The Conversation

The transition to a clean energy future is upon us, as shown by the huge uptake of solar panels and by the Turnbull government’s decision to set up a A$1 billion Clean Energy Innovation Fund. But what about those people who are at risk of being left behind?

Our survey of lower-income households shows that information about low-carbon living is often difficult to access, and that assistance is sometimes misdirected.

As a result, transitioning to low-carbon living is much harder for these households than it should be.

Listening to the people

Between December 2015 and June 2016, we held 23 focus group discussions with 164 lower-income households across eight metropolitan and regional centres in New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Our aim was to try to understand the challenges these households face in transitioning to low-carbon living. This was part of a wider study, funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living, on finding ways to help poorer households reduce their carbon impact.

Almost everyone we spoke with supported the idea of low-carbon living. However, the ability to afford whiz-bang green technology – from expensive solar panels and battery systems right down to LED lightbulbs – is a big issue for these households.

Significant increases in energy costs since the late 2000s have added to this problem. In some states, bills have more than doubled in just the past six years.

While money is a key problem, it’s not the whole story, and there are ways to help. We have found a range of factors, besides affordability, that limit lower-income households’ ability to transition to low-carbon living.

Finding reliable information

Not everyone is looking for a hand-out; many just want to know how they can help themselves become more energy-efficient.

A major barrier that cropped up time and again in our survey is accessing the “right” information. Many people get good tips about assistance programs through friends and family, or via charities like the Salvation Army (one of our in-kind project partners).

But outside these avenues, information is often only available online, and many of our participants said that they either can’t afford internet access at home or, more importantly, don’t know what to search for.

What little information trickles through is often hard to understand. The Tasmanian government, for instance, offers a range of concessions on power and heating bills for older people or those who need to run medical equipment at home. But the benefits are expressed in cents per day (the current electricity concession, for instance, is 132.557¢ per day), which can make them unnecessarily hard for customers to calculate. Eligibility criteria are also often complicated.

With access to government services increasingly being moved online, the process can become a confusing rigmarole for many people, while others may miss out entirely.

Misdirected assistance

Most of the assistance programs available to lower-income households, such as Centrelink Utilities Allowances, are aimed squarely at providing financial relief.

States and territories also have their own rebate schemes to offer relief from rising energy costs. In NSW, for example, EAPA vouchers are designed to provide emergency and crisis relief.

But with lower-income households less likely to own their homes, they are often precluded from accessing programs to encourage green energy, such as solar panel rebates. This is a classic split incentive – the owner buys the panels (and gets the rebate) but the tenant gets the benefit (lower bills), making the owner less likely to invest.

This leads to the question of why rebates are not offered for using green energy, as well as for installing it.

“Green” criteria already exist in some other assistance programs. For example, the No Interest Loan Scheme, which helps lower-income households buy products such as whitegoods, now requires appliance to meet certain energy-efficiency standards.

The same principle could easily be used to help lower-income renters access electricity from cleaner energy sources.

Giving poorer households free home energy assessments is a good start, but they are focused purely on cutting energy consumption.

Removing hurdles

The compounding impacts of energy bill increases mean that many lower-income households are doing it pretty tough. Forgoing comfort in not turning on the heater or air-conditioner is one thing, but skipping meals or medication (as many of our survey respondents do) can have significant impacts on health and well-being.

Unfortunately, lower-income households have been going without life’s essentials for far too long. Setting up assistance programs is a good start, but we need to make sure that those who need help are getting it.

Here are our five suggestions for making it happen:

1. Get the info out there. It’s important that people get the right information when they need it. Putting information online is great but it cannot be the only way – consideration must be given to those without internet access or who are less computer-literate.

2. Keep it simple. Information needs to be straightforward and clear. If it’s stuffed with jargon and confusing numbers, it can become self-defeating.

3. Support the support organisations. Charities like the Salvation Army and the St Vincent de Paul Society serve important roles within our community, but they too need our continued help, especially when funding is not keeping up with needs.

4. Get value for the public’s money. A billion-dollar public fund may sound like a big deal, but this is small fry compared to Australia’s A$878 billion annual domestic consumption expenditure. Nonetheless, it is a good start in heading towards the right direction. We just need to make sure it helps those who need it most.

5. Overcome personal pride. Asking for help is never easy, and that’s why so many lower-income families go without. Making sure that incentive programs reach the right people, in the right way, can dramatically improve their willingness to use them. Hopefully, in the long run, fewer families will need to go without.

Edgar Liu receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living, New South Wales' Department of Family and Community Services, PAYCE Communities, SGCH Ltd, South Australia's Department for Communities and Social Inclusion, and Strata Community Australia (NSW chapter).

Bruce Judd receives funding from the Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living, the Australian Research Council, and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

There are few frontiers in the world that can still be said to be unexplored. One of these terra incognita is the land beneath Antarctica’s ice sheets. Buried under kilometres of ice is a fascinating realm of canyons, waterways and lakes, which is only now being mapped in detail.

There are more than 400 known lakes in this harsh environment, and more are being discovered as technology advances. This water beneath the ice lubricates the interface between the ice sheet and its rocky bed, and thus controls the flow and behaviour of the ice itself.

Under such a large volume of ice, how is it possible for water to exist at all without freezing? The answer is pressure: when a large weight of ice is pushed onto water, it can stay liquid at temperatures well below the normal freezing point. What’s more, the large body of ice actually insulates the bed and protects it from the very cold air temperatures above.

The liquid water is created by heat from the Earth’s interior and from the friction generated as ice flows over the bedrock, which can melt the underside of the ice sheet. It is this water that flows into the subglacial lake basins and eventually into the ocean.

The network of lakes beneath Antarctica’s ice. Zina Deretsky/US NSF/Wikimedia Commons Huge water features

A tour around this subglacial landscape would take you first to the largest lake under the ice: Lake Vostok. At 12,500 square kilometres and with an average depth of 430 metres, Lake Vostok is the world’s sixth-largest lake by volume, but as it lies beneath some 3.5km of ice, it’s not easy to visit.

You can’t see it, but it’s there: Lake Vostok’s location in East Antarctica. NASA

Using ice-penetrating radar and seismic techniques, scientists have mapped Lake Vostok to understand its origins. They have found that it may be up to 15 million years old. The lake has circulation patterns driven by freezing and thawing of the overlying ice, and even has small lunar tides.

Lake Vostok was discovered decades ago, but what is thought to be the second-largest lake under the ice sheet was first observed only this year. It is in Princess Elizabeth Land, East Antarctica, known as the “last pole of ignorance” because until recently it was virtually unmapped.

This region is also home to a huge canyon system, which extends all the way from the ice sheet interior to the coast. The system is as deep as the Grand Canyon but 100km longer.

Map of subglacial lake locations and ice thickness. NSIDC (Blakenship et al., 2009; Smith et al., 2012) Dynamic environments

So far our tour has focused on the central regions of Antarctica, where ice and water are relatively stable. In contrast, at the ice sheet’s dynamic edges near the coast we find fast-flowing regions called ice streams. Many of these have subglacial lakes in their catchments.

Tens to hundreds of kilometres in length, these lakes are short-lived, growing and draining over a period of just a few years. Evidence of this drainage process comes from satellite measurements of the height of the ice sheet. The surface can be seen to rise and fall, as the lake swells and then ebbs away again.

So far, at least 130 of these “active” lakes have been discovered. More are being found every year.

One example is Lake Whillans, in West Antarctica. Covering about 60 square km, it’s small in comparison with the gigantic Lake Vostok, but is by no means insignificant. In January 2013, a US research expedition drilled into the lake, extracting clean samples that were later found to contain microbial life.

Such life thrives in this harsh environment without sunlight for photosynthesis. Instead, the microbes depend on the oxidation of methane and ammonia, derived from sediments that are hundreds of thousands of years old. This momentous discovery of life in such a harsh and unforgiving environment may provide scientists with critical information on the development of marine life cycles.

First view of the bottom of Antarctica’s subglacial Lake Whillans. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Wikimedia Commons Loose underpinnings

The water beneath the ice creates a mysterious and fascinating subglacial world, but it is also important because it lubricates the bed of the ice sheet and controls how fast the ice can flow. Where there is sediment under the ice, liquid water can make the ground unstable, while in other areas high pressure allows the ice to float on a pillow of liquid water. In both cases this reduces the friction at the base, allowing the ice to flow faster.

As scientists, we want to predict how the ice sheet will react to a warming climate. To do that, it is essential to pin down the role of water in the current flow rates of Antarctic ice. These fascinating lake and canyon features are therefore not only intriguing, but also play a crucial part in the future of the icy continent.

Christine Dow receives funding from the University of Waterloo and from a Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) fellowship.

Felicity Graham is funded by the Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative for Antarctic Gateway Partnership.

Sue Cook works for the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, which is funded through the Australian Government Department of Industry and Science.

Fleas get a free ride - and there's not much in it for the dog. Kristian Niemi/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

To call someone a “parasite” is an insult. But the word has rather a different meaning in biology.

Etymologically speaking, the earliest known record of the word parasite in the English language was in 1539, when it was defined as “a hanger-on, a toady, a person who lives on others”. The word itself was derived from the Greek parasitos, meaning “a person who eats at the table of another”.

The social use appears to precede the scientific use, which was first recorded in 1646 as “an animal or plant that lives on others”.

Parasite might trigger distant memories of school lessons about fleas and tapeworms. But is this view accurate? As with most things in life, the answer is not as straightforward as it first appears.

It’s complicated

Parasites are a group of often unrelated organisms that share a way of life. Parasitism is only one example in the spectrum of ways organisms relate to each other.

Today, ecologists use “symbiosis” to refer to any relationship between two organisms. Anton de Bary, the pioneering mycologist (a fungi specialist), defined symbiosis when he wrote in his 1879 monograph Die Erscheinung der Symbiose that “any two organisms living in close association, commonly one living in or on the body of the other, are symbiotic, as contrasted with free living”.

Symbiosis can be subdivided into four broad categories, with clear examples in each, but the boundaries between them are sometimes blurred.

Parasitism

Parasitism is a relationship in which one partner (the parasite) benefits at the expense of the other (the host). Parasites hurt their hosts in many ways, ranging from general or specialised pathology and impairment of sexual characteristics, to the modification of host behaviour. Parasites increase their own fitness by exploiting hosts for food, habitat and/or dispersal.

Less obvious but familiar examples include the cuckoo, which is a brood parasite, laying its eggs in the nests of other bird species. This relieves the parasitic parent from the investment of rearing young or building nests, enabling them to spend more time foraging and producing more offspring.

The risk of losing an egg to raiders such as small mammals is reduced by distributing the eggs among different nests – literally not putting all their eggs in one basket.

Another interesting example, a parasite for life and not just at Christmas, is mistletoe. This plant grows on a wide range of host trees and commonly stunts their growth, but can kill them with heavy infestation.

Mistletoe is not completely dependent on its host and has its own leaves that do some photosynthesis. It uses the host mainly for water and mineral nutrients.

A lion eating a wildebeest or zebra is certainly benefiting from the other organism’s loss, but lions are predators, not parasites. Well-adapted parasites have typically evolved not to kill their hosts.

What about mosquitoes, which drink human blood? Parasites usually live in a very intimate relationship with their host, depending on it for more than nutritional requirements. The host is a source of food and at the same time provides a more-or-less permanent habitat. So, a mosquito is more properly a tiny predator.

