The Conversation

If you can't taste the difference, why the backlash against recycled water? Water image from www.shutterstock.com

In light of climate change and a growing population, water authorities around the world are looking at the treatment of recycled water to achieve water security and sustainability.

Recent authors on The Conversation have raised the possibility of expanding the use of water recycling in Australia, noting the potential benefits for domestic, agricultural and industrial water supply.

Some contributors have noted that the major roadblocks to water recycling, in places where it could be beneficial, are not technical issues, but public reluctance to use recycled water.

Emotional Responses

In the past, our aversion to recycled water has been explained by the “yuck factor”. Some people have an emotional response of disgust to using recycled water, even when they know it has been highly treated and is safe. There are large individual differences in the strength and type of different people’s disgust responses.

Psychologists have tried to understand why our thought processes can lead some people to think of recycled water as unclean. One explanation is contagion thinking, the idea that once water has been defiled it will always remain unclean, regardless of treatment, at least according to the mental models that underlie our emotional responses. What such approaches often neglect is that cognition does not occur in a cultural vacuum, but is affected by the associations and stigmas of society.

It is important to note that these emotional responses are often in conflict with our rational thinking. Some theorists, such as Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, have argued that we make judgements using two contrasting systems. One of these systems is slow and operates according to a formal risk calculus. The other is fast, based on positive or negative emotional responses.

Because of this, how we feel about someone or something (positively or negatively) is often as important as what they are being judged on. In other words, the fact that a person understands that a highly treated sample of recycled water is safe to drink may not be enough to stop the emotional response, as we often tend to think intuitively, drawing on our social and cultural values.

The most important question, however, is whether the emotional responses some people have to recycled water can be changed. And what role do stigmas associated with cultural norms play in shaping these?

Sustainable communities and water recycling

In places where water recycling has been introduced, it has simply become a fact of life. In Singapore, citizens of the island nation have widely accepted NEWater (as the Public Utilities Board has branded it). It’s even celebrated at a visitors’ centre that has become a minor tourist attraction.

In Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, various forms of drinkable recycled water have been in use for almost 50 years, with no significant impact.

If these communities can accept recycled water, perhaps our aversion is simply a passing phase, which will disappear when people get used to it? If so, then cultural norms must also play a role, with acceptance building with increased familiarity.

Culture change and recycled water

Cultural cognition is an approach that suggests that our beliefs and judgements about risk and cleanliness are determined by social norms, as well as more innate processes of cognition. As cultural norms, peer pressure, stigmas and the public scientific consensus all affect our beliefs and judgements, then emotional responses to recycled water are strongly linked to our cultural classifications.

The anthropologist Mary Douglas coined the term “matter out of place” to refer to things that do not easily fit into our known systems of classification, and thus often come to be thought of as dangerous. Recycled water fits into this category, as it straddles our conceptions of both clean and polluted. As water recycling is a fairly new concept and most people have no direct experience with it, they revert to inferring from the categories that they do know about.

Thus our emotional responses to water recycling are associated with uncertainty, even though our rational scientific understanding tells us it is no different to any other treated water.

It is our cultural beliefs that determine whether we see recycled water as clean or dirty, and these categories are not fixed but are a reflection of our society at that point.

Looking to the future

If we are to understand how to use new water technologies effectively for social and environmental benefit, we need not only to understand the scientific case for these technologies, but also to change the social and cultural values that inform our attitudes to them.

Culture is dynamic. Our acceptance of any particular new technology is based on norms that are current at a particular time. The “yuck factor”, which has been the focus of so much research over the years, may well change with increasing exposure to recycled water.

Daniel Ooi has received research grants from the Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence (AWRCoE) and the National Centre of Excellence in Desalination Australia (NCEDA). Both the AWRCoE and NCEDA were funded by the Federal Government as part of the Water for the Future program.

Acoustic monitoring of the calls of marine animals, such as whales and seals, could be the key to identifying new species, finding new population groups and mapping migration routes.

We recently used custom-designed detection algorithms to run through 57,000 hours of underwater ocean noise to find the songs of endangered blue whales, rather than listening for each whale call. This detection program saved us an enormous amount of processing time and will be critical in future acoustic monitoring research.

Some endangered marine animals, including several whale and seal species, are “cryptic species”: they’re genetically different but look alike. This means that they are often mistaken for one another when identified visually, making conservation plans difficult to implement.

However, most animals produce species-specific calls. Eavesdropping on their calls therefore provides a unique way to monitor them. This is completely rewriting our understanding of their population recovery.

Recovery of the blue whale

We recently discovered two new blue whale populations migrating off the east coast of Australia using this technology. This is important news as the blue whale has been slow to recover after being hunted to the brink of extinction. How can the largest animal that has ever lived, the Antarctic blue whale, swim undetected just off the coast of Sydney?

