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Solar power to rise from Chernobyl's nuclear ashes
Chinese companies plan to spend $1bn building a giant solar farm on land contaminated by the nuclear disaster in Ukraine, reports Climate News Network
It was the worst nuclear accident in history, directly causing the deaths of 50 people, with at least an additional 4,000 fatalities believed to be caused by exposure to radiation.
The 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine also resulted in vast areas of land being contaminated by nuclear fallout, with a 30-kilometre exclusion zone, which encompassed the town of Pripyat, being declared in the area round the facility.
Continue reading...Tidal lagoon: £1.3bn Swansea Bay project backed by review
Tidal lagoons 'could ensure UK power supplies'
Former energy minister’s words will boost efforts to get Swansea Bay lagoon project off the ground
Tidal lagoons could play an important role in ensuring secure power supplies, according to a former energy minister who has led a review into the technology.
Charles Hendry was speaking before the publication of his independent review, commissioned by the government, into the potential for tidal lagoon energy in the UK.
Continue reading...Is the justice system failing British cyclists? Help us find out
The co-chair of parliament’s all-party cycling committee introduces its inquiry into how cyclists are treated by the police and courts
What stops more people from cycling? The answer is clear: too many people feel unsafe using Britain’s roads.
Almost two-thirds of people agree with the statement, “It is too dangerous for me to cycle on the roads.” Yet roads are too often all that people have available to them.
Continue reading...Comments invited: draft Threat Abatement Plan for the Impacts of Marine Debris on Vertebrate Marine Species
Under the thrum of the A1: sunbeams, hoofprints and pearly ice spears
Sandy, Bedfordshire In the concrete underpass, chemicals leach and stain, yet here the sun can pierce blight with beauty
Two bridges cross the river, 300 metres and an aesthetic mile apart. A little downstream, 18th-century builders had carried the old Great North Road over the Ivel in the only way they knew, fashioning pretty arches from local stone and a humpbacked road wide enough for two carriages to pass.
Here, their 20th-century counterparts twinned it with something bigger. Committed to a four-lane, prosaically named A1, they used an all-prevailing material that could be relied on for strength, durability and ugliness.
Continue reading...Victoria's plans for hydrogen exports to Japan are 'way of making brown coal look green'
Proposed plant would would be run by Kawasaki Heavy Industries and produce liquid hydrogen for use in vehicles
Victorian government plans to work with a Japanese company to produce hydrogen from brown coal in the Latrobe Valley are “a way of making brown coal look green”, according to one expert.
The proposed plant, which would be run by Kawasaki Heavy Industries as part of their Kawasaki Hydrogen Road project, would produce liquid hydrogen that would then be exported to Japan to be used in hydrogen-powered vehicles.
Continue reading...Life in a post-flying Australia, and why it might actually be ok
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In Australia, the amount of aviation fuel consumed per head of population has more than doubled since the 1980s. We now use, on average, 2.2 barrels (or 347 litres) of jet fuel per person per year.
This historically unprecedented aeromobility has enormous environmental costs. Aviation is contributing to around 4.9% of current global warming and this is forecast to at least triple by 2050. Domestic aviation in Australia produces around 8.6 million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year.
Offsetting schemes, technology solutions and other attempts to lower the carbon emissions of aviation have failed dismally.
The only solution to these intractable environmental impacts is the dramatic reduction, or complete elimination, of air travel. It might be hard to imagine life without the plane, but the idea is not as crazy as it sounds.
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Here are nine common objections to grounding planes, and our counterpoints:
1. There are no fast, cheap and clean transport alternatives to the plane.So we build them. We construct a national high-speed rail network and more efficient intercity, rural and urban transport systems. These projects would involve Australian steel, thousands of new jobs and large-scale regional planning and infrastructure development.
These programs would ameliorate urban congestion, the most pressing priority of Infrastructure Australia, revitalise regional communities and dramatically reduce our imports of crude and refined petroleum.
The continual development of communications technologies, including fast internet and virtual reality, will make much business travel redundant. Investing in virtual technologies and forcing the political and corporate elite to use other transport modes would hasten political support for, and investment in, the development of transport alternatives.
2. What about the economic value of tourism?If we abandoned all tourist flights, the economy would be A$14.4 billion better off. International visitors spent A$38.1 billion in Australia in 2015-16. But, Australians travelling overseas spent far more – A$52.4 billion – in the same period.
International tourism, both in and outbound, would continue under a no–aviation scenario. As an island nation we will become reliant on ships. Travel by cruise ship is already booming. While cruise ships are currently highly polluting, their conversion to non-fossil-fuel energy, in contrast to the plane, is more achievable.
3. What about our education export industry?Transnational education, teaching of students by Australian university offshore programs and via online distance education, is already significant, accounting for 30.2% of all higher education international students in 2015. We would invest more heavily in these educational platforms and technologies.
4. What about the jobs in the aviation industry?Technological replacement and offshoring have decimated full-time jobs in Australia’s aviation industry. The employment generated by growth in domestic tourism and the construction of high-speed rail, ships and other transport alternatives would more than compensate.
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We would still have a backpacker labour force under conditions of “slow tourism” that uses alternatives to cars and planes. Particularly for longer-stay tourism, arrival and departures by boat would be a small component of a trip.
