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Not so warped
Sumatran orangutans in rehab – in pictures
Members of the critically endangered species are cared for and nursed back to health before their release at the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme’s rehabilitation centre in Kuta Mbelin, North Sumatra, Indonesia
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
A pheasant that sports Donald Trump’s hairdo, a line of baboons and a ‘teddy bear’ bee and among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Global green movement prepares to fight Trump on climate change
Election of a climate sceptic as US president sparks outpouring of donations and a surge in planned protests and court challenges
The global green movement is preparing for the fight of its life against efforts by Donald Trump to rollback action on climate change, with a surge in fundraising, planned court challenges and a succession of protests.
Environmental activists said the election of a climate change denier as US president, along with the prospect of former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin and various oil billionaires holding senior posts, has prompted an “outpouring” of donations.
Continue reading...UK should retain carbon price floor to support coal phase-out – report
Policy Exchange paper argues government should stick with carbon price floor until coal is fully forced off the grid, reports BusinessGreen
Policy Exchange has become the latest organisation to call for the retention of the UK’s carbon price floor ahead of next week’s autumn statement, arguing changes to the policy would seriously undermine the government’s efforts to phase out coal power by 2025.
The influential thinktank joins the CBI and trade body Energy UK in arguing the levy should be kept in place, despite lobbying from some industry groups calling for it to be axed.
Continue reading...150 years of global warming in a minute-long symphony – video
Sometimes, a tune can say so much more than an image or words. Here, we turn almost 150 years of global temperatures into music. The higher the temperature, the higher the pitch of the note. And the louder the note, the more carbon there is in the atmosphere
Continue reading...Conquering the Cent Cols Challenge in the Pyrenees: from despair to defiance
Oliver Duggan recounts the geographical, physical and mental rollercoaster of cycling 100 mountain passes in 10 days across southern France and Spain
The col de la Core is not a famous climb – in cycling, or any other sport. There are no champions’ names spray painted on the ground, no monuments at the top to riders past or present. It has no especially beautiful scenery or harsh gradients. It is a simple, two-lane road, and on a Saturday morning last month, it nearly killed me.
Continue reading...Could gas from grass rival fracking to heat UK homes?
Britain’s first ‘green gas mill’ will convert grass into biomethane to heat more than 4,000 homes and is set to come online in 2018
The grass is always greener than the gas on the other side, according to a British businessman who claims grasslands could provide enough gas to heat all of the UK’s homes.
Dale Vince, the chairman of renewable energy company Ecotricity, is investing £10m in the first of a generation of what he calls ‘green gas mills’ that he says could compete against gas from fracking.
Continue reading...Great Barrier Reef: third fatality in a week as British tourist dies on dive
The man in his 60s is the third person to die on the reef this week, after two French tourists apparently had heart attacks on Wednesday
A British man has died while diving on the Great Barrier Reef, the third death in three days among visitors to Australia’s popular natural tourist attraction.
The 60-year-old man was found without a breathing device during a tandem scuba dive at Agincourt reef, 100km north of Cairns, on Friday.
Continue reading...Champions of high-altitude flight
Lake Manasarovar, Tibet Bar-headed geese are popular with British fanciers, but better to think of them here, readying for their lofty migration over the Himalayas
From the roof of Chiu monastery, perched high on its rocky hill, the water of Lake Manasarovar was cobalt, the surrounding hills rich ochre, luminous in the sunlight of a late autumn afternoon. With a shoreline 55 miles (90km) long, and at an altitude of more than 4,500 metres (15,000ft), this is one of the highest and largest bodies of freshwater in the world. Its name translates from the Sanskrit as “mind’s lake”; the mind in question being that of the Hindu creator Brahma, and in the thin air there is something ethereal about it, something unworldly. It is a sacred site of pilgrimage for a quarter of the world, not just Hindus but Buddhists too, as well as the lesser known Tibetan religion of Bon and India’s Jains.
Continue reading...75th anniversary of the sinking of HMAS Sydney II and HSK Kormoran
Peggy Whitson: Blast off to the ISS for oldest woman in space
Swiss try to give away nuclear plants, but find no takers
Supermoon floods warn of crisis facing Donald Trump
Tesla shareholders approve SolarCity acquisition
Tesla extends supercharger network to Brisbane, starts on Adelaide link
From lab to lobbying
IEA says Australia’s coal plans don’t match climate realities
Slovenia adds water to constitution as fundamental right for all
Parliament adopts amendment that declares country’s abundant clean supplies are ‘a public good managed by the state’ and ‘not a market commodity’
Slovenia has amended its constitution to make access to drinkable water a fundamental right for all citizens and stop it being commercialised.
With 64 votes in favour and none against, the 90-seat parliament added an article to the EU country’s constitution saying “everyone has the right to drinkable water”.
Continue reading...Why won't Australia ratify an international deal to cut mercury pollution?
While the Australian government congratulates itself on ratifying the Paris Agreement on climate change, it is dragging its feet on a less well known, but very important, international treaty on air pollution. Despite signing in 2013, Australia has still not ratified the UN’s Minamata Convention on Mercury.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin. In fact, the treaty is named after the city of Minamata in Japan, where mercury release was linked to developmental disorders after pregnant women ate contaminated fish in the 1960s.