It is remarkable that we have only now discovered them there. It is possible that they only started using this route recently, or perhaps they have been there all along and we have missed them.

Fortunately for us, blue whales sing, allowing us to detect them using arrays of listening devices spanning sites across the Indian and Pacific oceans. However, the frequency of their song is so low that humans can’t hear it.

Blue whales produce different calls and these calls possibly reflect different subspecies. Their different songs help the International Whaling Commission manage the recovery of these subspecies.

Blue whales speak with different dialects

Globally, there are at least nine separate blue whale acoustic populations, and Australia’s waters are home to at least three.

The west coast of Australia is a well-known blue whale feeding ground and both the Australian pygmy and Antarctic blue whales are common there.

Another popular blue whale feeding ground is in Southern Australia. Until recently the blue whales there were thought to be all pygmy blue whales, but it was discovered that the Antarctic blue whale is also found there.

We were further surprised to find that the Antarctic blue whales remained all year off southern Australia. In some years, they did not return to their krill-rich Antarctic feeding grounds in the summer, as we’d expect.

The east coast of Australia is not known as a blue whale site, so we were delighted to find two different acoustic populations in the Tasman Sea, all the way up to Samoa. We found the critically endangered Antarctic blue whale and, to the delight of our New Zealand colleagues, pygmy blue whales with a New Zealand accent.

Tasmania now looks like the boundary point separating the Kiwi and Aussie speaking pygmy blue whales.

What about seals?

Similar to whales, seals are also returning to our shoreline. Fur seals are an example of a marine cryptic species, and while some species are thriving, others are not.

The different fur seal species look similar. In fact, unless you are a seal expert, or a seal, it can be difficult to tell them apart. But we can easily recognise the different species because they have very different calls.

The seals can recognise further subtle differences in calls between one another. To maintain their breeding territories the male seals fight and bark incessantly. Each male has a distinctly different call.

A male can recognise and respond differently to the voices of his neighbours, whose territory boundary lines have been established by weeks of confrontations, from the voices of unknown males that are potentially a threat to his territory.

Fur seal mum and pup. Pixabay

The female fur seals and their pups also have individually unique voices. When a female returns from sea after days of hunting, she needs to find her pup from the hundreds of other pups on the island. The mum and pup call to find one another in the busy, noisy colony. The female recognises her pup’s unique call and scent as part of the reunion.

Spying on animal songs gives new insights into undiscovered populations and new migratory routes, completely rewriting our understanding of these marine giants. Accurately evaluating the population status and trends of cryptic marine species is critical in developing conservation management strategies.

Joy Tripovich receives funding from the Winifred Violet Scott Trust and is affiliated with the E&ERC at UNSW Australia.

Tracey Rogers receives funding from ARC. She is affiliated with the E&ERC at UNSW Australia

A rare glimpse of a river dolphin in Cambodia. Erwan Deverre/Flickr, CC BY-NC

It’s hot, and you’re sitting sweating in a small wooden boat. Your cold bottle of water is dripping, and the pink polyester roof does nothing to shade the glare of the setting sun. The young man at the back of the boat smiles and points at the water, and there you see it: one of Cambodia’s most magnificent spectacles.

Angkor Wat? No, it’s a critically endangered dolphin rising from the brown waters of the Mekong River, breathing, looking at you, and then disappearing below.

Our recent research suggests that while dolphin and whale tourism in Southeast Asia can be great for communities, it can also come at a cost to the environment.

So what should you look for if you’re going on tour?

Tourism boom

Dolphin- and whale-watching tourism is a booming industry worldwide, and it’s growing apace in developing parts of Asia. Many tourists flock to see spinner dolphins in Bali or Bohol; blue whales off Sri Lanka; Chinese white dolphins in Hong Kong; or Irrawaddy dolphins in great rivers like the Mekong and Ayeyarwaddy (as the Irrawaddy is now known).

Tourist boats looking for dolphins in the Mekong River, Cambodia. G E Ryan

This interest in seeing wildlife is a boon: it provides jobs for local people driving boats, selling souvenirs, or staffing restaurants and hotels. It also gives a growing Asian middle class the chance to get close to wildlife that many people are increasingly separated from in day-to-day life.

By providing jobs and building compassion for the species it targets, dolphin-watching tourism can thus provide an incentive to protect threatened species such as critically endangered river dolphins. But it has a cost.

Boat traffic can stress dolphins. What can seem like insignificant short-term stresses are known to have long-term costs on whole populations if they are repeated over a long time.

Tourist boats visiting dolphins several times a day can cause exactly this sort of problem, especially if they harass and chase animals. This happens in many places where regulation is absent or poorly enforced. We have seen large numbers of boats swarming groups of dolphins in many places.

Often such tourism is limited only by the numbers of boats and crews willing to conduct it. Understanding the long-term ecological effects of tourism activities on dolphin populations is difficult; it needs long-term data, which can be expensive and slow to collect.

