The Guardian
Tourism industry says lethal shark control measures threaten Great Barrier Reef
Peak Queensland tourism bodies oppose ‘unnecessary’ drum lines and say more research needed into shark behaviour
Peak bodies representing the Queensland tourism industry have resisted calls for changes to Great Barrier Reef protection legislation to allow for lethal shark control measures.
The strong statement, co-signed by several tourism bodies, said any such move would be an “unnecessary step” and could affect the reef’s world heritage status.
Continue reading...Conservative moratorium on fracking is just an election ploy | Letters
Should we temper exultation with realism (Fracking banned in UK after government U-turn, 2 November)? Remember that politicians, even Conservative prime ministers, have a record of telling high-profile lies, especially in the run-up to an election. Remember David Cameron’s emphatic assurance that there would be no new Heathrow runway, “no ifs, no buts”, repeated several times before the 2010 general election? Boris Johnson, whose promises have frequently been shown to be false, knows fracking is unpopular in a number of Midlands and northern constituencies, including Conservative targets. He might well assure us that fracking will be banned, but in the longer term cite “changed circumstances” to reverse the pledge.
David Packham
Bath
• The government has suddenly halted fracking until “compelling new evidence is provided” that proves it is safe. I would wager that Andrea Leadsom will unveil said evidence the week after the marginal Midlands and northern constituencies, who are strongly against fracking, have voted in her colleagues. The government hasn’t “banned” anything. It has temporarily halted an unnecessary and unpopular practice to gain some votes.
Simon Richards
Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire
Letter: Sir Simon Gourlay obituary
As editor of the newly launched weekly Farming News, I found Simon Gourlay (Other Lives, 28 October) to be a refreshingly dynamic and reformist president of the National Farmers Union.
While he was still deputy president, in 1983, he agreed to brief our freshly appointed staff of some 25 journalists in a converted church in Knightsbridge, central London. Just as Simon entered the room, a thunderstorm broke and amid claps of thunder and shafts of lightning he looked the very prophet.
Continue reading...Why I'm voting No 1 regent honeyeater in the Australian bird of the year poll | Andrew Stafford
They’re an eye-popping treat, but drought and the bulldozer have thinned their numbers. Now a coal plant and dam wall threaten their survival
• Cast your vote in bird of the year 2019 here
A few months ago, the bird-watching community in south-east Queensland went into a twitching frenzy. Two regent honeyeaters, a critically endangered species, had been discovered feeding on ironbark blossoms in the suburban heart of Springfield Lakes, on Brisbane’s south-western outskirts, near the satellite city of Ipswich.
The honeyeaters stayed for several weeks, spending the afternoons in a single, heavily flowering tree between a shopping village and childcare centre. When the blossom on that tree and the surrounding ironbarks began to dry up, they began feasting on lerps – tiny, sugary-tasting, sap-sucking insects which clung to the leaves of a small fig tree directly outside a coffee shop.
Continue reading...Shale gas fracking wasted ‘millions of taxpayers’ cash’, say scientists
Ministers have been condemned for wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in a failed attempt to introduce fracking to the UK. The bid also cost the nation a decade of effort that should have been expended on other, more environmentally friendly energy projects, scientists and activists claimed yesterday.
The criticisms were made in the wake of the government’s decision on Friday to impose a moratorium on fracking in the UK. A review published by the Oil and Gas Authority concluded it was impossible to predict the likelihood or scale of earthquakes triggered by fracking.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg asks for lift back across Atlantic as climate meeting shifts to Madrid
Swedish teenager needs help getting back to Europe following the COP25 meeting’s move from Chile to Spain
As delegates to the COP25 climate summit scramble to adjust to a last-minute change of venue from Santiago to Madrid, one of the highest-profile attendees has stuck out a metaphorical thumb on social media to ask for a lift across the Atlantic.
Teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was speaking in California during a stop on her low-emissions journey from Sweden to Chile, tweeted that she was now in need of a ride to Spain.
Continue reading...Clever, cheeky, screechy cockatoos: in search of Australia's naughtiest bird
A tip from the public leads us to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, on the trail of well-known mischief maker
• Cast your vote in bird of the year 2019 here
With their sharply curved grey beaks and talons, ear-splitting screech, snow-white feathers and crest flaring in a shock of yellow, sulphur-crested cockatoos are some of Australia’s most distinctive native birds.
They are also some of the nation’s smartest and most destructive. They are known to open the lids of wheelie bins, flicking rubbish everywhere while rummaging for food. They are notorious for destroying wooden window frames, decking or house fittings. They lop the tops off flowers, uproot seedlings, hollow out trees and generally make a big old mess. And they are loud.
Continue reading...Yes, there's still hope Australia can cross the bridge to a low-carbon world | Ross Garnaut
If we all understood the economic value of a transition to renewables, we could move from policy incoherence to hope
There is a chasm between a world that quickly breaks the link between modern economic growth and carbon emissions, and a world that fails to do so. The side of the chasm that we are now on is a dangerous place. It would be reckless beyond the normal human irrationality for us to stay where we are.
Australian prosperity and security, as well as our natural and human heritage, will be challenged in fundamental and perhaps unanswerable ways if humanity does not succeed in holding temperature increases below 2C and as close as possible to 1.5C. With only half the warming we can expect from 1.5C, we have already had to deal with dreadful impacts of more severe, earlier and more frequent bushfires; reduced flows into the Murray–Darling river system; degradation of the Great Barrier Reef; a shift to desalination to supply water for Perth; reduced moisture in our southern farming soils; and high tides lapping at the steps of the beach huts at Brighton in Victoria.
