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You shouldn't have to crank up the aircon. chanus/shutterstock.com

Whether you’re a boatie or not, everyone realises the importance of keeping the water on the outside when you go sailing or fishing. The less leaky the boat, the less you have to rely on devices like bilge pumps to stay afloat.

What does this have to do with houses? Well, Australia’s homes are notoriously “leaky” – allowing the uncontrolled flow of heat into and out of the building. Our answer has been to put in more and more pumps, in the form of air conditioning. This is often promoted as a feature, rather than an indication of a poor-quality building!

Air conditioning is promoted as a feature rather than a design flaw. Wendy Miller

This creates problems for everyone.

We all know that some houses are hotter than others in heatwaves, and that well insulated and designed homes cost a lot less to operate throughout the year because they don’t rely heavily on air conditioners or heaters to provide comfort.

But did you know that relying on air conditioners to stay cool on hot summer days affects the price of electricity for everyone, all year round?

Pumping heat from one place to another takes a lot of energy, which makes air conditioners particularly power-hungry appliances. The more leaky the house, the more heat needs to be pumped out. On hot days, when lots of aircon units are operating at the same time, this creates a challenge for the electricity infrastructure.

It costs money to build an electricity network that can handle these peaks in demand. This cost is recovered through the electricity unit cost (cents per kilowatt hour). We all pay this cost, in every electricity bill we get; in fact the cost of meeting summer peak demand accounts for about 25% of retail electricity costs. This is more than twice the combined effect of solar feed-in tariffs, the Renewable Energy Target and the erstwhile carbon tax.

A house that has been well designed for its tropical climate. Wendy Miller

This means that people living in houses that are built to handle their local climate are effectively subsiding those who live in poorer-quality buildings and relying solely on the air conditioning to stay cool. Perhaps even less fairly, those who struggle to afford air conditioning and have to cope with overheating are also paying this subsidy via the electricity they do use. All this is because many people still live in leaky, poor-quality buildings.

Does this mean that air conditioners are evil and should never be used? Of course not – there is a role for very efficient air conditioners (heat pumps) in extreme weather events. But it does raise some interesting questions. Can we design and build homes that are great to live in and don’t cost the Earth to run? And, if so, why aren’t these homes the norm, rather than the exception?

You get what you ask for

The good news is that comfortable, quality homes that put minimal strain on the electricity grid are certainly possible. What’s needed is a combination of design that takes account of the local climate, appropriate building materials and quality construction practices. Some homes consume less than a quarter of the energy of their contemporaries in the same climate – it’s just frustrating that they aren’t more common.

In the past, the housing industry would say that it’s simply building the homes that people want – that Australians are mainly interested in size and location, not energy performance. Recent research, however, seems to indicate that the perspectives of real estate agents and other property practitioners could be limiting how, or if, they promote energy efficiency and other sustainability features to potential clients.

Are Australians still mesmerised by the surface bling of granite benchtops, a theatre room, or automatic gadgets? Are we starting to consider weightier issues such as operation costs, resilience and comfort? Or are we waiting until the first heatwave or the first electricity bill to realise just how good or poor our purchase decision was?

Some savvy buyers – before they sign a contract – are starting to ask about insulation, but not the more fundamental questions, like “how hot does this room get?” or “can I afford to run this house?”.

The housing sector seems to assume that if you don’t explicitly ask for something, it is not important to you. They also seem to assume that the building regulations set the standard – despite the fact the building regulations are minimum requirements, not best practice for comfort and value.

Some also actively lobby for lower standards, arguing that energy efficiency has “questionable benefits” and that requiring information to be passed on to consumers is an “unnecessary burden”.

Buyer beware – you’re on your own

What does this mean? When buying a used car or a new phone, it’s relatively easy to get the information you need – and there are quite a few consumer protection laws in place. But when we inspect a home for sale or rent, we can see the number of rooms, test the taps and light switches, and measure how far it is to the shops or school or work, but there is a huge amount we can’t see and are not told.

A real estate agent is not acting in the prospective buyer’s interest (or even necessarily in the seller’s. The seller wants the highest price in the shortest time, and the agent wants the biggest commission for the least effort. And contrary to practices in the European Union, no one is obliged (in most parts of Australia) to tell prospective buyers or renters about the home’s running costs.

There have been successes and failures in state government attempts to ensure that home buyers and renters have access to information about comfort and running costs at the time of purchasing or renting. Queensland’s Sustainability Declaration, introduced in 2010, was very short-lived, with an incoming government declaring it “useless red tape”.