This kind of work is rarely done, especially in developing Asia. So we don’t really know how tourism affects dolphins and whales in this area.

With colleagues, we recently developed a rapid risk-assessment method to understand the risk tourism poses to wildlife. We applied it to seven sites in six countries in developing Asia, including sites on the Mekong River in Cambodia, on the coasts of Bohol in the Philippines, Bali, Malaysian Borneo and Thailand, and in India’s Chilika Lagoon.

We found the highest risk from tourism was to Irrawaddy dolphins at Chilika Lagoon, and to spinner and other dolphins at Lovina Beach in Bali. Both of these sites have no regulation of the number of boats visiting dolphins, or how boats are operated around the animals. This leaves large numbers of boats free to chase dolphins around – hardly ideal.

Spinner dolphins and tourist boats in Indonesia. Putu L Mustika How to travel lightly

The sites we assessed are just a drop in a sea full of opportunities to view wild whales and dolphins. So next time you’re heading out on holiday and considering going to see some of the water’s most charismatic inhabitants, how do you know if you should go?

Here’s a few things to consider:

• Is there a land-based alternative to see the animals without disturbing them?

• Is there a code of practice for boat operators to prevent stressing animals? This may not be obvious. Talk to other tourists about how boat drivers operate around animals. Avoid operators who chase, cut off, or otherwise harass animals.

• Ask your driver not to chase animals, and reward them with thanks or tips for driving carefully around the animals.

• Ask yourself how you can meaningfully contribute to the protection of these species in other ways.

Watching wild animals in their natural environment is one of life’s great experiences. Few things in this world are as uplifting as the sight of a dolphin breaking the water’s surface, and it’s a sight we hope everyone can enjoy for countless generations.

We’re sure we will be able to if we encourage responsible dolphin-watching tourism. And that can start with you on your next getaway into the wild!

Putu Liza Mustika is also affiliated with Cetacean Sirenian Indonesia, an environmental NGO in Indonesia.

Gerry Ryan and Riccardo Welters 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 Darwin the wet season usually arrives around Christmas Day. Storm image from www.shutterstock.com

Christmas in Darwin often means one thing: rain. The north is famous for its wet season, which runs from November to April, when the vast majority of the region’s rain falls.

The flora, fauna and people of the north have adapted to the Australian monsoon and now depend on the arrival of the rain for their survival. Living as we do on an arid continent, it is natural to eye this seasonal source of water as an important resource for agriculture and other economic activity.

But the summer monsoon is also notoriously fickle. Last year’s wet season was the driest since 1992, although there is some evidence that this year will be better. So what drives this important weather phenomenon, and how might it change in the future?

Northern Australia’s wildlife is adapted to the wild swings between wet and dry. Crocodile image from www.shutterstock.com What is the Australian monsoon?

The Australian monsoon actually alternates between two seasonal phases linked to wind direction. In the winter phase, easterly trade winds bring dry conditions. In the summer, westerly winds bring sustained rainy conditions. In fact, the word “monsoon” comes from the Arabic word for season.

Global rainfall daily averages (1979-2008) for the months of January (left) and July (right). The monsoon trough is positioned over northern Australia in the southern summer, and moves northward during the southern winter. NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/)

As the summer approaches, the sun heats the Australian land area faster than the surrounding ocean in much the same way as the pavement next to an outdoor swimming pool is heated faster than the pool water.

This difference in heating also produces a difference in pressure, which is lower over the land than the ocean. As a result, warm, moist air from the tropical ocean is drawn towards the lower pressure over the hot and dry north of Australia. It is this increase in humidity in the month or so prior to the sustained rains (known also as the “build-up”) that makes life so uncomfortable for many, driving some people “troppo”.

With increasing humidity, conditions become progressively better for the development of deep clouds and storms.

Eventually, sustained rain, low pressure (the “monsoon trough”) and deep westerly winds become established over land. This transition can be relatively abrupt, and at Darwin usually occurs around Christmas Day, although there is a great deal of variability from year to year.

Satellite image from December 27 2015, showing a tropical low in the Australian monsoon. This weather system contributed to the first big rainfall burst of the 2015/2016 summer monsoon. NASA Worldview (https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/) Why so variable?

Unsurprisingly, El Niño (and its counterpart, La Niña) is partly responsible for the monsoon’s variability.

In El Niño years, the summer monsoon tends to be drier than average, and last year was no exception.

However, El Niño (or La Niña) usually influences only the early part of the season. Once the summer monsoon becomes established, the relationship with El Niño (or La Niña) becomes weaker.

The tropical oceans just to the north of Australia also play a role in the variability. Warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures and greater evaporation have contributed to an early onset of summer monsoon this year by increasing the moisture early in the season.