But mosquitoes also transmit disease-causing micro-organisms such as the malaria protozoan or dengue virus. These are true parasites.

Mutualism

Mutualism is a relationship in which both partners benefit from the interaction.

The classic example of mutualism is lichen, a long-term association between a fungus and a green alga (or blue-green cyanobacterium). It is this that the German mycologist Heinrich Anton de Bary described as “the living together of unlike organisms”.

The fungus benefits from the relationship because algae or cyanobacteria produce food by photosynthesis. The algae or cyanobacteria benefit by being protected from the environment by the filaments of the fungus, which also gather moisture and nutrients from the environment and (usually) provide an anchor to it.

A further example may be observed in a tropical aquarium. Well known to fans of the Disney film Finding Nemo, the clownfish is protected by a sea anemone, which stings the fish’s predators; in turn, the clownfish removes ectoparasites from the anemone.

Commensalism

Commensalism is a similar concept, but only one partner benefits, while the other is unaffected. The cattle egret is a classic example of a commensal.

This bird forages in fields among cows and horses, feeding on insects stirred up when the animals graze. The egret benefits from this relationship because the livestock inadvertently help it find a meal, while they are seemingly unaffected by its presence.

Another, more recently appreciated example is the colonisation of the human gut by so-called “good bacteria”, also known as probiotics, which multiply in the mammalian gut and apparently aid digestion. Whether this relationship is in fact commensal or mutual may depend on the species of bacteria involved.

Some biologists argue that any close relationship between two organisms is unlikely to be completely neutral for either party, and that relationships identified as commensal are more likely mutualistic or even parasitic in a subtle way that has not been identified.

Competition

Competition is an interaction between organisms in which the fitness of one, or potentially both, is lowered by the presence of the other. In some cases, both partners may be harmed by the relationship.

The behaviour of male red deer during the rutting season is an example of competition within a species, while trees of different species compete for light in a rainforest.

So, the next time you are tempted to call someone a parasite, think again. Your relationship with them may in fact be an example of competition, commensalism or perhaps even mutualism: you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

Andrew Taylor-Robinson 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.

When most Australians hear of Nauru they tend to think of immigration detention, or perhaps of the environmentally ruinous legacy of the island nation’s ill-fated phosphate mining boom.

Nauru’s troubled history has seen it fall from being one of the world’s richest nations, on a per capita basis, to a society plagued by financial mismanagement and corruption. Yet despite its tragic back story, this tiny country of just over 10,000 citizens may well be poised for a comeback.

During a recent visit to research possible sustainable development pathways, I became cautiously optimistic about the country’s trajectory. On July 9, Nauru held an election which delivered some old and new faces to its 19-member parliament, including re-elected president Baron Waqa and leading Nauruan entrepreneur Sean Oppenheimer. They now face the task of leading their battered nation’s recovery.

Environmental cleanup

Nauru’s unique geography has created threats and opportunities. Living on a raised coral atoll with a fairly high plateau, the island’s population is less vulnerable than those who live on low-lying coral atolls.

It is on this high plateau, known locally as “Topside”, where much of Nauru’s phosphate deposits formed, interspersed between calcium carbonate pinnacles.

Now, almost all of the available phosphate has been mined for use in fertiliser. The residual pinnacles have left a jagged landscape that cannot be used for agriculture or forestry.

A jagged legacy. US Department of Energy/Wikimedia Commons

Recovering from the mining boom and bust has been a slow process. In 1993, Nauru settled a landmark international legal case, in which Australia agreed to pay reparations for colonial-era mismanagement of the island’s assets. This provided substantial funds for environmental restoration through the Nauru Rehabilitation Corporation (NRC).

When the regional asylum processing centre on Nauru was reopened in 2012, it was suggested that immigration detainees might even help with the nearby Topside restoration work. This may currently seem implausible, but could be considered as a livelihood option for some who may be interested in ecological restoration skills development.

However, the only land that has thus far been rehabilitated is in an area known as “Pit 6”. Ironically, this is being developed as a local Nauruan correctional facility, with the prisoners possibly to assist with reclamation work. Thus far the NRC has not managed to achieve its reclamation objectives anywhere else.

New ideas

Despite the slow progress so far, some innovative ideas are now taking root, which could potentially offer economic and development boosts as well as helping to rehabilitate the environment.

One option is to mine the leftover limestone pinnacles, which contain several potentially useful minerals such as dolomite. The United Nations Development Program has championed these so-called “neglected development minerals” as a way of helping Pacific nations (and others) out of poverty.

Although these materials can be sourced more cheaply in China and elsewhere, Nauru could conceivably be branded as a “boutique” producer of tiles from these stones, potentially attracting consumers who are willing to pay an “origin premium” – much like Carrara marble or Vermont slate.

Sustainable growth

Ultimately, Nauru’s population is constrained by the island’s small size – just 21 square km. But there is still room to grow, as well as economic and environmental opportunities, particularly where essentials such as energy and water are concerned.

Nauru has just one brackish lake, called Buada Lagoon, and an underground lake called Moqua Well. But it has plenty of sunshine, which is being tapped for solar-powered water purification systems to deliver drinkable water.

The United Arab Emirates has also supported a pilot project to develop a solar farm on Topside. This could help wean Nauru from its reliance on diesel as a source of energy.

However, far greater investment from donors and the private sector would be required to scale up these efforts. This, in turn, could help other sectors to develop, including a modest boutique tourism sector related to the island’s location as an airline transit hub for the central Pacific.

A derelict phosphate plant. More sustainable industries are needed next time around. d-online/Flickr.com/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY Financial future

Of course, much of this depends on the international financial community maintaining its faith in Nauru after years of financial mismanagement. On this question, the signs are still mixed.

In April, Nauru was admitted to the International Monetary Fund – a mark of international confidence in its finances and a move that will ensure rigorous economic oversight. But within days of that decision Westpac severed its ties with the country, reportedly amid concerns over financial irregularity that it had been investigating over the preceding months.

In contrast, Bendigo Bank returned to Nauru in 2015 after a 15-year absence of any banking provisions in the country. The bank has registered more than 5,000 accounts since then.

Public finances are also being given some positive assurance through the recent establishment of an Intergenerational Trust Fund for the country. Seed funding has been provided by the Asian Development Bank, Australia and Taiwan. This fund has far more stringent safeguards and independent auditing requirements, in contrast to earlier sovereign wealth funds that became notorious for their mismanagement.

A critical next step will be to ensure that, this time around, unlike the previous boom, the country’s revenues from its relationship with Australia, and from its natural capital, are converted into lasting economic capital.

As the country gets ready to review its National Sustainable Development Strategy in 2017, these efforts will garner further attention. While there is no room to be sanguine about the development challenges facing Nauru, there is certainly ample reason for hope.

Nauruans are amazingly resilient people who have survived several brushes with oblivion during their history. Every year on October 26, Nauru celebrates Angam Day, which commemorates the two occasions on which the population has bounced back from near-extinction to reach 1,500, which is considered to be the threshold for their long-term survival.

With careful environmental and economic planning, Nauru has the potential to celebrate many more Angam Days to come.

Saleem will be online for an Author Q&A between 4 and 5pm on Friday, July 15, 2016. Post any questions you have in the comments below.

Professor Saleem H. Ali receives funding from from a wide variety of public and private organizations. However, this article's content has no conflict of interest with any of the funding sources that support his research.

A federal election is an opportunity to take stock of how Australia is doing, where it’s going, and what governments can do about it. This series, written by program directors at the Grattan Institute, explores the challenges that Australia faces and advocates policy changes for budgets, economic growth, cities and transport, energy, school education, higher education and health.

Over the next few decades Australia, like many countries, faces the prospect of an energy transformation that will challenge every aspect of stationary and transport energy: from production, transmission and distribution to consumption and exports.

The ultimate imperative is to move our economy to a low-carbon footing, while ensuring that consumers don’t pay unnecessarily high costs. The COAG Energy Council, the decision-making body of federal and state energy and resources ministers, formally recognised the critical connection between energy and climate policy last July. Later that year the world’s governments brokered the Paris climate agreement, with Australia promising to cut emissions to 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Yet this need for wholesale transformation has emerged at a time when Australia’s policy structures are already struggling to maintain the delivery of affordable and reliable electricity, after the reforms of the 1990s lost momentum in the 2000s.

It also comes at the end of a three-year period in which the Coalition government’s actions to address these challenges made modest progress at best. Tony Abbott’s administration repealed the carbon price, wound back the Renewable Energy Target and established the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), which has contracted for more than 100 million tonnes of CO₂ emission reductions at less than A$14 per tonne. But it largely sidestepped the reforms needed to address emerging energy trends such as low demand growth, the rise of distributed wind power generation, the boom in domestic solar power and the dramatic growth of coal seam gas.

The upshot was that 2013-16 has left the energy industry with huge uncertainty about what is in store, at a time when it craves reassurance more than ever.

This leaves the new government with three key priorities. As elsewhere, its capacity to deliver will be constrained by the reality of the new parliament.

The first priority will be to build on its current climate change policy to create a stable, long-term approach that will lead the transition to a low-emissions economy. The government will be able to do this through a combination of administrative action and bipartisan support.

The second priority is to revive energy market reform through the COAG Energy Council. The third is to maximise the value of Australia’s gas resources and ensure continuity of supply.

These are not politically partisan issues but they do require galvanising cooperation across state and territory governments.

In addition, the government should develop a renewed reform agenda for the COAG Energy Council – one that addresses all these issues with a focus on outcomes, rather than being mired in process as it has been so far.

Climate policy

For most of this century Australia has lacked a credible, long-term climate policy. Instead we have had toxic debate, policy bonfires and a mishmash of unstable and unpredictable federal and state policies that have threatened industry investment, not to mention the environment itself.

Existing government policy (the ERF and its new safeguard mechanism, plus the reduced Renewable Energy Target) is likely to be enough to meet Australia’s 2020 emissions target – a 5% reduction on 2000 levels by 2020 – but far from enough to meet the stronger 2030 target, or indeed to get us to zero net emissions thereafter.

An economy-wide carbon market is the best way to cut emissions and meet Australia’s targets without excessive cost to the economy. But in the absence of the political will to implement this, we must work with what we have.

The government should therefore strengthen the safeguard mechanism, which puts pollution limits on 140 of Australia’s biggest-emitting businesses, so that it becomes an effective market mechanism. This approach has the potential to gain the bipartisan support that energy companies seek as they consider investments in long-lived assets.

Technologies that might produce plentiful low-emission electricity will still be expensive and risky in the short term. To overcome these market barriers, the government will need to expand its existing clean energy research funding to reduce the costs of moving to a low-emissions economy.

Electricity reform

Energy market reform began in the early 1990s but stalled in the 2000s. Privatisation became politicised and governments baulked at introducing electricity prices that more closely reflect the costs of producing power. Meanwhile, prices climbed by 60% in real terms for all customers.

The government should work through the COAG Energy Council to push for network privatisation and tariff reform, with the goal of delivering fairer and cheaper electricity bills.

In reforming power networks, two issues come first.

The process for defining the costs that networks can recover from customers takes too long and encourages networks to overspend. It must be overhauled.

Second, governments must decide who will pay for surplus network infrastructure that was built to meet overly cautious reliability standards and exaggerated demand forecasts. This “gold-plating” is one of the main causes of power price rises over the past decade.