In contrast, the ACT government has required an Energy Efficiency Rating for the sale or rent of residential properties since 1999, with multiple reports showing the benefits to property value and to reduced running costs. New South Wales plans to introduce a voluntary disclosure scheme in 2018, and to make it mandatory in 2020.

These schemes not only make it easier to identify homes that cost less to run, but can also drive demand for energy-efficient renovations and put downward pressure on electricity prices.

The distribution of information about housing in Australia is flawed. Real estate agents, valuers, financiers and electricity industry operators are making decisions based on very little or no information about how the quality of houses impacts on their clients, their business processes and electricity infrastructure investment.

Most importantly, owners and renters are not being informed about the quality of the houses they are buying or renting, and the impacts that particular dwellings will have on their health, comfort and wallets.

What can you do?

So is the housing sector right? Do you care about the quality of the building you live in? What is a sensibly designed and well-constructed house worth to you? What dollar value do you put on your health, safety and comfort? What value is there for your family to able to cope with heatwaves, or to pay off the mortgage sooner because of the money you save on power bills?

Which house would you buy in this suburb? Wendy Miller

You don’t need to wait for government to act. If you are looking at buying or renting a new home or apartment, ask to see the energy certificate for the dwelling. Such a certificate would have been created as part of the building approval process.

It could also be useful to ask for a thermal imaging report and air leakage report. These are tests the builder can have done to prove his quality of construction.

Is the insulation properly installed? Wendy Miller

For existing homes, you can ask the seller for a Universal Certificate, or a copy of their energy bills, or evidence of features they have installed to enhance the comfort of the house (such as receipts for insulation or window tinting).

And next time you’re visiting a friend or neighbour with heat radiating from the walls, windows and roof, and the aircon cranked at full blast, enjoy the nice cool air – because you’re helping them pay for it.

Wendy Miller receives/has received funding from the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre, the Australian Research Council and the National Climate Change Adaptation Fund. She has conducted industry funded research on building performance and the electricity network for the Australian Glass and Glazing Association, Ergon, ERM, Brisbane Airport Corporation, Metecno and various government departments.

The adventurer Sir David Hempleman-Adams calls on politicians to "grasp the nettle" on climate change.

Wildlife experts have applied for licence to release 10 animals following successful reintroductions in Scotland and England

Beavers could return to Wales for the first time in hundreds of years, after being successfully reintroduced in other parts of the UK.

Wildlife experts are submitting a licence application to release 10 beavers in the south of the country and hope the reintroduction could begin this year.

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2016 wasn’t all bad news for the climate, but it was ugly toward the end

This past year had so many stories involving human-caused climate change – it will be forever in our memories. Here is a summary of some of the high points, from my perspective. When I say “high points” I don’t necessarily mean good. Some of these high points are bad and some are downright ugly. Let’s do the good first.

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A leading US Republican fears for the future of her grandchildren with Donald Trump as president.

Parkhead, Sheffield Shortly before the day died, luridly bright streaks of pink and purple began appearing like a bruise

The window of my room here looks south-west, over the rooftops of a Sheffield suburb draped over the foothills of the Pennines, and through it I watch the endless traffic of the sky all day; the fleets of clouds steaming past on their journey from coast to coast, the planes etching contrails that wobble tipsily in the winds.

Recently, the sky has seemed muted, in the way it often does when the light is at its leanest and the weather settles for grey neutrality. But a marvel of midwinter is how even the most austere, threadbare days can give rise to the most lavish of sunsets.

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Karumba locals use improvised barricades to corral the 3.5m saltwater crocodile, which made an unwelcome appearance on New Year’s Eve

Locals in a small north Queensland fishing town improvised with rubbish bins and hay bales to corral a 3.5m crocodile who wandered into their midst on New Year’s Eve.

The crocodile kept police and residents in Karumba, on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, on high alert for most of Saturday until environment department officials arrived from Cairns, about 700km away, to capture and remove the reptile.

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Ornithologists and volunteer twitchers search Kakadu National Park for the endangered yellow chat; goats make a meal of weeds in the Bega Valley; we visit a dairy farm with a difference - this one milks camels.

The climate debate can give you a headache at the best of times. Confused person image from www.shutterstock.com

If you thought the climate debate has been ugly, you haven’t seen anything yet. In 2017 Australia will review its climate policies, and the process is not off to a good start.