Rainfall in the Australian summer monsoon occurs in a series of bursts, each of which may last for a few days or weeks. The relatively dry periods between the bursts are referred to as breaks, which can last for lengths similar to bursts. The total amount of rain that falls in a season depends on the intensity of the bursts, their number and their duration.

Daily rainfall averaged over land areas in the north of Australia for the period 1979-2010 (red), and the 2015/16 daily rainfall (blue). Although on average the rainfall over northern Australia is largest between January and February, in any given season the rainfall will occur in sporadic bursts as seen for the 2015/2016 summer monsoon. Bureau of Meteorology (http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp) The science of bursts

One ingredient in rainfall bursts is the envelope of deep clouds known as the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). This eastward-moving atmospheric wave organises deep clouds in the tropics and is often linked to widespread rainfall as it passes over the north of Australia.

This wave has a period (the length of time between rises and falls) of 30 to 60 days, and is closely monitored by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Recent research has shown that a second important ingredient is the mid-latitude troughs (zones of low pressure) that periodically move towards the equator into the tropics. Such troughs rapidly increase the moisture in the monsoon trough and are associated with two-thirds of all bursts.

These influences also work together to produce rainfall bursts in the Australian monsoon.

What about climate change?

The jury is still out on this one, although there are hints as to what might be ahead.

State-of-the-art climate models furiously disagree on whether there will be more or less rainfall and how much more or less in the north of Australia. Although there are reasons to believe that the monsoon regions may become wetter in a warmer world, monsoons pose a challenge for climate models as they depend very strongly on the relationship between the atmosphere, the land and the ocean.

However, recent advances in understanding the role of the mid-latitudes in producing rainfall bursts may help us to untangle some of the uncertainties in the models.

The continuing research into understanding and predicting the Australian summer monsoon will help in planning for the future in this important region.

Sugata Narsey receives funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Systems Science.

Michael Reeder receives funding from Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Timber stockpiled along a logging road. Day Edryshov/Shutterstock

If you asked a friend to name the worst human threat to nature, what would they say? Global warming? Overhunting? Habitat fragmentation?

A new study suggests it is in fact road-building.

“Road-building” might sound innocuous, like “house maintenance” – or even positive, conjuring images of promoting economic growth. Many of us have been trained to think so.

But an unprecedented spate of road building is happening now, with around 25 million kilometres of new paved roads expected by 2050. And that’s causing many environmental researchers to perceive roads about as positively as a butterfly might see a spider web that’s just fatally trapped it.

A Malayan tapir killed along a road in Peninsular Malaysia. WWF-Malaysia/Lau Ching Fong Shattered

The new study, led by Pierre Ibisch at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, Germany, ambitiously attempted to map all of the roads and remaining ecosystems across Earth’s entire land surface.

Its headline conclusion is that roads have already sliced and diced Earth’s ecosystems into some 600,000 pieces. More than half of these are less than 1 square kilometre in size. Only 7% of the fragments are more than 100 square km.

Remaining roadless areas across the Earth. P. Ibisch et al. Science (2016)

That’s not good news. Roads often open a Pandora’s box of ills for wilderness areas, promoting illegal deforestation, fires, mining and hunting.

In the Brazilian Amazon, for instance, our existing research shows that 95% of all forest destruction occurs within 5.5km of roads. The razing of the Amazon and other tropical forests produces more greenhouse gases than all motorised vehicles on Earth.

Animals are being imperilled too, by vehicle roadkill, habitat loss and hunting. In just the past decade, poachers invading the Congo Basin along the expanding network of logging roads have snared or gunned down two-thirds of all forest elephants for their valuable ivory tusks.

Deforestation along roads in the Brazilian Amazon. Google Earth Worse than it looks

As alarming as the study by Ibisch and colleagues sounds, it still probably underestimates the problem, because it is likely that the researchers missed half or more of all the roads on the planet.

That might sound incompetent on their part, but in fact keeping track of roads is a nightmarishly difficult task. Particularly in developing nations, illegal roads can appear overnight, and many countries lack the capacity to govern, much less map, their unruly frontier regions.

One might think that satellites and computers can keep track of roads, and that’s partly right. Most roads can be detected from space, if it’s not too cloudy, but it turns out that the maddening variety of road types, habitats, topographies, sun angles and linear features such as canals can fool even the smartest computers, none of which can map roads consistently.

The only solution is to use human eyes to map roads. That’s what Ibisch and his colleagues relied upon – a global crowdsourcing platform known as OpenStreetMap, which uses thousands of volunteers to map Earth’s roads.

Therein lies the problem. As the authors acknowledge, human mappers have worked far more prolifically in some areas than others. For instance, wealthier nations like Switzerland and Australia have quite accurate road maps. But in Indonesia, Peru or Cameroon, great swathes of land have been poorly studied.

A quick look at OpenStreetmap also shows that cities are far better mapped than hinterlands. For instance, in the Brazilian Amazon, my colleagues and I recently found 3km of illegal, unmapped roads for every 1km of legal, mapped road.