Network infrastructure has been built to meet the peak demand that occurs only once every summer in most states, yet customers are charged on their year-round use. Pricing to reflect the cost of meeting this peak would make electricity prices fairer and cheaper for all consumers in the long term.

Federal and state governments have agreed to introduce new network tariffs from the start of 2017. But progress is slow, as the losers from policy changes have loud voices that have deterred risk-averse state ministers.

This lack of tariff reform is one of the factors (alongside the large subsidies on offer) that have prompted so many Australian households to install solar panels. By our analysis, the benefits have fallen far short of the costs so far.

Yet as solar panels and battery storage continue to get cheaper, cost-reflective network tariffs will encourage consumers to combine them fairly and effectively.

Since its creation in 1998, the National Electricity Market has helped to provide affordable, reliable and secure electricity supplies. But now it faces new challenges that were not envisaged when it was established.

Thanks to the surge in household solar and other factors, more and more electricity is now generated at zero or even negative marginal cost. A similar situation in European markets has led to serious financial losses for major energy companies in Germany. This is forcing governments in Britain, Germany and elsewhere to introduce supplementary markets for generation capacity even if it is not used.

Although Australia is not yet in this situation, the government should initiate a review of the National Electricity Market to avoid such threats arising.

Gas markets

Opening the east coast domestic gas market to international buyers has pushed up prices. These pressures are exacerbated by the lack of progress toward a transparent and liquid wholesale market and by patchwork regulation of unconventional extraction such as fracking.

The government should lead the implementation of recommendations from the recent Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s East Coast Gas Inquiry to create a more effective and efficient market. Reverting to protectionism by reserving a proportion of gas for domestic use is not the answer; in the long run this would reduce the availability of domestic gas and drive up prices, while also reducing export revenue.

Fixing the COAG Energy Council

A recent review of how Australia’s energy markets are governed identified problems with the COAG Energy Council and the operation of the government agencies that implement its decisions.

In a way this serves as a neat illustration of the problems facing the government if it is going to get energy policy right. Governance, rules, regulations and policy settings are desperately dry issues. But if Australia gets them right, the problems people really care about – like expensive energy bills and climate change – will be much easier to solve.

Tomorrow in the series: schools and higher education.

Read more: A snapshot of the challenges facing the new Turnbull government

Tony Wood owns shares in several energy and resources through his superannuation fund.

Turnbull might be hamstrung by his barely-there majority. AAP Image/Paul Miller

The re-elected Coalition government has the opportunity to revamp its policies on climate change. Transition of the energy sector is key if the 2030 emissions target is to be met. But with a razor-thin majority in Parliament, will Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull have the appetite and internal authority to tackle the challenge?

In contrast to the past three federal elections, climate change policy was not one of the big issues in this campaign. Faced with a fairly comprehensive climate policy blueprint from the Labor Party, the Coalition opted not to say much on the subject. A carbon tax and emissions trading scheme have been ruled out, but the door for climate and energy policy reform has not been slammed shut.

In fact, there has been a clear sense that the government accepts that there needs to be a more comprehensive policy framework than just the subsidy-based Emissions Reductions Fund, with its inherent problems. In 2015, Environment Minister Greg Hunt announced that there will be a climate change policy review during 2017.

But the internal politics of the Liberal Party could yet stand in the way. Turnbull has traditionally supported measures to cut emissions, and this fits with his emphasis on innovation. But many on the right of the party oppose action on climate change.

The fact that the Coalition only just scraped into government might be seen as an argument in favour of more moderate policies. But it could also strengthen the hand of Turnbull’s detractors, including opponents of climate change action.

Is that a price on your carbon?

One tricky issue for the Coalition in the election was the plan for the Emissions Reductions Fund “with safeguards”. In the expert community it is generally thought that the Coalition’s plan has been to transform the current mechanism into a so-called “baseline and credit” scheme or a variant thereof.

Baseline and credit would put a price signal on carbon emissions in electricity and possibly industry. It has drawbacks compared with normal emissions trading, among them that there would be no revenue for the government from selling carbon permits; that it would not fully reflect carbon costs to electricity users; that some or many businesses may not be covered; and that it may perpetuate carbon-related investment uncertainty. Its main attraction is political – it would limit effects on electricity prices, and it has been depicted as something that is not a “carbon price”.

Energy transition

The energy challenge is of an altogether different magnitude. Climate policy needs to be integrated with energy policy, and it must get the transformation of Australia’s power sector under way. As the Deep Decarbonisation project showed, a near-zero-emissions electricity supply by 2050 is at the heart of a low-emissions strategy.

This is possible and affordable, but waiting for it to happen all by itself would take too long.

Unless there is a significant and durable price on carbon, other approaches are needed to get the most emissions-intensive power plants off the system – for example, through a market mechanism for brown coal exit and/or regulated closure of old plants.

Support for new zero-emissions energy is a big open question. Will the Renewable Energy Target be extended, perhaps as a low-emissions energy target? Will there be fixed-price auctions for large-scale renewable energy, such as those in the ACT? Should funding for clean energy research and development be ramped up, and how?

Then there are questions about energy market reform and structural adjustment. How to provide adequate revenue for a future power system that largely relies on renewables, when the existing electricity market was designed for fossil-fuel-powered generators? How to manage the social and economic adjustment in the coal regions?

The government will need to tackle energy transition, and it has the opportunity to make this one of its contributions to help modernise the economy. There might even be some common ground for it in parliament.

Ambition needed

Marginal policy change is not going to do the trick. Australia’s pledge under the Paris Agreement is a 26-28% reduction in emissions by 2030, relative to 2005. This is at the lower end of the range, according to many indicators, and it is likely that the target will need to be strengthened for the next round of international pledges.

Labor’s proposed target is a 45% reduction. This is on the way to much deeper required reductions down the track.

Achieving even a 28% target through domestic reductions would be a big step for Australia. Net national emissions have been roughly flatlining for more than two decades, thanks to falling emissions from land-use change.

Brexit, Trump and the future

Amid the current global destabilisation, there are concerns that climate policy will take a back seat despite the momentum created by the Paris Agreement. In Europe, Brexit, terrorism and refugees are top of the agenda. But unless they herald a global shift towards inward-looking governments or wider economic malaise, Europe’s troubles should have little bearing on the transition to cleaner energy in Asia and Australia.

A Donald Trump presidency, on the other hand, could throw a spanner in the works by providing a rallying point for opponents of climate action. Hillary Clinton as president, however, would push for meaningful climate policy both globally and at home.

Those determined to push ahead will do so regardless of the to and fro in Europe and the United States. China, for example, seems unlikely to waver in its push to modernise its economy and thereby dampen carbon emissions.

Turnbull has a chance to help position Australia for a future in which the carbon-intensive way of doing things is on the way out. We will see whether he chooses to do so – and whether his party room will let him.

Frank Jotzo has received research funding from a range of organisations. He has been a member of various review panels and advisory bodies, most recently as a member of the ACT Climate Change Council and the SA government's low carbon economy expert panel.

It was back in 250ʙⅽ when Archimedes reportedly stepped into his bathtub and had the world’s first Eureka moment – realising that putting himself in the water made its level rise.

More than two millennia later, the comments sections of news stories still routinely reveal confusion about how this same thing happens when polar ice melts and sea levels change.

This is in marked contrast to the confidence that scientists have in their collective understanding of what is happening to the ice sheets. Indeed, the 2014 Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported “very high confidence” that the Greenland Ice Sheet was melting and raising sea levels, with “high confidence” of the same for the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Despite this, commenters below the line on news stories frequently wonder how it can be true that Antarctica is melting and contributing to sea-level rise, when satellite observations show Antarctic ice expanding.

Unravelling the confusion depends on appreciating the difference between the two different types of ice, which we can broadly term “land ice” and “sea ice” – although as we shall see, there’s a little bit more to it than that. The two different types of ice have very different roles in Earth’s climate, and behave in crucially different ways.

Sea levels rise when ice resting on land, grounded ice, melts (often after forming icebergs). Floating sea ice that melts has a very important role in other areas of our climate system. Land ice

Ice sheets form by the gradual accumulation of snow on land over long periods of time. This “grounded” ice flows in glaciers to the ocean under the influence of gravity, and when it arrives it eventually melts. If the amount of ice flowing into the oceans is balanced by snowfall on land, the net change in global sea level due to this ice sheet is zero.

However, if the ice begins to flow more rapidly or snowfall declines, the ice sheet can be out of balance, resulting in a net rise in sea level.

But this influence on sea level is only really relevant for ice that is grounded on land. When the ice sheet starts to float on the ocean it is called an “ice shelf”. The contribution of ice shelves to sea-level rise is negligible because they are already in the sea (similar to an ice cube in a glass of water, although the ocean is salty unlike a glass of water). But they can nevertheless play an important role in sea-level rise, by governing the rate at which the grounded ice can discharge into the oceans, and therefore how fast it melts.

Sea ice

When viewed from space, all polar ice looks pretty much the same. But there is a second category of ice that has effectively nothing to do with the ice sheets themselves.

“Sea ice” is formed when ocean water is frozen due to cooling by the air. Because it is floating in the ocean, sea ice does not (directly) affect sea level.

Sea ice is generally no more than a few metres thick, although it can grow to more than 10 metres thick if allowed to grow over many winters. Ice shelves, on the other hand, are hundreds of metres thick, as seen when an iceberg is created and rolls over.

A big breakup.

In the ocean around Antarctica, almost all the sea ice melts in the southern hemisphere spring. This means that every year an area of ocean twice the size of Australia freezes over and then melts – arguably the largest seasonal change on our planet.

So, while ice sheets change over decades and centuries, the time scale of sea ice variability is measured in months.

Antarctic sea ice grows and shrinks dramatically over the course of the year. These changes do not directly affect sea level. Land ice changes are slower but do affect sea levels, at least until the land ice becomes afloat.

The seasonal cycle of Arctic sea ice is much smaller. This is because the Arctic retains much more of its sea ice in the summer, and its winter extent is limited by land that surrounds the Arctic Ocean.

What is happening to land ice?

The two great ice sheets are in Greenland and Antarctica. Thanks to satellite measurements, we now know that since the early 1990s both have been contributing to sea-level rise.

It is thought that most of the Antarctic changes are caused by seawater melting the ice shelves faster, causing the land ice to flow faster and hence leading to sea-level rise as the ice sheet is tipped out of balance.

In Greenland, both surface and ocean melting play important roles in driving the accelerated contribution to sea levels.

What about sea ice?

Over the last four decades of satellite measurements, there has been a rapid decrease and thinning of summer Arctic sea ice. This is due to human activity warming the atmosphere and ocean.

In the Antarctic there has been a modest increase in total sea ice cover, but with a complex pattern of localised increases and decreases that are related to changes in winds and ocean currents. What’s more, satellite measurement of changes in sea ice thickness is much more difficult in the Antarctic than in the Arctic mainly because Antarctic sea ice has a lot of poorly measured snow resting on it.

The Southern Ocean is arguably a much more complex system than the Arctic Ocean, and determining humans' influence on these trends and projecting future change is challenging.

Observations of the changes happening in the Arctic and Antarctic reveal complex stories that vary from place to place and over time.

These changes require ongoing monitoring and greater understanding of the causes of the observed changes. And public confusion can be avoided through careful use of the different terms describing ice in the global climate system. It pays to know your ice sheets from your sea ice.