To recap: with the release of the climate review’s terms of reference at the end of 2016, the federal environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, appeared to place on the table an emissions intensity scheme (a widely supported form of carbon pricing). He then wisely went to Antarctica.

After its day in the sun, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull swiftly backtracked in part due to pressure from conservatives within the Coalition. By allowing a small group of politicians to take the most cost-effective policy off the table at the outset, Turnbull has made the coming year(s) that much harder to manage.

In the same week, Chief Scientist Alan Finkel reported his initial findings on the security of the National Electricity Market. He stated that his review “will continue to analyse all the options to ensure future security of power supply and compliance with climate obligations”.

And that was only 2016…

Reviews galore

The Finkel review of the National Electricity Market will be released in 2017. At the same time, the government will begin its climate policy review.

Unless the political circumstances change dramatically, the review will conclude by the end of this year.

Every step of the way will see protests, media stunts, hostile leaking and lobbying – public and private – by big actors. Climate and energy will consume the national news agenda, which will leave voters and viewers exhausted.

The terms of reference state that the review will look into:

• the role of international carbon permits in reaching targets

• a long-term emissions-reduction goal after 2030

• asking the department to look at the impact of state-based policies, including the states’ own ambitious renewable energy targets, and whether this helps or hinders the national approach

• the impact of policies on jobs, investment, trade competitiveness, households and regional Australia

• Turnbull’s move to combine the energy and environment portfolios and whether this is the best way to tackle climate policy.

That there is nothing in this about an expanded and lengthened Renewable Energy Target will mean nothing to groups who want it discussed.

What can the government actually achieve now?

Now the government has ruled out the most promising policy option, who will be willing to lead the hamstrung review? Watch this space.

And what is left on the policy table? There are a couple of options:

• expanding the large-scale Renewable Energy Target (RET) – this seems unlikely, given the amount of grief Turnbull and Frydenberg have been giving South Australia and Queensland over their own renewable targets of late

• regulating the closure of coal-fired power stations – this seems unlikely too, given the failure of the “cash for closures” scheme under the Gillard Labor government

• further restrictions on land use (unlikely to make the National Party very happy) and research into methane reductions from livestock (cue headlines about cow farts).

But asides from not making environmentalists particularly happy, these will not resolve the questions of grid security and energy pricing, both of which have the potential to cause political and economic mayhem.

Sharpen the pitchforks

Labor will use climate as a “wedge issue”, perhaps more gingerly and cautiously than Kevin Rudd did ahead of the 2007 election.

The government’s relations with the state governments will stay fraught. South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has mooted a states-based emissions intensity scheme, but there is little appetite from other states, and business appears unenthusiastic

However, Weatherill may now be tempted to deflect blame for any South Australian energy problems onto Turnbull, who has made himself into a piñata.

Business is fuming and some odd coalitions are forming. The policy uncertainty (caused of course in no small part by the business sector’s failure to defend Gillard’s carbon tax) is aggravating them and scaring away investment. The worst possible outcome for business – a patchwork of state laws causing more work and less profit – is a distinct possibility.

Meanwhile, the gas industry has had its beady eye on electricity generation for well over a decade. It wants some sort of emissions trading scheme badly, so it can be in pole position as lots of coal-fired plants are closing soon.

Expect to see a “gas versus coal” battle, with coal pointing to gas prices rising, because it fetches more on the international market. The question of reservation policy – hated by many – may attract some strange allies.

The environmental movement will struggle over this. They are still bruised over the Rudd and Gillard policy battles, and an emissions intensity scheme is numbingly technical. In her excellent PhD thesis at the University of New South Wales, Rebecca Pearse argued that many activists have moved on to either supporting community-based renewables or contesting fossil-fuel infrastructure projects.

Of course, anti-green groups will also be hard at work, perhaps led by Coalition MPs Cory Bernardi and George Christensen and the Institute of Public Affairs. All have argued that Australia should do much less on climate change.

Expect anything

Finkel’s final electricity review is due in March. It will be interesting to see if the attacks that have happened to other scientists involved in climate and energy happen to him.

At some point in 2017 Al Gore will release a sequel to his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Expect to see reactions to that.

The next big international negotiations, chaired by Fiji but hosted by Germany, will take place in November 2017.

Will President Trump have taken the United States out of the Paris Agreement by then? Will the US pull out of the entire climate convention? Or will Trump settle for just sending the office junior to the negotiations, while gutting his Environmental Protection Authority?