A logging truck blazes along a road in Malaysian Borneo. Rhett Butler/Mongabay

What this implies is that the environmental toll of roads in developing nations – which sustain most of the planet’s critical tropical and subtropical forests – is considerably worse than estimated by the new study.

This is reflected in statistics like this: Earth’s wilderness areas have shrunk by a tenth in just the past two decades, as my colleagues and I reported earlier this year. Lush forests such as the Amazon, Congo Basin and Borneo are shrinking the fastest.

Road rage

The modern road tsunami is both necessary and scary. On one hand, nobody disputes that developing nations in particular need more and better roads. That’s the chief reason that around 90% of all new roads are being built in developing countries.

On the other hand, much of this ongoing road development is poorly planned or chaotic, leading to severe environmental damage.

For instance, the more than 53,000km of “development corridors” being planned or constructed in Africa to access minerals and open up remote lands for farming will have enormous environmental costs, our research suggests.

Orangutans in the wilds of northern Sumatra. Suprayudi

This year, both the Ibisch study and our research have underscored how muddled the UN Sustainable Development Goals are with respect to vanishing wilderness areas across the planet.

For instance, the loss of roadless wilderness conflicts deeply with goals to combat harmful climate change and biodiversity loss, but could improve our capacity to feed people. These are tough trade-offs.

One way we’ve tried to promote a win-win approach is via a global road-mapping strategy that attempts to tell us where we should and shouldn’t build roads. The idea is to promote roads where we can most improve food production, while restricting them in places that cause environmental calamities.

Part of a global road-mapping strategy. Green areas have high environmental values where roads should be avoided. Red areas are where roads could improve agricultural production. And black areas are ‘conflict zones’ where both environmental values and potential road benefits are high. W. F. Laurance et al. Nature (2014)

The bottom line is that if we’re smart and plan carefully, we can still increase food production and human equity across much of the world.

But if we don’t quickly change our careless road-building ways, we could end up opening up the world’s last wild places like a flayed fish – and that would be a catastrophe for nature and people too.

Bill Laurance receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other scientific and philanthropic organisations. He is the director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University, and founder and director of ALERT--the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Thinkers.

Business here and households here, already we’re paying twice the cost of the US for electricity. – Craig Kelly MP, chair of the backbench environment and energy committee, ABC Radio National Breakfast interview, December 6, 2016. (Listen from 7.38)

Environment and energy minister Josh Frydenberg recently left open the possibility of some form of carbon trading in the electricity sector. He later ruled out that option, saying he wanted to keep electricity prices down.

Following Frydenberg’s initial comments, Liberal MP Craig Kelly said businesses and households in Australia are already paying twice as much as Americans for their electricity.

Is that true?

Checking the source

When asked for sources to support his statement, Craig Kelly referred The Conversation to a range of sources, saying that:

… a report titled 2015 Residential Electricity Price Trends lists [on page 212] the average Australian price at 28.72 cents per kilowatt hour for 2014/2015.

In comparison, the US Energy Information Administration lists the average price for residential electricity [in the US] at 10.44 cents for 2014.

Converting 10.44 US cents at A$1/US$0.74 – is the equivalent of 14.11 cents Australia.

So using these sources (in Australian cents) we have 14.11 cents in the USA and 28.72 cents in Australia. Therefore I think to say that “we’re paying twice the cost of the US for electricity” (on average) is pretty much right on the money.

You can read Craig Kelly’s full response here.

Do Australians pay more?

It’s definitely true that Australians pay much more for their electricity than US citizens do (and Australian prices are set to rise even further, according to the Australian Energy Market Commission.

Using OECD data, there’s one measure that says it is twice as much – or at least it was twice as much as recently as 2014. Another measure – a better measure, in my view – shows Australians pay about 50% more than US citizens do for their electricity.

As Craig Kelly notes in his full response, there is significant variation in electricity prices across states and territories in Australia and in the United States, so comparing the two is not a simple matter. The Australian Energy Market Commission’s annual Electricity Price Trends report shows that retail prices in Australia vary from 18.44 c/kWh in the Australian Capital Territory to 29.75 c/KWh in South Australia.

But we can use Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data on wholesale and retail indices energy prices to check Craig Kelly’s statement.

The wholesale price is the cost of generating the energy that is sent to the grid. Retail prices are what householders are more used to talking about. Retail prices factor in extra costs like transmission and distribution (“poles and wires”), retailer margins and other levies (such as Feed-in Tariff and Renewable Energy Target costs). In other words, it’s what we’re paying on our power bill.

Let’s examine the data.

A tale of two measures

The two measures I have used to compare prices in the US and Australia are called “market exchange rates” and “purchasing power parities”. Craig Kelly’s calculations rely on market exchange rates, so we will start with that one.