Matt King receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Environment.

Ben Galton-Fenzi works for the Australian Antarctic Division. He receives funding from the Department of the Environment.

Will Hobbs is employed by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, and receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

There is ample evidence of systematic cruelty and regulatory failure with which to justify the New South Wales government’s decision to ban greyhound racing. But this is a single industry in a single state – if we step back and look at the wider picture we see a telling lack of consistency in animal welfare policy and practice around the nation.

The ABC Four Corners investigation that sparked the NSW inquiry found wrongdoing in multiple jurisdictions. Yet only the ACT is set to follow NSW’s lead in banning the greyhound industry rather than simply pledging to increase oversight.

How many trainers will simply move interstate, taking the animal welfare problems with them?

Even within states, there is considerable inconsistency in the regulation of different animal sectors. The Baird government has rightly condemned the killing of up to 68,000 greyhounds over the past 12 years. Yet tens of thousands of cats and dogs are killed every year in NSW because the government has failed to control their breeding and sale.

The government has already held two inquiries into this issue: first by the Companion Animals Taskforce, which reported in 2012, and then by a parliamentary committee on companion animal breeding practices in 2015. But in contrast to the swift response on greyhounds, the recommendations have been timid and government action glacial.

Still in NSW, but on a very different issue, the increased land clearing likely to accompany proposed changes to native vegetation laws will have significant impacts on the habitat of native animals. Why is this not also a major animal welfare issue?

Inconsistent policy and practice are not confined to NSW. In Victoria, while the state government has tightened laws governing pets, it continues to allow jumps racing for horses and the recreational shooting of ducks. Both activities are banned in many other parts of the country.

Philosophical anomalies

Policy inconsistency reflects anomalies at the philosophical level. Without a hint of irony, the NSW inquiry condemns the treatment of greyhounds as “commercial commodities, not animals to be cherished and loved”. However, this legal property status underpins the regulation of all domestic animals.

This is most clearly evident in livestock industries, with the routine commodification of animals and acceptance of mass “wastage”. This is precisely the issue cited as the main rationale for the greyhound ban.

How to explain this different thinking, when livestock animals are as individual as pets and just as capable of feeling pleasure and pain? If it is necessary to rely on animals as our main source of food and fibre – and this idea is increasingly contested – does not their sentience demand at the very least a much greater measure of humane treatment?

In any case, if greyhounds are considered more deserving because they are dogs rather than cows, pigs or chickens, this brings us back to the question of why breeders of pet dogs and cats haven’t met with similarly strong action as those who breed dogs for racing.

Barriers to reform

The NSW greyhound inquiry has also raised another issue that cuts across animal industries: the conflict of interest that arises when one body is responsible both for promoting the industry and for regulating welfare within it. It is no coincidence that examples of animal cruelty in the live export and greyhound racing industries have both been exposed by animal activists and the media, rather than the regulators.

Premier Mike Baird has acknowledged his failure to pay sufficient attention to the concerns of animal advocates, including the dissenting views of John Kaye, the late Greens MLC and deputy chair of a 2014 parliamentary inquiry into greyhound racing. In that inquiry, the majority report found that “the incidence of greyhound cruelty and neglect is minimal”, despite compelling submissions to the contrary.

It is heartening to note Baird’s recognition of the importance the public attaches to animal welfare. Unfortunately, belated and inconsistent government conduct tends to trigger cynicism even if the action is properly informed and courageous; witness Baird’s subsequent denials that it was all a ruse to hand dog tracks to property developers.

The reaction to the ban by industry and the NSW Labor opposition make it clear that a conservative government is not immune to the kind of political and legal backlash that followed the federal Labor government’s 2011 suspension of live exports to Indonesia over animal welfare issues.

None of this is conducive to the sustained reform that is urgently needed. Moreover, it is symptomatic of a regulatory framework that is showing its age. A more coherent strategy is required, one that identifies animal welfare problems consistently and proactively, with long-term planning and nationally consistent implementation. The establishment of an independent office of animal welfare, ideally at federal level, is critical to leading this kind of change.

Better planning and greater consistency would improve animal welfare as well as minimising the negative impact on human lives when changes are made. This would also prove advantageous for governments, by helping to shield action taken in good faith from attacks by political opponents and vested interests.

Elizabeth Ellis is a life member of the RSPCA and a member of the Australasian Animal Studies Association and Animals Australia.

Clean water can help to break the link between poor hygiene and eye diseases such as trachoma. Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA)

Nations are gathering in New York this week to discuss the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to improve health, wealth and well-being for countries both rich and poor.

As a developed nation, it might be assumed that Australia will easily meet these new goals at home – including goal number 6, to ensure “availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”. But the unpalatable truth is that many Australians still lack access to clean water and effective sanitation.

The World Bank’s Development Indicators list Australia as having 100% access to clean water and effective sanitation. But a discussion paper we released last week with our colleagues outlines how some remote Aboriginal communities struggle to meet Australian water standards.

Making water safe

High standards of health and well-being are unattainable without safe, clean drinking water, removal of toilet waste from the local environment, and healthy hygiene behaviours.

The Western Australian government has reported that drinking water in some remote communities is contaminated with uranium, faecal bacteria and nitrates above the recommended levels.

This contamination – combined with problems such as irregular washing of faces, hands and bodies (often without soap), and overcrowding in homes – means that residents in these communities suffer from water- and hygiene-related health problems at a higher rate than the general Australian population.

The health situation in affected communities throws up some sobering facts. Australia is the only developed country that has not eradicated trachoma, a preventable tropical disease that can cause blindness. It persists in remote areas with poor hygiene, where children repeatedly pass on the infection.

Cleaning faces can break the link with long-term ear and eye health impacts such as trachoma and deafness. The Footprints Network

Similarly, glue ear, which is influenced by poor water and hygiene practices and can cause permanent hearing loss and developmental difficulties, is prominent in these communities. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that one in eight Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people reported ear and/or hearing problems in 2012-13. This is significantly more than non-Indigenous people.

Installing properly managed community swimming pools can provide a community-wide (and enjoyable) amenity that will also contribute to preventing glue ear, trachoma and other hygiene-related infections.

Community swimming pools have been found to be the best way to ensure clean skin and prevent the spread of neglected tropical diseases. OzOutback How committed is Australia to delivering at home?

In signing up to the SDGs last September, the Australian government stated that this agenda:

…helps Australia in advocating for a strong focus on economic growth and development in the Indo-Pacific region … [and is] well aligned with Australia’s foreign, security and trade interests.

What is glaring about this statement is the lack of any mention of a national focus.

Australia should focus on delivering safe water at home as well as abroad – especially given Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s new role as a member of the United Nations' High-Level Panel on Water.

Our discussion paper sets out how Australia can approach the task of delivering safe water, sanitation services and hygiene practices both at home and in the Asia-Pacific region.

One crucial recommendation is for government departments to avoid addressing the 17 SDGs (which have 169 different targets) as a simple “checklist”, because many of them overlap and intersect in complex ways.

For example, education quality (SDG 4) can affect gender equality (SDG 5), which in turn affects behaviour around water use and hygiene (SDG 6). Similarly, within SDG 6 itself are targets to protect water-based ecosystems, but this obviously influences the accompanying targets of water quality and universal human access to safe water.

The World Health Organisation has estimated that access to clean, safe water and sanitation could reduce the global disease burden by almost 10%. The UN SDGs provide aspirational goals to address this. In Australia, the disease burden is low but persistent. This means that the goal for proper water and sanitation cannot be said to have been satisfactorily met.

This week’s UN talks offer an ideal time to put Australia’s remote communities in the spotlight and draw much-needed attention to the preventable toll of water-related health issues they still experience.

Cindy Shannon is affiliated with AIATSIS as an external appointment.

Nina Lansbury Hall and Paul Jagals do 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.

In May 2012, my colleagues and I had a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate, showing that temperatures recorded in Australasia since 1950 were warmer than at any time in the past 1,000 years.

Following the early online release of the paper, as the manuscript was being prepared for the journal’s print edition, one of our team spotted a typo in the methods section of the manuscript.

While the paper said the study had used “detrended” data – temperature data from which the longer-term trends had been removed – the study had in fact used raw data. When we checked the computer code, the DETREND command said “FALSE” when it should have said “TRUE”.

Both raw and detrended data have been used in similar studies, and both are scientifically justifiable approaches. The issue for our team was the fact that what was written in the paper did not match what was actually done in the analysis – an innocent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

Instead of taking the easy way out and just correcting the single word in the page proof, we asked the publisher to put our paper on hold and remove the online version while we assessed the influence that the different method had on the results.

Enter the bloggers

It turned out that someone else had spotted the typo too. Two days after we identified the issue, a commenter on the Climate Audit blog also pointed it out.

The website’s author, Stephen McIntyre, proceeded to claim (incorrectly) that there were “fundamental issues” with the study. It was the start of a concerted smear campaign aimed at discrediting our science.

As well as being discussed by bloggers (sometimes with a deeply offensive and sexist tone), the “flaw” was seized upon by sections of the mainstream media.

Meanwhile, our team received a flurry of hate mail and an onslaught of time-consuming Freedom of Information requests for access to our raw data and years of our emails, in search of ammunition to undermine and discredit our team and results. This is part of a range of tactics used in Australia and overseas in an attempt to intimidate scientists and derail our efforts to do our job.

Bloggers began to accuse us of conspiring to reverse-engineer our results to dramatise the warming in our region. Former geologist and prominent climate change sceptic Bob Carter published an opinion piece in The Australian claiming that the peer-review process is faulty and climate science cannot be trusted.

Checking the facts

Meanwhile, we set about rigorously checking and rechecking every step of our study in a bid to dispel any doubts about its accuracy. This included extensive reprocessing of the data using independently generated computer code, three additional statistical methods, detrended and non-detrended approaches, and climate model data to further verify the results.

The mammoth process involved three extra rounds of peer-review and four new peer-reviewers. From the original submission on 3 November, 2011, to the paper’s re-acceptance on 26 April, 2016, the manuscript was reviewed by seven reviewers and two editors, underwent nine rounds of revisions, and was assessed a total of 21 times – not to mention the countless rounds of internal revisions made by our research team and data contributors. One reviewer even commented that we had done “a commendable, perhaps bordering on an insane, amount of work”.

Finally, today, we publish our study again with virtually the same conclusion: the recent temperatures experienced over the past three decades in Australia, New Zealand and surrounding oceans are warmer than any other 30-year period over the past 1,000 years.

Our updated analysis also gives extra confidence in our results. For example, as the graph below shows, there were some 30-year periods in our palaeoclimate reconstructions during the 12th century that may have been fractionally (0.03–0.04℃) warmer than the 1961–1990 average. But these results are more uncertain as they are based on sparse network of only two records – and in any event, they are still about 0.3℃ cooler than the most recent 1985–2014 average recorded by our most accurate instrumental climate network available for the region.

Comparison of Australasian temperature reconstructions. Red: original temperature reconstruction published in the May 2012 version of the study; green: more recent reconstruction published in Nature Geoscience in April 2013; black: newly published reconstruction; orange: observed instrumental temperatures. Grey shading shows 90% uncertainty estimates of the original 2012 reconstruction; purple shading shows considerably expanded uncertainty estimates of the revised 2016 version based on four statistical methods. The recent 30-year warming (orange line) lies outside the range of temperature variability reconstruction (black line) over the past 1,000 years.