Currently human activities are releasing around 2,000 tonnes of mercury each year. Scientists predict that this could reach 3,400 tonnes each year in 2050 unless we take action.
Australia’s reticence puts us behind 35 nations that have ratified the convention, including developing nations such as Madagascar, Gabon, Guinea, Guyana, Lesotho, Djibouti and Nicaragua. So what’s the holdup?
Why reduce mercury?The goal of the Convention is to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic (human-caused) emissions and releases of mercury and mercury compounds.
Airborne mercury emissions can be transported far from their point of origin, even across continents, and are dispersed widely before being deposited, primarily via rainfall, into lakes and streams and the ocean.
The most important chemical forms of mercury are elemental mercury (Hg), divalent inorganic mercury (Hg²⁺), methylmercury (CH₃Hg⁺), and dimethylmercury ((CH₃)₂Hg).
Through chemical conversion, mercury compounds enter food webs. Mercury becomes concentrated at the top of the food chain, in predatory fish through a process of biomagnification. Readers with a penchant for tuna sashimi or sushi might have some concern about mercury, as research highlighted on The Conversation pointed out that mercury levels in tuna are increasing.
People are exposed to methylmercury through their diet, particularly if it is high in fish, and especially those high up the food chain.
As methylmercury, mercury damages the human central nervous system and is extremely harmful to pregnant women and their offspring.
The Mercury ConventionAustralia signed the Minamata Convention on Mercury on 10 October 2013 at Kumamoto in Japan, when the text of the Convention was first adopted and opened for signature. But it has not taken sufficient action since then to ratify it.
One issue is that the Convention will not come into force unless enough countries ratify it. 50 ratifications or accessions are required, but so far there have been only 35.
In March 2014, the Department of Environment issued a public consultation paper seeking the views of the Australian public on ratifying the Convention.
In January 2015, the Department of Environment commissioned an economics consulting firm to undertake a cost-benefit analysis of ratifying the Minamata Convention. That taxypayer-funded document has not been made public. Nor has the timetable for ratification. The consulting firm claims the report is the “intellectual property” of the Australian government.
Electricity sector a major sourceIt is likely that one reason for the delay in ratification is deference to the objections voiced by the fossil-fuel energy sector. The electricity sector is a significant source of mercury emissions in nations that rely heavily on coal-fired electricity generation, including Australia. Coal currently supplies about 75% of Australia’s electricity (excluding rooftop solar).
The latest data from the National Pollutant Inventory show that 2,700kg of mercury were emitted from 105 electricity generators in 2014-15, an increase from the previous year’s emissions of 2,600kg.
The nation’s top three mercury emitters from the electricity sector were all power stations in Victoria, burning brown coal (lignite): Hazelwood (420kg; due to close in 2017), Yallourn (310kg), and Loy Yang B (290kg, down from 470kg).
Pollution is regulated by state environment protection authorities, but pollution licenses show an alarming lack of attention by the regulator to the issue. For example, the licence for Hazelwood power station places limits on carbon monoxide, chlorine compounds, NO₂, particulate pollution, and sulfur oxides, but does not regulate mercury at all. The word does not even feature in the licence.
Mercury is capped under general Victorian air pollution regulations, but in combination with antimony, arsenic, cadmium and lead.
Tightening pollution controlsUnlike the United States, Australia does not have a federal Clean Air Act. The question of mercury emissions from coal combustion is largely left to state pollution laws.
Australian federal environmental laws do not regulate or restrict emissions of either mercury or carbon dioxide from coal-fired power stations. This is especially the case since the July 2014 repeal of the price signal that had been set by the carbon tax.
What would ratifying the Minimata Convention mean for coal power stations? As mercury pollution is now a matter of international concern there is a strong constitutional basis for Federal legislative action, even prior to the Convention coming into force.
State pollution control regulations will need to be tightened to impose stricter limits on mercury emissions. Presently the standards found in some of the pollution licences are much weaker than those to be applied under the US standard introduced in 2013.
Unsurprisingly, the owners of Australia’s coal-fired generators have pushed back against stricter pollution controls implied under the Convention, as shown by their submissions to the public consultation paper.
They claimed that “if Australia is forced to adopt US-based mercury emissions reduction technologies, new and existing coal-based plant would cease to be competitive”, and pleaded that “requirements to retrofit Australian coal-based power stations with mercury capturing equipment would not only be very costly and unnecessary”.
Such pollution controls are only unnecessary if we are unconcerned about the environmental and health implications of mercury emissions. Researchers at MIT found that the US standard will provide benefits worth billions of dollars each year.
Given Australia’s recent ratification of the Paris Agremeent, it would seem consistent for the Australian government to move ahead more rapidly with the ratification of the Mercury Convention. This will require a closer examination of the adequacy of domestic laws in order to implement the Minamata Convention.
The Minamata Convention has not been tabled yet in Federal Parliament and this means the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties has not yet moved ahead with its part of the ratification process.
New Zealand’s analysis of ratification concluded it was “strongly” in that country’s interest to ratify. Even if the Australian government continues to delay ratification of the Minamata Convention, it is likely to come into force quite soon, and the international scientific literature is already making a strong case for stricter emissions controls in Australia.
Ratification of the Mercury Convention by Australia is a necessary step for human health and the environment.
James Prest receives funding from the Australia-Indonesia Centre.
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