number of UK cycling sportives that take place on routes shut to motor traffic

If there is one single activity most responsible for the recent mini-boom in Britons taking up road biking, it is arguably the sportive.

These organised, entry-only mass cycling events have sprung up around the UK in ever-increasing numbers. For various legal and insurance reasons they are not races but instead challenge riders only against the clock.

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Tourist survives, suffering only moderate injuries, after rare attack at Curio Bay in the South Island

A French tourist survived a rare shark attack in New Zealand on Thursday, suffering only moderate injuries, rescuers and locals said.

The woman, aged in her 20s, was bodyboarding in the afternoon at Curio Bay in the South Island when the shark attacked her leg, St John Ambulance said.

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Victoria government wants two 20MW battery storage installations, with 100MWh of storage, in place by January.

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At its Annual General Meeting on 4 May, Santos will be subject to a vote on a shareholder resolution that seeks improved disclosure of climate risks.

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