Overall, we are confident that observed temperatures in Australasia have been warmer in the past 30 years than every other 30-year period over the entire millennium (90% confidence based on 12,000 reconstructions, developed using four independent statistical methods and three different data subsets). Importantly, the climate modelling component of our study also shows that only human-caused greenhouse emissions can explain the recent warming recorded in our region.

Our study now joins the vast body of evidence showing that our region, in line with the rest of the planet, has warmed rapidly since 1950, with all the impacts that climate change brings. So far in 2016 we have seen bushfires ravage Tasmania’s ancient World Heritage rainforests, while 93% of the Great Barrier Reef has suffered bleaching amid Australia’s hottest ever sea temperatures – an event made 175 times more likely by climate change. Worldwide, it has never been hotter in our recorded history.

Speed vs accuracy

There are a couple of lessons we can take away from this ordeal. The first is that it takes far more time and effort to do rigorous science than it does to attack it.

In contrast to the instant gratification of publishing a blog post, the scientific process often takes years of meticulous evaluation and independent expert assessment.

Yes, we made a mistake – a single word in a 74-page document. We used the word “detrended” instead of “non-detrended”. Atoning for this error involved spending four extra years on the study, while withstanding a withering barrage of brutal criticism.

This brings us to the second take-home message. Viciously attacking a researcher at one of Australia’s leading universities as a “bimbo” and a “brain-dead retard” doesn’t do much to encourage professional climate scientists to engage with the scores of online amateur enthusiasts. Worse still, gender-based attacks may discourage women from engaging in public debate or pursuing careers in male-dominated careers like science at all.

Although climate change deniers are desperate to be taken seriously by the scientific community, it’s extremely difficult to engage with people who do not display the basic principles of common courtesy, let alone comply with the standard scientific practice of submitting your work to be scrutinised by the world’s leading experts in the field.

Despite the smears, a rummage through hundreds of our emails revealed nothing but a group of colleagues doing their best to resolve an honest mistake under duress. It wasn’t the guilty retreat from a flawed study produced by radical climate activists that the bloggers would have people believe. Instead, it showed the self-correcting nature of science and the steadfast dedication of researchers to work painstakingly around the clock to produce the best science humanly possible.

Rather than take the easy way out, we chose to withdraw our paper and spent years triple-checking every step of our work. After the exhaustive checking, the paper has been published with essentially the same conclusions as before, but now with more confidence in our results.

Like it or not, our story simply highlights the slow and unglamorous process of real science in action. In the end, this saga will be remembered as a footnote in climate science, a storm in a teacup, all played out against the backdrop of a planet that has never been hotter in human history.

Joelle Gergis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Just as President John F. Kennedy famously implored Americans to ask what they might do for their country rather than vice versa, the New South Wales government’s decision to ban greyhound racing from July next year suggests an approach that asks not what animals can do for us, but what we can do for them.

Nor is NSW the only place looking at dog racing in this way. In the 55 years since JFK’s speech, 40 US states have banned greyhound racing, leaving only 19 dog tracks in six states still operating.

The principal reason for the NSW government’s decision is the high “wastage rate”. According to the special inquiry into the NSW industry, 50-70% of all greyhounds raised for racing are killed simply because they are too slow, meaning that at least half of the almost 98,000 dogs bred for racing over the past 12 years have been killed.

Reforming the industry was considered possible, but difficult, in relation to the live baiting scandal that engulfed Victorian racing in 2015. But the wastage of dogs that are too slow has become an integral part of the business model, rather than a rogue practice, and as such is much harder to tackle.

Similar problems exist in the racehorse industry, where the wastage rate is close to 40%. But the financial and political implications of a similar ban on horseracing are far more profound. There have already been suggestions of a class factor at play here, with the sport of kings protected while the “battlers' sport” is banned.

Protecting ‘useless’ animals

Protection for animals that have outlived their useful purpose for humans is relatively rare in Western societies, but in Eastern religions it often features prominently. In India, cows that are too old to give milk are retired to shelters, where the public donate food and money to keep them in good health until they die. This principle is firmly embedded in the Hindu religion.

In contrast, the Christian and Muslim traditions hold that animals have been put on Earth solely for our benefit. For most scientists and philosophers this is a convenient interpretation of the scriptures but biologically absurd, especially when we consider the question of the killing of those that don’t suit our purpose or match up to arbitrarily defined standards.

Some will argue that (humanely) killing an animal does not affect its welfare, but most acknowledge that we have a moral imperative to provide animals with a life that is valued and sufficiently long to be worth living.

Western society is beginning to wake up to the massive wastage in its dairy industry, with male (bobby) calves routinely slaughtered at just a few days of age, and cows that rarely last more than two or three lactations in the herd being killed at about 5 years of age, when their natural lifespan is 25.

There are the rudiments of protection systems in Western society, for some animals at least. Regarded by the industry as “spent hens”, chickens are routinely condemned to an early death after just one season’s laying because they will be less productive in their second year. But charities are beginning to offer opportunities for members of the public to give homes to these hens. Similarly, the Donkey Sanctuary in the UK offers retirement to weary donkeys.

For many the recognition in Western society that animals are not just a commodity is too little, too late. The animal industries are intensifying at a rate never experienced before in response to growing demand, particularly in Asia. The financial pressure on greyhound trainers to increase their dogs’ speed to win more prize money is so great that they often don’t consider the ethics of what they are doing. Illegalising a cruel business is the only answer.

And how will the greyhounds be affected by this decision? There are concerns that the ban will lead to more deaths as trainers dump their obsolete dogs. Is rehoming an alternative to wastage? The extensive selection of the greyhound for speed makes them less than ideal as pets, and it seems unlikely that new homes can be found for all of NSW’s greyhounds.

Advocates will argue that the dogs love the sport. Admittedly there is something in dogs that makes them chase objects that run in front of them, and many dogs will do it until they are exhausted. It’s in their genetic makeup, as over the millennia of evolution those that could do this would have had an advantage. But it is the associated treatment of the dogs as commodities that makes this sport unacceptable in today’s society.

Beyond reform?

The other reason for the NSW government’s decision is that the industry was deemed to be inherently corrupt and beyond reform, as detailed by Justice Michael McHugh’s report on the industry. This is a sad reflection of how the government/industry partnership model of managing our animal industries has failed to inspire confidence.

The ACT has also announced a ban, although other states seem unlikely to follow suit, citing the profit generated by the industry or the high costs of compensating those involved.

The Victorian government believes it can reform its industry in the wake of the live baiting scandal, but the Australian federal government has repeatedly claimed to be able to do this with livestock export and still the exposés of cruelty keep coming.

Asking what we can do for the greyhounds that have been exploited in this way is just the first step in repairing a damaged sense of trust that man’s best friend so faithfully placed in us.

Clive Phillips is on the Scientific Expert Advisory Panel of the animal charity Voiceless

Kelp forests along some 100km of Western Australia’s coast have been wiped out, and many more areas damaged, by a marine heatwave that struck the area in 2011.

The heatwave, which featured ocean temperatures more than 2℃ above normal and persisted for more than 10 weeks, ushered in an abrupt change in marine plant life along a section of Australia’s Great Southern Reef, with kelp disappearing to be replaced by tropical species.

As we and our international colleagues report in the journal Science, five years on from the heatwave, these kelp forests show no signs of recovery.

Instead, fish, seaweed and invertebrate communities from these formerly temperate kelp forests are being replaced by subtropical and tropical reef communities. Tropical fish species are now intensely grazing the reef, preventing the kelp forests from recovering.

Assessing the damage

We and our team surveyed reefs along 2,000km of coastline from Cape Leeuwin, south of Perth, to Ningaloo Reef between 2001 and 2015.

Up until 2011, temperate reefs were clearly defined by the distribution of kelp forests which formed dense, highly productive forests as far north as Kalbarri in WA’s Mid West.

Since 2011, the boundary between these temperate reefs of southern WA and the more tropical reefs (including Ningaloo) to the north has become less clear-cut. Instead, the sharp divide has been replaced by an intermediate region of turf-dominated reefs.

Infographic illustrating the impacts of the heatwave, kelp loss and tropicalisation of temperate reefs. [Produced by Awaroo]((www.awaroo.com))

This has implications for the Great Southern Reef (GSR), which extends more than 8,000km around the southern half of Australia from the southern half of WA all the way to southern Queensland – a coastline that is home to around 70% of Australians.

Kelp forests are the GSR’s “biological engine”, feeding a globally unique collection of temperate marine species, not to mention supporting some of the most valuable fisheries in Australia and underpinning reef tourism worth more than A$10 billion a year.

But our research shows that on the GSR’s western side, kelp forests are being pushed towards Australia’s southern edge, where continued warming puts them at risk of losses across thousands of kilometres of coastline because there is no more southerly habitat to which they can retreat.

While the 2011 marine heatwave affected some 1,000km of Western Australia’s temperate coastline, it was a stretch of roughly 100km extending south of Kalbarri on the state’s Mid West coast that was most severely affected.

In this area alone an estimated 385 square km of kelp forest have been completely wiped out.

Further south, from Geraldton to Cape Leeuwin, the extent of kelp loss was less severe, despite an estimated total area of 960 square km having been lost in the region.

Northern regions towards Kalbarri were more severely affected because these kelp forests were closer to their limit, and also because this area is closer to the tropical regions like Ningaloo Reef, meaning that tropical species could more easily move in.

The problem was exacerbated by the southward-flowing Leeuwin Current, which helps tropical species move south while making it harder for temperate species to move north and recolonise the affected areas of the GSR.

The combination of these physical and ecological processes set within a background warming rate roughly twice the global average, compounds the challenges faced by kelp forests in the region.

The plight of WA’s kelp forests provides a strong warning of what the future might hold for Australia’s temperate marine environment, and the many services it provides to Australians.

Scott Bennett receives funding from European Commission and the Hermon Slade Foundation.

Thomas Wernberg receives funding from The Australian Research Council and The Hermon Slade Foundation.

Julia Santana-Garcon 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.

The Chinese icebreaker Xue Long sails from Fremantle Harbour on its way home from Antarctica. Bahnfrend/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Antarctica’s early history was marked by national rivalries – think of Britain and Norway racing to the South Pole in 1911. But since the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, collaboration has become more important than competition. And the relationship between Australia – Antarctica’s biggest territorial claimant – and China, the emerging superpower, is among the most crucial of all.

One of Australia’s key aims, as set out in its Antarctic Strategy and 20 Year Action Plan, is to strengthen the existing Antarctic Treaty system, by “building and maintaining strong and effective relationships with other Antarctic Treaty nations through international engagement”.

As Australia’s largest trading partner and a significant player in Antarctica, China is a crucial nation with which to engage if Australia is to meet its objectives. This raises the question of how the two countries might fruitfully cooperate in Antarctica over the next 20 years.

Existing ties

China began its first scientific expedition to Antarctica in 1984. It now has four Antarctic bases, two on Australian-claimed territory.

Australia and China’s Antarctic ties have thus been evolving for more than three decades, with a focus on science, logistics and operations. Bilateral relations seem to have strengthened in recent years.

In 2014, President Xi Jinping visited Hobart and signed a memorandum of understanding with Australia to collaborate in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.

Last year, Australia’s Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre signed an agreement with its Chinese counterpart, the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Centre, to develop new forecasting methods to aid the challenging task of navigating Antarctic sea ice.