Market exchange rates simply means converting the price in one country’s currency to that of another country’s currency, as Kelly did. This measure of comparison is more volatile than purchasing power parity exchange rates.

Using market exchange rates, OECD data show that Australian electricity prices have, in recent years, been approximately twice as high as electricity prices in the US. Recently, the gap has narrowed. In 2015, using market exchange rates, electricity prices in Australia were about 70.3% higher than in the US.

The Australian Energy Market Commission projects that Australian prices will rise even further in coming years.

By converting Australian electricity prices into US dollars (market exchange rates), we can see Australian electricity prices have been an average of twice as high as in the US over the past four years – though the gap narrowed in 2015, down to a 70% difference. Chart provided by author, using data from the OECD.

That broadly supports what Kelly said. But if we use purchasing power parity exchange rates, the data show that Australia’s prices are approximately 50% higher than the US.

Purchasing power parity exchange rates, or PPP, factor in inflation and the cost of living in a particular country, and eliminate differences in price levels between countries. This measure allows a cleaner, less volatile comparison between the US and Australia.

The chart below compares the retail prices of electricity in Australia and the United States when adjusted for cost of living differences using purchasing power parity.

Using purchasing power parity exchange rates, OECD data shows household prices of electricity are approximately 50% higher in Australia than in the US. Chart by author, using data from the OECD.

As the above chart of the OECD data shows, household prices of electricity are about 50% higher in Australia than in the US when you use purchasing power parity data.

Why are the prices so different?

As this chart shows, data from OECD indicate there has been a substantial divergence between Australian and American electricity prices since about 2008.

Retail price index: average power prices for householders in the US and Australia. The year 2000 is indexed to 100 (that is, 2000 = 100) Author provided, using data from the OECD Wholesale price index: the average price the generators charge to the retailers (or distributors) for the power they put into the grid. The year 2000 is indexed to 100 (that is, 2000 = 100) Author provided, using data from the OECD.

As noted in the preliminary report of the Australian chief scientist Alan Finkel’s review of the National Electricity Market, household energy bills in Australia increased 61% on average between 2008 and 2014.

The main reason for this is the cost of maintaining the electricity network – essentially, the poles and wires that deliver the power. Network costs represent between 45% and 55% of a typical electricity bill. This has been the largest contributor to Australia’s increasing prices over the past six years.

Some observers have said that the “gold-plating” of the network came about because of a regulatory regime that encouraged over-investment in poles and wires. This was been partly driven by an effort to shore up electricity supply and an overestimation of demand.

The US shale gas revolution has also helped keep energy more affordable there than in Australia.

The Productivity Commission reported that, in New South Wales, network costs accounted for 80% of price rises in 2010-11 and 50% of price rises in 2011-12.

Is it really that simple?

Not really. Energy economics is far more complicated than can come across in Kelly’s quick quote or this short FactCheck.

While the Australian price is higher, this doesn’t necessarily mean the cost is higher: Australians use much less energy than Americans. This is because as prices increase, energy productivity and energy efficiency also tend to increase. In total, most countries actually spend a similar proportion of GDP on energy costs.

This holds surprisingly consistent across a range of countries. For example, Japan has high energy prices, but also has high energy efficiency and productivity. Consequently, it spends practically the same amount of GDP on energy cost as the US.

So prices may be higher for individuals, but that doesn’t mean the economy-wide costs are higher. All that said, Kelly was talking about the prices for individuals and business, so that’s what this FactCheck is focused on.

Verdict

If we compare Australian and American electricity prices using market exchange rates, Craig Kelly’s comment is correct: Australia’s electricity prices were essentially double those of the United States as recently as 2014. In 2015, using market exchange rates, the US prices were about 70.3% higher.

If we compare the prices using purchasing parity power exchange rates – which I’d argue is the more accurate reflection of the costs of living in each of the countries – Australia’s prices are about 50% higher than the US.

Overall, Craig Kelly’s broader point is correct: Australians pay a much higher price for their electricity than Americans do. – Dylan McConnell.

Review

I agree with the author’s position that purchasing power parity comparisons are less volatile and more representative of the relativity based on actual living costs. It is true Australian households pay a much higher electricity price than Americans.

There’s one important point I’d add. There is a baseline cost of having a house or business connected to electrical supply, regardless of how much electricity is used. This is called the fixed supply cost. The more electricity a household or business uses, the more the fixed supply cost is diluted in the overall electricity bill. This brings down the cost per kilowatt-hours (kWh).

American households use about twice as much electricity as Australian households. According to the US EIA, average US household electricity consumption in 2015 was 10,812 kWh. 2014 data for Australia shows average Australian household electricity consumption was 5,772 kWh (down from 6,819 kWh in 2008. At 25 cents/kWh that is a saving of $307 for Australians for using less electricity over time).