Nobody knows, probably not even the president-elect himself. A recent ANU study points to Trump-style disaffection taking hold in Australian politics.

There’s a hoary old Machiavelli quote that gets dragged out in articles like these about the political pain that transitions cause:

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

In these dire times, it is unclear who could call an end – or a ceasefire – to what Guardian journalist Lenore Taylor calls “the stupid barren years of the carbon wars”. It’s what some public policy theorists call a “hurting stalemate”.

This is going to be bloody.

Marc Hudson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Economically driven infrastructure and housing plans endanger beauty spots, say rural campaigners

Some of Britain’s best-loved landscapes are being threatened by the government’s rush to declare the country “open for business”, warn rural campaigners.

Large developments and infrastructure projects are planned in some of the UK’s most treasured tourist destinations, including the Lake District, the Cotswolds, and Sussex’s High Weald as well as on large swaths of green belt land.

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With stable democratic government, a well developed health system and a highly educated population, Costa Rica is the happiest nation on earth.

Despite international efforts, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to grow. Coal image from www.shutterstock.com

Cabinet papers from 1992 and 1993 released today by the National Archives of Australia confirm that Australia was a reluctant player in international discussions about climate change and environmental issues under Prime Minister Paul Keating.

Internationally, it was an exciting time for the environment. In June 1992, the UN Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro. Here the world negotiated the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (which last year gave us the Paris Agreement) and opened the Convention on Biological Diversity for signing.

So what was Australia doing?

Australia stumbles towards climate policy

Domestically, the focus was on Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD), a policy process begun by Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Working groups made up of corporate representatives, environmentalists and bureaucrats had beavered away and produced hundreds of recommendations.

By the final report in December 1991, the most radical recommendations (gasp – a price on carbon!) had been weeded out. Democrats Senator John Coulter warned of bureaucratic hostility to the final recommendations. Keating replaced Hawke in the same month.

The August 1992 meeting, where the ESD policies were meant to be agreed upon, was so disastrous that the environmentalists walked out and even the corporates felt aggrieved.

Two interim reports on the ESD process from the cabinet papers fill in some of the detail.

The first interim report, in March 1992, said that government departments had not been able to identify which recommendations to take on board. Cabinet moved the process on, but the only policies on the table were those that involved:

…little or no additional cost, cause minimal disruption to industry or the community, and which also offer benefits other than greenhouse related.

By May, federal ministers were told that the states and territories weren’t committed to either ESD or greenhouse gas policies.

The policy process rumbled on after the walkout, finally producing a National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development and a National Greenhouse Response Strategy. The greenhouse strategy contained only – surprise! – toothless voluntary measures, which proved ineffective in keeping emissions down to 1990 levels.

The November 1992 minutes mildly note that:

Most major interest groups have voiced concerns about their lack of involvement in the drafting of the NGRS [greenhouse strategy] document. Officials made provision for community input through the public comment process and a public consultative forum held in August [the one the environmentalists walked out of]. Reaction from conservation groups is likely to be negative, given the limited changes made to many of the responses in the revised strategy. They are likely to want to see more concerted efforts in areas such as fuel efficiency and renewable energy sources.

Indeed.

With equal prescience, the document warns:

Coal producers and resource-intensive industries (eg. aluminium) may express concern about their prospects in the medium to long term.

There are not many surprises here. The dithering over climate and environmental policies has been well covered by Clive Hamilton, David Cox, Joan Staples and numerous academic papers (see here, here, here, and here).

And while we won’t know officially who said what for another 30 years, there are tantalising hints in Neal Blewett’s A Cabinet Diary. Published in 1999, it reveals the antagonism between the environment minister and others in the Keating cabinet.

The international stage

International climate policy was dominated by the US threat, under President George Bush senior, not to attend the Earth Summit if the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) included specific emission-reduction targets. The US attended, and the UNFCCC didn’t include targets.

In Australia, the cabinet papers point out, not for the first or last time, that:

Australia is the only developed megadiverse country; it is a major user and exporter of greenhouse gas producing fossil fuels and energy intensive products; it could be significantly affected by global environmental change.

In May 1992 cabinet endorsed in principle support for the UNFCCC. There are three ironies here.

First, it was a major concern that the media statement to accompany Environment Minister Ros Kelly’s signing should be amended to include the fact that:

The Convention does not bind any signatory to meet any greenhouse gas target by a specified date.