February 2016 saw the inaugural meeting of the China-Australia Joint Committee on Antarctic and Southern Ocean Collaboration, which arose from the 2014 agreement.

But it has not all been smooth sailing. China has strongly opposed Australia’s proposal to establish a network of marine protected areas off East Antarctica.

Proposed marine parks off East Antarctica. Australian Antarctic Division

Australia is also concerned about China’s presence in Antarctica. For example, a news article at the time of Xi’s 2014 visit suggested that “China may eventually try to overthrow the Antarctic Treaty system underpinning Australia’s claim to 43% of the frozen continent”, while questions have been asked about the scope of China’s mining ambitions on the frozen continent.

Potential future collaborations

There are several reasons, however, to expect that China and Australia can put aside their diplomatic differences in pursuit of Antarctic science.

First, it seems more likely that China will continue to endorse the Antarctic Treaty than to undermine it. As a rising power, China has growing interests in the Southern Ocean but it has no territorial claim in Antarctica. It would certainly not be at the front of the queue in the ensuing land grab if the treaty were to end.

Realistically, China should therefore continue to support the treaty, under which the seven existing national claims (plus any prospective claim by the United States, which has a research base at the South Pole) are suspended.

This logic is backed up by China’s behaviour with regard to the even more politically fraught North Pole. By becoming an observer of the Arctic Council, China has opted to embrace rather than challenge the current Arctic regime, despite the jockeying among Arctic nations over territorial rights.

Second, to maintain Australia’s leadership and excellence in Antarctic science, it will need to collaborate with industry and other nations. As an economic powerhouse, China has both the funding and the technology to deliver things like icebreaker ships, a well as a keen interest in Antarctica, which should extend to long-term scientific collaborations.

Third, Australia wants to maintain its leadership in environmental stewardship of Antarctica. One current hurdle seems to be China’s opposition to Australia, France and the European Union over the planned marine protected areas off East Antarctica. As the world’s largest fishing nation, China’s reluctance to support “no-take zones” is hardly surprising.

Nevertheless, this issue could potentially be converted from obstacle to opportunity, perhaps by Australia inviting Chinese scientists to conduct joint scientific research in these areas of the Southern Ocean. This would not only improve understanding of unknown marine ecosystems, but would also be a useful way for Australia to exert diplomatic “soft power”.

Antarctica is increasingly attractive to the more affluent of China’s tourists. Butterfly voyages/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Finally, Australia has its own economic interests in Antarctica, such as sustainable fishing and tourism. Meanwhile, ever greater numbers of Chinese tourists are venturing abroad, with visits to Australia passing the 1 million mark last year. With Antarctica now also on the radar for China’s richer tourists, Australia could not only benefit economically but must also work closely with China to develop regulations that prevent this nascent industry from damaging the Antarctic environment.

All of this means we can reasonably expect Australian-Chinese ties to grow ever closer over the next two decades – even in the world’s remotest place.

This article is part of a series on Australian science and diplomacy in Antarctica. Look out for more articles in the coming days.

Nengye Liu 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.

Australia (whose flag is pictured on the right) is one of several countries with a big stake in the South Pole. Josh Landis/US NSF/Wikimedia

Earth’s geographic poles have been making a lot of news lately. Canada is looking to make a claim on the North Pole within the next couple of years, arguing that the pole (along with a large slab of the Arctic seabed) falls within the limits of its continental shelf, despite similar existing claims by Denmark and Russia.

The pole, however, seems to have its own view on this. Scientists recently reported that, having drifted towards Canada’s Hudson Bay for many decades, it has abruptly changed direction and is now headed for London.

It comes as a surprise to many people that Earth’s geographic poles move at all. We tend to think of them as stationary, the points where all the lines of longitude meet. Ninety degrees north and south, however, are defined as averages of the poles’ actual positions over a particular period.

If defined as the places where the Earth’s rotational axis meets its surface, the geographic poles are constantly on the move, with a periodic, spiral motion as well as a linear one. This happens because our planet is not, as we might like to imagine, a perfect sphere, but in fact is rather lumpy. Seasonal displacement of air and water on its surface, as well as changes within its mantle, contribute to the shifting of its axis, and hence the movement of the poles.

The distances involved are not large – the linear drift can be measured in centimetres per year – but they are revealing. The North Pole’s lurch towards London, scientists suggest, is a result of recent melting of glacial ice and the emptying of underground aquifers for water supplies.

A century ago humans had barely managed to reach either pole; now, it seems, we have inadvertently managed to move them. Our decisions and actions are more closely connected with these symbolically most remote of places than we might imagine.

Windswept and remote, but still claimed by six countries. Bill McAfee/US NSF/Wikimedia Commons The ‘other’ pole

In humanity’s thinking about the Arctic and Antarctic regions, the South Pole has long been the underdog. Due to the cartographical convention that defines north as “up”, we think of it lying under us, hidden away at the very bottom of the planet.

As I discuss in my book South Pole: Nature and Culture, the place conjures ideas of remoteness, isolation, hostile weather, tragic explorers, altruistic scientists and even extreme tourists. But we rarely consider it in political terms.

The 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which declared the continent a place of peace and science and put national claims on hold, seemed to leave behind the imperial ambitions that produced the “race to the pole” in the early 20th century. And while Antarctica’s potential mineral resources are an ongoing source of concern, the South Pole, sitting atop almost 3km of ice, is not an obvious place to drill.

Now occupied by a large scientific research station, where (among other activities) astronomers use giant telescopes to study cosmological events, the South Pole is often assumed to be a politically neutral place, immune to the clamour going on in the north.

Polar positions

Why, then, should Australians care about the South Pole? Surprisingly, the pole featured in the celebrations that marked the nation’s federation in 1901. A spectacular pantomime entitled Australis, performed in Sydney over the summer of 1900-01, imagined a future in which Australia annexes Antarctica and takes as its capital the “City of Zero” sitting exactly at the pole – a satirical wink to the rivalry at the time between Sydney and Melbourne for the honour.

Although this unlikely future did not come to pass, Australia does indeed have a claim on the pole – or rather, a fraction of it. Although the pole is not the geographical centre of the continent by any means, the various wedge-shaped territorial claims – including Australia’s – meet there, like pieces of a meringue pie with the pole in the middle. The only exception is Norway’s claim, which has an undefined southern limit – ironically enough, given that Norwegians were the first to set foot at the pole.

The scientific base at 90ºS – the United States' Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station – thus sits across six territorial claims. This is a highly strategic position for a nation that recognises none of the existing claims but reserves the right to make its own in the future.

Antarctic territorial claims. CIA World Factbook Connecting Australia to the pole

Australia’s claim to 42% of Antarctica is also, then, a claim (indeed, the largest of any nation) on the South Pole – if it makes any sense to claim a percentage of what is, after all, technically a dot.

Our domestic politics, such as the recently announced Australian Antarctic Strategy, which confirms our continued interest in the region and includes plans for greater access to the continent’s interior, are thus inextricably connected to the site sometimes described as the last place on Earth.

While the South Pole may not be subject to the contemporary claim-making that besets its northern cousin, this symbolic heart of Antarctica remains a deeply political place and one that Australians – both those keen to maintain our claim and those who believe that all territorial claims there are misplaced – should know and care about.

This is the first in a series of articles on Australian science and diplomacy in Antarctica. Look out for more in the coming days.

Elizabeth Leane receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Australia’s economy may have ridden on the sheep’s back but the colonies’ first export was actually Eucalyptus oil. From a small batch of oil distilled from Sydney peppermint gum sent to England by First Fleet Surgeon-General John White, an industry grew around the use of the oil for medicinal and industrial purposes.

As demand grew around the world, Australia dominated the global supply. But as the 20th century progressed, cheaper production from plantations in Spain, Portugal, South Africa and China drove Australia’s market share down to less than 5%.

Today the global market for Eucalyptus oil sits at around 7,000 tonnes each year, with a slowly growing demand and price. In fact, Australia is now a net importer of its own iconic oil!

But a range of cutting-edge new uses for plant-based oils appear set to give this old dog some new tricks, potentially jolting the local eucalyptus oil industry out of its sleepy niche and into the high-tech limelight.

What’s in the oil?

Eucalyptus oils are a cocktail of aromatic compounds called terpenes. The oil that is sold in pharmacies and supermarkets is dominated by one compound called eucalyptol that instantly gives it a recognisable medicinal scent. This oil is sourced from about a dozen species.

There are many other types of oils from Eucalyptus. Oil from the lemon-scented gum, for example, is full of citronellal, which is used in perfumes and insect repellents. What makes a specific oil valuable are the commercial uses for the major terpenes found in that oil.

Eucalyptol is a flammable terpene. Carsten Kulheim Jet fuel grown on trees

Powering a modern jet aircraft with anything other than fossil fuels is a big ask. Renewable ethanol and biodiesel might do fine in the family SUV, but they just don’t possess a high enough energy density to cut it in the aviation industry.

Certain terpenes commonly found in oils from eucalypts, such as pinene and limonene, can be refined through a catalytic process, resulting in a fuel with energy densities in the same league as JP-10 tactical jet fuel.

Turpentine from pine trees is another potential source of these terpenes, but pines grow more slowly than eucalypts.

As a pure fuel, or as an additive to standard aviation fuels, the potential exists to carve out a renewable slice of the enormous aviation fuel market, if the volume of terpene production can be increased to economically competitive levels. Current plantations produce up to 200kg of oil per hectare per year, but by selecting the best genetic stock it is estimated that yields could be more than 500kg per hectare.

Graphene from terpenes

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the discovery of the physical properties of graphene, a two-dimensional carbon grid or film, less than one-millionth of a millimetre thick yet more than 100 times stronger than steel.

In fact, a square metre of graphene can support the weight of a house cat, but weighs less than one of its whiskers. Production value in 2012 was US$9 million and growing fast, and new ways of producing graphene are keenly sought.

Terpinene-4-ol, which is found in Eucalyptus and its close relative tea tree, is an ideal starting material for the direct production of high-quality graphene. This method is scalable and sustainable, potentially providing the solution to the growing demand for graphene and opening up further innovative uses for Eucalyptus oil.

Australia’s advantage

Worldwide, more eucalypts are grown for the production of pulp, paper and timber than any other type of tree. However, all of that global production comes from just over a dozen of the almost 800 Eucalyptus species that occur naturally in Australia, and mostly from a limited ancestry. This means the existing plantations lack genetic diversity and they also lack diversity and variability of oils.

This is where Australia’s advantage lies. We have the choice of 800 species growing in every imaginable ecological niche and possessing vast genetic diversity. For example, within a single species the amount of oil found in leaves can vary 30-fold among wild individuals, which can contain as many as six different major oil variants.

Australia has a veritable smorgasbord of variation from which to select plants with high yields of the right oil for new commercial purposes.

Ecologically a good alternative

Growing eucalypts for oil can provide benefits beyond the commercial value of the terpenes. Several Eucalyptus “mallee” species, which happen to be prolific oil producers, are purposely planted in wide rows on agricultural land to combat dryland salinity and prevent soil erosion.

Mallees are known for their bushy form, which is best described as a “ball of leaves”, and can be re-harvested for oil every 1-3 years. This puts them in the rare class of being renewable oil crops with added ecological benefits.

Ramping up oil production would still require large, dedicated plantations. A frequent criticism of biofuel crops is that land suitable for food production is diverted to fuel production, in turn pushing up food prices. But many eucalypts can grow well on marginal land that is not used for other agricultural purposes, skirting this issue altogether.