So we would expect Australian household electricity prices to be higher, because an average Australian household uses less electricity and the large fixed supply costs must be spread across a smaller amount of consumption. This raises the cost per kWh. But because Australians use less, their annual bill may be lower.

Further, in recent years, Australian energy retailers have been raising their fixed supply (or baseline) charges. So small users pay much more overall per unit of electricity they use.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that larger businesses often negotiate much better deals on their electricity prices than householders can. – Alan Pears.

Have you ever seen a “fact” worth checking? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at checkit@theconversation.edu.au. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.

Dylan McConnell has received funding from the AEMC's Consumer Advocacy Panel and Energy Consumers Australia.

Alan Pears has worked for government, business, industry associations public interest groups and at universities on energy efficiency, climate response and sustainability issues since the late 1970s. He is now an honorary Senior Industry Fellow at RMIT University and a consultant, as well as an adviser to a range of industry associations and public interest groups. His investments in managed funds include firms that benefit from growth in clean energy.

Ideas to enhance the liveability and sustainability of our cities have attracted a lot of interest recently. Examples include establishing or enhancing “urban forests”, or “bringing back nature” into cities to support animals and ecosystems displaced by human activity.

While these projects focus on creating space for nature and enhancing biodiversity within cities, they rarely consider the impact on nature of the artificial lighting used across the urban landscape.

Public lighting is often thought to be essential for improving safety and preventing crime. Most commercial and public structures are lit up at night, although often for purely aesthetic reasons.

A network of street lighting links these “islands of illumination”. The effects of this can, in some large cities, result in “sky glow” that interferes with star visibility at distances of more than 300 kilometres.

A cascade of harmful impacts

While modern life makes some artificial lighting essential, when it’s overused or poorly designed it creates light pollution. It is not widely appreciated that this can have significant adverse effects, which go beyond interference with stargazing. These include serious impacts on humans, plants and animals.

Effects on humans reportedly include (but are not limited to) an increased risk of breast cancer, sleep disruptions and possible links to metabolic disorders, including diabetes and obesity. Furthermore, artificial lighting uses large amounts of energy associated with CO2 emissions.

Adverse effects on animals include interference with reproduction, predator and prey interactions, and orientation and migration. These effects are potentially damaging for entire ecosystems, as well as particular species.

Ecosystems involve a complex balance of interactions between species. Disrupting this can trigger a cascade of harmful effects.

The attraction of moths to lights offers an illustration of this. In becoming disoriented and infinitely attracted to the artificial light, the local moths of a given species become an easy meal for bats and other predators, and the moth population declines. Other species that depend on the moths for their survival are now themselves at risk.

If this particular species of moth pollinates plants, then local pollination may be reduced. And if this moth is the only pollinator of a plant species, then that species’ rate of reproduction will fall. This can be devastating for insect and animal communities that rely on these plants for habitat and food.

A whole ecosystem can be harmed by something as apparently harmless as public lighting.

A need to rethink lighting standards

Despite awareness of adverse effects, the collective ecological impact of artificial light is not well recognised beyond the sphere of ecological research.

Planning regulations and practices tend not to consider artificial lighting as a source of pollution. Rather, the focus is on minimum lighting standards, reflecting perceptions of safety and community expectations.

Questions of unwanted light are more often considered in terms of nuisance or energy wastage. The focus of light reduction tends to be on cost savings, or even CO2 savings, and not wider environmental effects. Ironically, the introduction of energy-saving lighting, such as LED, may lead to even greater impacts on some species.

Being diurnal creatures, we humans tend to have little awareness of night-time ecosystems. Given that light emissions disappear once the source is turned off, it is unsurprising that artificial light has not been identified as an important pollutant.

Global concerns about climate change and energy consumption, and the resulting trend towards greater efficiency and sustainability, create an opportunity to challenge the underlying assumptions about public lighting. For example, the notion that more lighting equates to greater safety and discourages crime may be questionable.

Reconsidering our association of artificial lighting with progress and modernity allows us to reframe the “minimum lighting standards” model to one that seeks to minimise harm in all respects. The key question then is what lighting is needed for human safety while minimising unwanted or harmful light as well as energy consumption?

Possible solutions go beyond a debate of more versus less lighting. We could, for instance, use lights with wavelengths that cause less disruption to key species, as well as “adaptive street lighting” that responds to pedestrian movement. There are doubtless many possible innovations that balance human and ecological needs.

Urban greening programs could play a leading role here in developing smarter lighting solutions that benefit both humans and ecosystems. Such initiatives would be natural inclusions in the emerging protocols to guide biodiversity-sensitive urban design.

Alex Kusmanoff receives funding from the Australian Research Council and through the National Environment Science Programme's Threatened Species and Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hubs.

Georgia Garrard receives funding from the National Environmental Science Programme's Threatened Species Recovery Hub.