Continue reading...Canine confusion: NSW 'wild dogs' found to be dingoes or dingo-hybrids
Researchers say study dispels belief that state no longer has ‘real dingo’ populations
Almost all of the so-called wild dogs in New South Wales that are killed to protect livestock are actually dingoes or “dingo-dominant hybrids”, according to new research.
Researchers at the University of New South Wales said their DNA sampling project showed between 9% and 23% of the “wild dogs” in the state had only dingo ancestry, challenging a notion that most dingo populations had died out.
Continue reading...Government's halt to fracking an election stunt, says Corbyn - video
Jeremy Corbyn has said the decision to halt fracking in England with immediate effect is an election stunt. The Labour leader says he believes the moratorium will be lifted on 13 December, the day after the general election, if Boris Johnson's government is returned to office
Continue reading...Jeremy Corbyn decries fracking suspension as election stunt
Labour leader’s comments come after minister suggests halt may only be temporary
Calls are growing for the next government to make the suspension of fracking in England permanent after a minister suggested the halt to exploration may only be temporary.
The government announced an immediate moratorium on fracking on Friday in a major U-turn after the Oil and Gas Authority said in a report that it was unable to predict the magnitude of any earthquakes triggered by hydraulic fracturing NEW after one measured 2.9 on the Richter scale in August. NEW
Continue reading...Leonardo DiCaprio calls Greta Thunberg ‘a leader of our time’
Environmentalist actor says first meeting with teenage climate activist was ‘an honour’
Leonardo DiCaprio has praised teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg as a “leader of our time” following their first meeting.
DiCaprio, a prominent environmental campaigner, said 16-year-old Thunberg’s message should be a “wake-up call to world leaders everywhere that the time for inaction is over”.
Continue reading...Wales has lowest number of electric car chargers per head in UK
One Welsh county has only three public charging points for every 100,000 residents
Britain may be on the verge of an electric car revolution but Welsh drivers wanting to change to greener personal transport may struggle: the eight counties in the UK with the lowest number of chargers per person in Britain are all in Wales, government data has revealed.
Rhondda Cynon Taf has only three public car chargers for every 100,000 residents, putting it bottom of a league table of English counties, Scottish council areas and Welsh principal areas published on Saturday from the Department for Transport and private sector data provider Zap-map.
Continue reading...Thousands of Britons invited to climate crisis citizens' assembly
Only 110 of 30,000 who receive invites will take part in event over four weekends next year
Thirty-thousand people across the UK have been randomly chosen to take part in a citizens’ assembly on the climate emergency convened by MPs.
Invitations to the assembly, which will be held over four weekends in Birmingham from January to mid-March, are due to arrive from Wednesday next week.
Continue reading...Antarctic marine park: conservationists frustrated after protection bid fails for eighth time
Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources unable to agree on plan backed by Australia, France and EU
Conservationists have expressed frustration that an international commission for protecting marine life in Antarctica has failed for the eighth consecutive time to create a marine park across 1 million sq km on the continent’s east.
Members of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) could not agree on the proposal, backed by Australia, France and the EU, that would have protected habitat for penguins, seals, whales and seabirds.
Continue reading...'Ecological breakdown': Greta Thunberg and youth activists rally as wildfires burn
The Swedish climate activist joined more than 1,000 people for an afternoon of youth-led climate action in Los Angeles
Paradise is not what it used to be, as Greta Thunberg witnessed earlier this week. Today the town with a lovely name is best known for the apocalyptic fire that ripped through it last year, decimating nearly every home and killing 86 people.
This week California is once more in flames as fires rage in the north and south – a point that was not lost on the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who spoke at a rally in Los Angeles on Friday.
Continue reading...Fracking banned in UK as government makes major U-turn
Victory for green groups follows damning scientific study and criticism from spending watchdog
The government has banned fracking with immediate effect in a watershed moment for environmentalists and community activists.
Ministers also warned shale gas companies it would not support future fracking projects, in a crushing blow to companies that had been hoping to capitalise on one of the new frontiers of growth in the fossil fuel industry.
Continue reading...Seeing red: sharks, drum lines and the media hysteria that surrounds them
The recent Whitsundays shark attack prompted the usual calls for lethal control measures, but would they have made any difference?
The terrifying triumph of the film Jaws was how its opening scene unfolded without a glimpse of the shark. Thrashing, screaming, spluttering. And the fear of a killer lurking beneath that has lingered in swimmers’ minds for decades.
Shark attacks remain exceptionally rare. But when one occurs off Australia’s coast, the reaction is often hysteria, as dramatic and phoney as when the fake shark finally did raise its head.
Continue reading...To the moon and back with the eastern curlew
Ultra-endurance athlete, aerodynamic wonder … and facing extinction. Why the bird who flies 30,000km a year needs Australia’s mudflats
• Vote for your favourite in the 2019 bird of the year poll
The ascent is vertical. Up, up and into the jet stream. If the conditions are not right up there it will come back down and wait. But if there is a good tailwind in the right direction it will begin an epic journey that will take it around the curvature of the Earth; from the Arctic Circle to the southern hemisphere.
Using the sun and stars as a compass, and navigating by the Earth’s magnetic field, recognising landmarks, the far eastern curlew will fly nonstop to the Yellow Sea, where it fuels up on the mudflats of north-east China.
Continue reading...Greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles cancelled out cuts from renewable energy
Annual carbon dioxide emissions from burning diesel increased by 21.7m tonnes between 2011 and 2018
Greenhouse gas emissions from diesel cars, utes and vans have risen sharply since 2011, effectively cancelling out the cut in pollution from new renewable energy replacing some coal plants.
A surge in ownership of diesel vehicles is the main reason emissions from transport leapt by more than 10% over the decade, according to the monthly emissions audit published by progressive thinktank the Australia Institute.
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