With the right genetics from the right species grown in the right places, the humble Eucalyptus oil may be on the verge of an ecologically sustainable renaissance.

David Kainer receives funding from the Australian National University and Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation

Carsten Kulheim receives funding from Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation and Australian Research Council.

Koalas face many threats, and our conservation efforts are failing them. Koala image from www.shutterstock.com

Koalas are a much-loved Australian icon and a tourism moneyspinner too, contributing more than A$1 billion each year to Australia’s economy.

Worringly, however, there is growing evidence that koala populations are declining rapidly in many parts of Australia. They are thought to be declining in all but one bioregion (a way of classifying ecosystems) in Queensland and New South Wales.

They also face the growing threat of climate change. Recent modelling found that koala habitat could be considerably reduced as the world warms, particularly due to heatwaves and rainfall.

These declines are deeply concerning and failure to reverse them can result in only one outcome: the loss of koalas from many parts of the Australian landscape. But conserving koalas is a complex job.

A wicked problem

In western Queensland, koala numbers declined by 80% between 1995 and 2009, mainly because of habitat loss, drought and heatwaves.

In southeast Queensland, where threats from urban development are a key factor, some populations fell by 55-80% between 1996 and 2015.

The picture is similar in NSW, where there is evidence for a substantial decline in koala numbers over the two centuries from European settlement in 1788 to the first major statewide survey in 1986-87. Subsequent studies have identified steep declines and local extinctions of koala populations in the past 30 years.

Unfortunately, there may be no quick fix: koala recovery has many of the characteristics of a wicked problem, riddled with dilemmas, trade-offs and tough choices.

For a start, koalas are declining for several complex reasons. In the western parts of Queensland and NSW, the main factors are climate change (drought and heatwaves) and habitat loss. Along the coast, koalas are chiefly threatened by rapid urban development and the associated impact of vehicle collisions and dog attacks.

There is also considerable uncertainty about the role of disease (such as chlamydia and retroviral infections) in driving koala declines. We don’t know whether this is a cause or a symptom of the koalas' plight, but we know that it is likely to be having an important impact.

These complexities make it difficult to identify the best management strategies to try to improve things.

There are also social and political complexities that tend to polarise, or at least confuse, the debate about koala conservation. For instance, there are strong trade-offs between koala conservation and other human needs and wants, such as land for urban development, agriculture and economic progress. In reality, these trade-offs tend to limit what is possible for koala recovery.

Finding solutions

In our research we are looking at koala recovery strategies that factor in different threats and trade-offs. In a recent study we looked at which recovery strategies to prioritise across NSW.

Interestingly, instead of spreading conservation efforts thinly across the state, we found the best option by far is to concentrate on particular regions.

If funding is low (say, A$2 million each year) we found it better to focus on koalas in eastern parts of NSW and reduce threats from urban development, particularly dog control.

But if funding is higher (say, A$40 million per year) it is possible to spread conservation efforts more easily between eastern and western parts of the state (reducing the impact of urban development in the east, and habitat loss in the west).

The NSW government has pledged A$100 million for threatened species over five years. With only some of this going to koalas, our work indicates that the strategic prioritisation of limited funding is critical (and potentially should favour eastern over western populations).

Planning for koala recovery

Koalas were listed as “vulnerable” in Queensland, NSW and the Australian Capital Territory under national threatened species legislation in 2012. This is helping to limit impacts on koalas from future development.

But true koala recovery will require a concerted effort by all levels of government and the community to implement measures to combat existing threats. In this process, identifying the best strategic actions and locations for action will be vital.

The federal government has begun a koala recovery planning process, drawing on past efforts. However, a review of koala conservation found that while the objectives were basically fine, the implementation was largely missing.

A key issue is that planning is principally a state matter and detailed planning a local government matter embedded within state legislative frameworks. This means that planning for koala survival and recovery must include all levels of government and their legislative and policy frameworks.

Our research shows the importance of strategic investment in koala conservation, rather than a scattergun approach. The challenge is to formulate an integrated strategy across governments that funds the activities that really work, to yield the highest return for the funds invested. This is not a modest challenge, but is essential to provide koalas with the best chance of long-term survival.

Jonathan Rhodes receives funding from The Australian Research Council, and the Australian, Queensland and New South Wales Governments.

Clive McAlpine has been supported by the Australian Research Council, the Australian Koala Foundation and the Southwest Natural Resource Management body.

Daniel Lunney receives funding from ARC, Office of Environment and Heritage NSW, Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife NSW, and Environmental Trusts NSW. He is affiliated with the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, and the Office of Environment and Heritage NSW.

Kerrie Wilson receives funding from The University of Queensland, The Australian Research Council, the Australian Department of Environment and the Woodspring Trust.

Truly Santika receives funding from the Australian Government.

An electric field could help avoid getting any closer than this. Sharkdiver.com/Wikimedia Commons

A wearable electric shark deterrent can effectively repel great white sharks, according to our independent tests of the device.

The manufacturers of the A$749 Shark Shield Freedom 7TM say it works by emitting an electric field around the wearer. This causes uncomfortable muscle spasms in sharks that swim too close and discourages them from coming into contact.

Our research, published in the journal PLoS ONE, shows that the device does indeed make sharks keep their distance. Upon first encounter with a Shark Shield, all approaching great white sharks were effectively deterred, staying an average of 1.3m away from a baited canister with the device attached.

After multiple approaches, individual great white sharks showed signs of habituation to the Shark Shield, coming an average of 12cm closer on each successive approach. Despite this increase in tolerance, 89% of white sharks continued to be deterred from biting or interacting with the bait.

Don’t take the bait

We carried out our testing in Mossel Bay, South Africa, in 2014. We used custom-built cameras equipped with bait and either an inactive (control) or active Shark Shield. Using a video analysis technique traditionally used to measure the size of fish, we were able to determine exactly how closely the sharks approached the device.

We analysed a total of 322 encounters involving 41 individual white sharks, ranging from 2m to 4m long.

Only one great white shark came into contact with the bait in the presence of an active Shark Shield, and only after multiple approaches. The interaction in question simply involved a bump of the bait canister rather than a full bite. In contrast, bites were common during control trials.

Although the effectiveness of the Shark Shield probably varies between shark species, it is encouraging to note its effect on great white sharks, the species implicated in the majority of fatal incidents worldwide. This suggests it could be an important safety consideration for a range of ocean users such as surfers, divers, spear fishers and open-water swimmers.

We also found no evidence that the Shark Shield attracted sharks from further away, which is a common myth among surfers.

A useful tool

Besides showing that the Shark Shield can ward off sharks, our method provides an accurate way to test the effectiveness of any type of shark deterrent that is currently available or likely to enter the market.

But, most importantly for now, we have finally given the public some evidence that there is an effective way to reduce the risk of a negative encounter with a shark.

Instead of the redundant debate about culling sharks as a response to shark-bite incidents, ocean-goers can now proactively take extra precautions, by using proven technology to reduce their already very low risk of injury.

There are many shark deterrent devices on the market, particularly those that use electric or magnetic fields. But without robust, independent scientific evaluation we can’t be sure which of these products actually work. In fact, not only may some devices not be as effective as others, but it is also possible that some of them could actually attract sharks rather than repel them.

Robust scientific evaluation of these types of devices will help the public make informed decisions about how they can reduce their risk of encountering a shark.

It’s important to note that the likelihood of being involved in a negative encounter with a shark is exceptionally low. As a result, some will argue that the use of expensive technology to mitigate that risk even further is unnecessary. Furthermore, no device is likely to guarantee 100% protection from any species of shark.

But at present, under the conditions in which we tested it, this is one device that does seem to offer a genuine benefit. So if you feel that you need extra protection from sharks when entering the water, this device will offer you exactly that.

This article was written with the help of Channing Egeberg, a University of Western Australia marine euroecology MSc graduate and cofounder of Support our Sharks.

Ryan Kempster received funding from WA State Government Shark Hazard Mitigation Applied Research Program, which provided over $220,000 for this research as part of a larger package to investigate the effectiveness of existing shark deterrents. He is also affiliated with the non-profit shark conservation group Support Our Sharks.

Shaun Collin received funding from the WA State Government Shark Hazard Mitigation Applied Research Program, which provided $220,000 for this research.

The Bramble Cay Melomys is arguably the first mammal driven extinct by climate change, rather than direct human interaction. Ian Bell/EHP/State of Queensland, CC BY-SA

Australia recently gained an unenviable title: perhaps the first country to lose a mammal species to climate change. The Bramble Cay Melomys, a native rodent found on one tiny sand island in the remote northern regions of the Great Barrier Reef, reportedly became extinct after rising seas destroyed its habitat.

The melomys' likely extinction is a symptom of the massive changes taking place across the natural world. Faced with these changes, we cannot possibly save every species without increasing funding for conservation.

We should be trying to conserve everything we can, or at least minimising the number of plants, animals and ecosystems that are lost. The problem is that Australia’s conservation laws presume that we can preserve everything in its natural state. But in a changing world, we’ll have to be more flexible than that.

The new nature

Our conservation laws were drafted on the assumption that, if human intervention could be avoided or managed, plants and animals would survive in their natural, pristine environments.

We now know that that is not the case. Nature is dynamic. Humans have had a pervasive influence on the environment and recent research suggests that pristine environments no longer exist.

Climate change will rapidly accelerate environmental change. Shifting temperature and rainfall will shift the specific conditions that species depend on to survive. Everything will be on the move.

On top of these gradual climate shifts, more frequent and intense bushfires, storms and heatwaves will destroy some habitats and increase the threatened status of many species. In some cases, these extreme events may result in localised extinctions.

Climate change is creating new problems for biodiversity (such as new invasive species) and is making existing problems worse (such as by changing fire patterns).

What does conservation mean if we can’t save everything?

Far from making conservation law irrelevant, these challenges mean that conservation policy and laws are more important than ever.

Expanding land and marine reserves, restoring and connecting habitat with other areas, and reducing other threats such land clearing or feral animals are all important climate adaptation strategies.

But many Australian plants and animals will not be able to move fast enough to escape extreme events or to keep pace with their specific climate niches on their own. To conserve these species, we may need to engage in high‑intervention conservation strategies, such as assisted colonisation.

This involves moving an individual, population or species to a place where it has never been found before. This tactic is being investigated for the endangered Western Swamp Tortoise in Western Australia, as its wetland habitat begins to dry out.

Conservation laws in Australia were not designed to accommodate these kinds of dynamic and proactive approaches to conservation management.

Legal road blocks

Current conservation laws promote keeping or returning the environment to what it used to be, whether that is pristine or not.

In a recent paper, we looked at three ways laws may impede conservation in a changing world.

First, current laws emphasise maintaining the current status and location of ecosystems and their constituent parts, or returning them to an “undisturbed” state.

Second, they place high value on biodiversity that is rare, native and wild.

Finally, they emphasise reserves (especially on public land) as the sites for most conservation effort.

For example, national park laws typically require agencies to conserve national parks in their natural state. This is usually defined by the plants and animals that are already there or that have been found there in the past.

But some species might need to be moved into national parks, even if they have never been found there before, or out of national parks to somewhere more climatically suitable. Current laws do not let us do this.