We could also start using our own population for these jobs by paying higher wages. This might also reduce unemployment and dependency on social welfare and raise additional tax revenue. In the longer term we would transition to agriculture and hospitality industries that are not reliant on exploited and underpaid holiday-workers.
6. What about medical, military and rescue flights?We need to keep essential flights for medical, rescue and firefighting purposes, and some military capacity. For essential flights, mitigation strategies like offsets may work as emissions would be low in aggregate.
7. What about sport and culture?Sport and air travel are closely linked. Our national rugby union team is the Qantas Wallabies. Although teams travel, more spectators than ever are staying put – preferring to watch live sports on TV. Technological improvements will continue to produce a better-than-real home experience. And the eSports teams of the future may not have to leave home either.
8. Prohibition never works!Banning things like alcohol has proven historically difficult, even in Canberra. But no-fly zones are easier to enforce – you couldn’t smuggle an A380 into the country and fly it around without anyone noticing.
9. It’s too radical a change – it would cause chaos!Arguably, the controllable outcomes of grounding aircraft will be far less severe than the chaos of uncontrolled global climate change. A transformed, low-emissions transportation system can be planned for and, while there will be significant readjustment, life will go on.
A “business as usual” climate change scenario will unleash destruction unparalleled in human history, including the genuine threat of species extinction.
As an island nation we are more dependent than most on the aeroplane. Rather than giving us special dispensation, this puts us in a position to be world leaders in sustainable transport. Our proposal to ground planes and dramatically reduce emissions would need tremendous action in terms of civic will, and a state apparatus politically capable of taking radical action.
Liberal democracies are capable of such action, as evidenced by Australia’s Snowy Mountains Scheme. And Trump’s mandate to build infrastructure shows nation-building projects still command public support. An aviation-free Australia is a genuine and necessary alternative.
![The Conversation](https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/70388/count.gif)
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
'Star Wars gibbon' is new primate species
Mysterious fossils find place on the tree of life
World's largest peatland with vast carbon-storage capacity found in Congo
Carbon-rich peatlands in remote Congo basin could store three years’ worth of world’s fossil fuel emissions, say scientists
Scientists have discovered the world’s largest tropical peatland in the remote Congo swamps, estimated to store the equivalent of three year’s worth of the world’s total fossil fuel emissions.
Researchers mapped the Cuvette Centrale peatlands in the central Congo basin and found they cover 145,500 sq km – an area larger than England. The swamps could lock in 30bn tonnes of carbon that was previously not known to exist, making the region one of the most carbon-rich ecosystems on Earth.
Continue reading...MPs tell Theresa May to halt sale of Green Investment Bank
Caroline Lucas criticises proposed sale to Macquarie due to Australian firm’s ‘appalling track record of asset-stripping’
Theresa May has been urged to stop the Green Investment Bank being “killed off” by a sale to private firm Macquarie, amid fears the assets will be stripped and its environmental purpose abandoned.
MPs from across the parties raised concerns about the proposed sale in the House of Commons, after Caroline Lucas, co-leader of the Green party, called a debate arguing the whole process should be stopped.
Continue reading...Water relief for 8,000 thirsty elephants neglected by Zimbabwe
Boreholes set up by local conservationists are saving drought-stricken elephants in Hwange national park
As a drought-inducing El Niño settled over southern Africa in 2016, the animals of Hwange national park in Zimbabwe faced desperate water shortages.
During a heatwave in October, conservation worker Prince Sansole spotted an elephant partially submerged in a muddy pool. His movements initially looked no different from the water games routinely played by the giant creatures. Only a closer look revealed that the young bull was in trouble, struggling to get up. His limp trunk kept dropping back into the water, unable to catch a fresh breath.
Continue reading...Nightmare on the pill
Polar bear cam to show bears' response to declining sea ice
Blind mice have sight restored
New species of gibbon discovered in China
Newly recognised species given the name ‘Skywalker hoolock gibbon’ by the team that proved it was distinct from other Chinese gibbons
Scientists have discovered a new species of gibbon living in south-west China’s rainforests.
Although scientists had been studying the primate for some time, new research has revealed it is in fact a different species.
Continue reading...'Star Wars gibbon' is new primate species
Bird species vanish from UK due to climate change and habitat loss
Rising temperatures and crop farming mean birds are disappearing from parts of England, says study, while butterflies and dragonflies are faring better
Climate change has already led to the vanishing of some bird species in parts of England, where intensively farmed land gives them no room to adapt to warming temperatures. The revelation, in a new scientific study, contradicts previous suggestions that birds are tracking global warming by shifting their ranges.
The research found that birds that prefer cooler climes, such as meadow pipits, willow tits and willow warblers, have disappeared from sites in south-east England and East Anglia, where intensive crop growing is common.
Continue reading...The tiny world in a rotten post top
Wenlock Edge, Shropshire In this miniature pool had fallen a gunk of seeds and leaves, and lawns of algae had spread
Something about the fencepost grabbed my attention, and instead of watching the path winding through dark trees against the orchestral sweep of a January sky, I picked out small visual notes: moss, water, tree rings on the post.
I’d passed this way 100 times; each time was different and each time I’d been looking elsewhere. What brought the fencepost into focus this time? Perhaps it was the dissimilitude of small birds in the trees: blue tits, great tits, chaffinches, robins, so different from each other yet similar in their size and movement, their little mutterings under breath made me notice smaller details.
Continue reading...