Second, the minutes note that:

A decision by Australia not to sign the Convention would be criticised by domestic environment interests and could also attract international criticism, particularly in the Pacific region.

In later years, Prime Minister John Howard would not worry about this when repeatedly nixing ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.

Third, an emphasis on assisting developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region with climate adaptation looks odd given there had been zero mention of greenhouse gases in a March 1992 discussion document of aid to Cambodia (that country is feeling the effects already).

Keating’s willingness to let Kelly sign the convention may have been related to the following:

The Convention contains several safeguards which protect Australia’s interests … [A]llowance is made for “the differences in Parties’ starting points and approaches, economic structures and resource bases, and the need to maintain strong and sustainable economic growth, available technologies and other individual circumstances”. Additionally, Parties are obliged to take into consideration the situation of Parties with economies that are highly dependent on the production, processing, export and use of fossil fuels. These two provisions will give relevant countries, including Australia, flexibility in fulfilling their obligations under the Convention.

And they probably thought they had more time than they actually did. The May 1992 note argues:

[The UNFCCC] is likely to take some years to obtain the necessary ratifications to bring it into force.

It took two. Australia ratified the treaty in December 1992, but not before noting that the UNFCCC would worry industry for being too strong, and environmental groups for being too weak. So no changes there.

What happened next

At least when it comes to climate policy, there are no real secrets worthy of the name. We have always known that the Australian state quickly retreated from its already hedged promise to take action, and told us all along that this was because we had a lot of coal.

While Australia’s international credibility has flatlined (with a brief bump from 2007 to 2009), two other things have soared over the last 25 years: Australia’s coal exports, and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Both look set to continue their upward trend.

Reading the documents, it is striking how concerned the cabinet was to minimise its financial commitments (unsurprising, perhaps, given the overall state of the economy at the time), and just how unimportant the climate issue was to leaders who ask us to trust them on the long-term future of the country. It seems it was a distant abstraction that many didn’t really think was real. How times have changed.

Marc Hudson does 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.

• NYPD posts photo of whale swimming near mayor’s mansion
• Another humpback took up residence in Hudson river last month

A large whale, believed to be a humpback, was spotted in the East river in New York City on Saturday.

Related: New York's whales to be studied for the first time

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Greek graphic designer Meni Chatzipanagiotou, who has been immersed in nature since she was a child, crafts her scenic illustrations of starry mountainscapes on wood rather than on paper. “The natural colour and smell of the wood brings me closer to nature,” she says. “I enjoy thinking about the wood’s structure, how it can be transformed into something else and hold additional purpose and meaning.” At the intersection of science, fantasy and fiction, and made with thin pens to achieve an intricate attention to detail, these woodcut illustrations represent an ode to our earthly origins. “Botanical nature holds harmony and purity. For those who want to listen, I believe that nature has many things to teach us.”

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A longtime advocate for public lands, Terry Tempest Williams has been at the forefront of fighting for conservation. This year, she stepped into the firing line

One cold day last February, Terry Tempest Williams, a prominent environmental author and advocate, stepped into Utah’s Salt Palace to begin her unlikely career in the energy industry.

Salt Palace, Salt Lake City’s largest convention center, was hosting a federal oil and gas lease sale, at which the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) would auction off 45,000 acres of public land for oil and gas extraction.

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Cricieth, North Wales There was no horizon, no distinction in the grey tonality, no dividing line between sea and sky

A drab December greyness. I scrunched eastwards along the shingle, heading towards Black Rock. Foamy salients threatened to swamp my boots. My little terrier Phoebe darted in and out of the wavelets to retrieve sticks.

Here and there I paused to watch a raft of scoter (Melanitta nigra) offshore. Their dark shapes pulsed up and down on a smooth swell.

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Each summer for 40 years Nev and Bev McLachlan have camped on a remote Queensland beach to monitor and tag nesting sea turtles. Melissa Davey joins them on their mission

It’s about 7pm at the remote Wreck Rock beach within Deepwater national park in Queensland and Nev and Bev McLachlan are starting the night watch.

For the past 40 years the husband and wife have been travelling from their home on the Sunshine Coast to a tiny campsite about 140km north of Bundaberg, their enormous caravan full of camp supplies as well as turtle tagging and monitoring gear.

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Join Indira Naidoo, Amelia Telford and David Suzuki in this discussion which considers our links with the natural world.

From a majestic natural spectacle to a high-octane technological thrill ride, here's our guide to the big science events of 2017.