Rather than an outdated idea of what is “natural”, we need new objectives that focus on diversity and ecosystem function and health. If introducing a plant or animal into a national park will increase its chance of surviving under climate change and will not undermine the health of the park’s ecosystems, the introduction should not be excluded just because the species is not “native” to that specific park. This approach would help species adapt through movement across boundaries.

Letting species go

Another example of a potential legal roadblock is the emphasis on individual threatened species in both legal protection and funding. For instance, the Coalition government has pledged AU$5 million for specific actions to protect some of the most endangered of Australia’s listed threatened species.

But this is an example of assuming that we can save everything. The contracting ranges and already precarious status of many listed species make it unlikely that we will be able to conserve them all, and impossible to do so in their historic locations.

Choices based on what species we fund are rarely transparent and the public is rarely consulted about what we value the most. We need to have a conversation about how we value species and ecosystems in a changing world. If more people realised that we cannot save everything, perhaps more people would demand that appropriate funding is allocated to saving as much as possible.

While funding remains limited, we need objectives that reflect the certainty of some loss of species in the wild and that clearly define the criteria we are using for targeting some species for protection while letting others go.

Our conservation laws direct how we will act to save species and ecosystems under climate change, and whether we will succeed. But climate change makes our current objectives unachievable.

We must not give up on conserving as much as we can as the climate changes. Laws can be used to help us achieve this goal. But we urgently need a national conversation about what reform is needed to ensure the best possible conservation results for Australia’s precious wildlife, plants and ecosystems.

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 has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Coal’s impact on the Great Barrier Reef by causing climate change is one of the reasons why environmentalists oppose the development of coal fields and exports in Queensland. But fossil fuels could have a more direct impact on the reef and the waters around it, through chemicals produced during their production and distribution.

When coal dust is released in the marine environment it can damage marine ecosystems. Coal contains a number of different chemicals, but it is polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are known carcinogens, that are of most concern.

Some components of coal PAHs cause biochemical changes in fish and can lead to cancer. The coal dust has a very slow degradation rate and will build up in the ecosystem from the continuous input.

Coal dust also absorbs chemicals in the coastal zone and transports things like pesticides and herbicides offshore. Oil spills are another source of PAHs in the marine environment.

It is currently impossible for Australia to assess the impact of these chemicals in marine sediments, because our sediment guidelines are out of date. They need to be updated to match the standards used elsewhere, such as in the United States.

Coal dust and Great Barrier Reef marine life

I have previously looked at how far these chemicals can travel from coal ports. I found they can be detected in suspended sediments all the way to the shelf break 200km offshore. (I also published a corrigendum to this paper to correct data errors and to explain how sediment guidelines need to be updated.)

I used the Australian and the US Environment Protection Authority (EPA) sediment quality guidelines to assess the concentration of PAHs in the sediments and suspended sediments on the Great Barrier Reef. The guidelines are meant to indicate “trigger values” for the concentration of possible toxins. If trigger values are reached then sources should be curtailed.

My study showed the concentrations were below toxic levels as then defined by the US guidelines. But it is impossible to know based on the Australian guidelines because these guidelines don’t target the PAHs contained in coal or oil. To explain why, we have to go into a bit of chemistry.

The composition of the PAHs can indicate the source from coal, oil or combustion processes.

The US guidelines use 34 key PAH groups (a total of about 290 individual compounds) and are currently the best available for assessing oil pollution incidents.

The Australian guidelines do not assess the PAHs that are the major contributor to PAHs in coal and oil. The Australian guidelines specify only 20 “parent” PAHs. These guidelines are more relevant to combustion products.

When is it toxic?

The Australian guidelines consider PAHs reach toxic levels at 10-50 milligrams per kilogram of sediment. But research suggests this is way too high.

Modern assessments of oil spills now rely on the PAH content of oils in addition to the total oil content.

PAHs make up about 1% of total oil content. If you applied these guidelines to an oil spill, the toxic level of 10mg PAH per kg of sediment would equal 1,000mg of oil per kg. This oil content would kill everything in marine sediments.

For example, I and a colleague published a detailed study of fiddler crabs after the West Falmouth oil spill. We determined that total oil concentrations of 100-200mg oil per kg of sediment were toxic to juvenile crabs. Concentrations of 1,000mg per kg were toxic to adults and/or caused a number of impacts before the crabs died.

As PAHs make up around 1% of most oils, this means that the trigger values should be 1mg PAH per kg (with a maximum of 5mg per kg). And this assessment must include the PAHs that are commonly found in oil and coal.

Commercial Australian labs don’t assess all these PAHs yet, but neither did the American labs until it became necessary for assessing major oil spills such as the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We should not wait for the next disaster to upgrade our capability.

Cleaning up coal ports

We also need the ports to reduce their inputs. Townsville port has reduced the dust emission from its powdered zinc and lead loadings.

The train cars are covered and one at a time enter a shed which is under negative pressure. The powder is dumped in a hopper, transported to the conveyors and loaded onto the ships with no or little dust escaping the process.

The cars are then rinsed before leaving the shed. Water is retained and filtered so no dust leaves the area.

Why can’t coal be handled the same way? Improvement in loading metal powders was brought on by public objections to the previous operations.

This would eliminate coal piles in the coastal zone which blow dust all over nearby cities such as Gladstone and leach into coastal creeks. We also need the Australian sediment quality guidelines for PAHs brought up to 21st-century standard.

Do we have to wait until we have another incident like the Montara platform explosion in the Timor Sea in 2010 before we update our guidelines and response times?

Kathryn Burns received funding from the Australian Institute of Marine Science for chemistry studies in the Great Barrier Reef lagoon 2008-2010, and retired in 2011.

Should killing too many fish be dealt with in the same way as war crimes? Bob Williams/Wikimedia Commons

Whether we consider wild weather, unprecedented Arctic melting and global temperatures, or the Great Barrier Reef, the global environment is generating alarming news. Predictions of multi-metre sea level rises, the collapse of marine biodiversity and food chains, and global warming far beyond 2℃ are equally concerning. Is our system of global environmental law and governance adequate to this crisis?

Our short answer is “no”, but what should be done? We believe new international institutions and laws are needed, with one fundamental purpose: to give a voice to ecosystems and non-human forms of life.

We say this knowing that the current global system is inadequate to respond to many human crises, but with the conviction that environmental justice often overlaps with social justice.

It is tempting to believe that we can muddle through with the existing system, centred on the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change and Convention on Biological Diversity. But these are not integrated with each other, and are also kept separate from global economic and trade institutions like the World Trade Organisation, the G20 and the World Bank, and from global security institutions like the UN Security Council. The latter has never passed a resolution about the environment, despite growing warnings from military strategists of the potential for climate-catalysed conflict.

Global trade and security are each governed by global agencies. But there is no comparable global authority to protect the environment.

The climate agreement negotiated at last year’s Paris summit was a great diplomatic achievement, but the euphoria was premature. Current national pledges to cut emissions will fail to keep global warming below 2℃, let alone the 1.5℃ that climate scientists and many nations in Paris have argued is the safer limit.

The Paris deal’s predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, actually saw global emissions rise by 60% to 2014.

Three months before Paris, the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals and its mission to “heal and secure our planet”. The gap between ambition and ability could scarcely be greater.

A new manifesto

We and our colleagues have published a “Planet Politics” manifesto, which argues that the current architecture of international society is failing to see and address the global ecological crisis. Our global governance is too focused on interstate bargaining and human interests, and sees the environment as an inert backdrop and resource for human societies. Yet the reality is that the fates of society and nature are inextricably bound together – and the planet is letting us know that.

In response, we propose three key international reforms: a coal convention, an Earth system council, and a new category of “crimes against biodiversity”.

A coal convention

Every year toxic air pollution from coal burning causes death and disease. Coal is responsible for 43% of global greenhouse emissions and 80% of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration since 1870.

We already have UN treaties banning the use of chemical and biological weapons, on the basis of their threats to human health and security. Based on the same principles, we suggest a similar international convention to outlaw the mining and burning of coal.

This would create a common legal framework in which states can transform their energy economies without fear of “free riders”. It would also add to the pressure already being felt by the coal and energy industries to curb their damaging pollution.

An Earth system council

An Earth system council would function much like the UN Security Council – it would, in effect, be an “ecological security council”.

Its mandate would be to preserve, protect and repair global ecosystems. It would respond to immediate crises while also stimulating action on systemic environmental degradation and ecosystem repair. Its resolutions would be binding on all UN member states, although we do not envisage that it would have the same coercive powers (such as sanctions). The council would be able to refer issues to the International Court of Justice, or create ad hoc international criminal tribunals relating to major environmental crimes.

This is significant reform that would require the revision of the UN Charter, but our proposals for membership go even further. Every meeting would be briefed by the head of the UN Environment Program and by Earth system scientists or ecologists.

We suggest it could have 25 voting seats, 13 of which would go to state representatives elected for fixed terms, allocated among the major world regions. The other 12 would be permanent seats held by “eco-regions”: major ecosystems that bind together large human and non-human communities and are crucial to the planetary biosphere, such as the Arctic and Antarctic, the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the Amazon Basin, tropical Africa, or major river systems like the Mekong and Congo. Alternatively, following WWF’s Global 200, eco-regions could be based on major habitat types.

Each eco-region would be represented by a democratic assembly and have a constitution focused solely on the preservation and repair of its ecology. It would appoint a representative to the Earth system council and have the power to make recommendations for ecosystem protection to regional governments. Each state with territory that overlaps that eco-region would have one seat. Other seats would be elected democratically from communities (especially indigenous peoples) within those regions.

Crimes against biodiversity

A “crimes against biodiversity” law would act like a Rome Statute for the environment. It could add much-needed teeth to efforts to preserve global biodiversity and prevent large-scale environmental harms. Ecological damage should be criminalised, not just penalised with fines or lawsuits.

We envisage that this law would outlaw and punish three kinds of activity:

• actions that contribute to the extinction of endangered species, such as poaching, illegal whaling or destruction of habitat;

• actions that involve the unnecessary large-scale killing or death of species groups, as happened in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster;

• activities that destroy ecosystems, such as the dumping of mine tailings or toxic waste into rivers.

It would not criminalise the farming of animals or the catching of fish, but could apply if these practices involve the mistreatment of animals or large-scale collateral damage to biodiversity – for instance, by overly extractive fishing methods. Such global-level regulation will augment enforcement at local levels.

Unlike international laws that punish genocide, our suggested law would not require proof of intent to commit the crime, but merely a strong link between the activity and the destruction of biodiversity or industrial and systemic harm to animals. There are potential legal precedents in the US legal doctrine of “depraved heart murder” in which individuals are liable for deaths caused by wilful indifference, rather than an express desire to harm.

It is easy to see how this kind of legal reasoning could be used to help deter dangerous industrial, mining or agricultural activities.

Readers might ask how the destruction of biodiversity is as morally appalling as genocide or other crimes against humanity. The philosopher Hannah Arendt has argued that the distinct evil of crimes against humanity lies not simply in mass murder but in the destruction of human diversity; an attack on humanity’s peaceful coexistence on our planet.

Now, as we become ever more aware of the complex enmeshment of human and non-human life in the planetary biosphere, the human-caused extinction of species is likewise an attack on our common ecological existence. It is time for this truth to be recognised in international law.

We are aware that these are radical ideas that raise significant political and legal complexities, but the time to start debating them is now. Planet Earth needs unprecedented politics for these unprecedented times.

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 has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.