Luis Mata receives funding from the National Environmental Science Programme - Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub.

Sarah Bekessy receives funding from the Australian Research Council and through the National Environment Science Programme's, Threatened Species and Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hubs.

Wildfires in Tasmania in 2016 were in part the result of an extended dry period beginning in 2015. Rob Blakers, CC BY-SA

Climate change made some of Australia’s 2015 extreme weather events more likely, according to research published today in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

As part of an annual review of global weather extremes, these studies focused on October 2015, which was the hottest on record for that month across Australia. It was also the hottest by the biggest margin for any month.

October 2015 was also the driest for that month on record in Tasmania, which contributed to the state’s dry spring and summer, and its bad fire season.

El Niño events usually drive global temperatures higher, and 2015 had one of the strongest on record. So were these records due to El Niño, or climate change? The research shows that while El Niño had some influence on Australia’s weather, it was not the only culprit.

El Niño packed a punch – or did it?

In 2015, a strong El Niño developed, with record high temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean contributing to 2015 being the hottest year on record globally (although 2016 will smash it). The Indian Ocean was also very warm.

El Niño is often associated with warm and dry conditions across eastern Australia, particularly in spring and summer. The new studies found that for Australia as a whole, while El Niño did make the continent warmer, its direct contribution to record temperatures was small.

Only in the Murray Darling Basin did El Niño make it more likely that the October 2015 heat would be a record. El Niño also played a small but notable role in the dry October in Tasmania.

Temperatures were at a record high across the south of the country. Bureau of Meteorology The hottest October

Although record-high spring temperatures might not make you sweat as much as a summer heatwave, ecosystems and agriculture can be susceptible. October 2015 was 2.89℃ warmer than the previous hottest October in 2014, beating the margin set by September 2013, which was 2.75℃ warmer than the previous hottest September.

Even before October 2015 was over, Mitchell Black and David Karoly at the University of Melbourne reported that human-induced climate change played a strong role in the excessive October heat.

The first paper (chapter 23 in the annual review) explains this further. Using the citizen science Weather@home ANZ system, the researchers analysed thousands of simulations of the world’s climate of 2015, generated on home computers (you can donate your computer power here).

To find out whether climate change played a role, some of those simulations included the observed ocean temperatures of 2015, while some included ocean temperatures as if human-caused climate change had never occurred.

According to this method, climate change made breaking the October record four times more likely compared to a world without climate change.

The second paper (chapter 24 in the review) backed this up. This study used the Bureau of Meteorology’s seasonal forecast system to compare the real world to a world with less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The researchers came to exactly the same conclusion: rising carbon dioxide levels made a record October four times more likely.

This second study also found that the atmospheric conditions – the series of high and low pressure systems that shift heat from inland Australia towards the south – were more important in driving the extra heat than the extreme global ocean temperatures.

If these weather systems had occurred in a low-CO₂ world, it would still have been an extremely warm month. But for October 2015, climate change increased the temperature by an extra 1 degree.

Driest October for Tasmania

In October 2015, Tasmania received only 21mm of rainfall, just 17% of its normal amount. It was much drier than the previous driest October in 1965 (in the era with reliable record, when the state received 56mm). This was part of the driest spring on record, and a dry and warm run of months through spring and summer.

This run of warm and dry months had major impacts on agriculture and hydroelectricity, and helped to set up a catastrophic fire season.

Rainfall extremes can be complex, and it is generally much harder to figure out what caused them than temperature extremes. So the third Australian study (ch. 25 in the review) used two different methods to compare October 2015 to the previous record.

The results showed that El Niño did affect the October climate, but human-caused climate change also played a small but significant role. Climate change probably increased the chances of Tasmania having its driest October by 25-50%.

The record-dry October appears to be linked to higher atmospheric pressure in a band around the whole southern hemisphere, which is consistent with trends over recent time.

Rainfall across Tasmania was the lowest on record across nearly the whole state. Bureau of Meteorology Climate change is altering our extremes

More extreme events and more broken climate records are causing many people to ask whether climate variability or climate change is to blame. But of course it is never just one of these; it is always a combination of both.

For the extreme October of 2015, while short-term weather patterns and the El Niño contributed to the extremes, breaking these climate records would have been substantially less likely without human-induced climate change.

Climate change has already altered the extreme weather we experience in Australia and will continue to do so over the coming years.

David Karoly, Mitchell Black, EunPa Lim and Harry Hendon all contributed to the research on which this article is based.

Pandora Hope receives funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme, as part of the Earth Systems and Climate Change hub.

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Guomin Wang receives funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme, as part of the Earth Systems and Climate Change hub.

Julie Arblaster previously received funding from the Australian Climate Change Science Programme

Michael Grose receives funding from Australian Government's National Environmental Science Programme, as part of the Earth System and Climate Change hub.

The annual review of extreme weather and climate events published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society today highlights how climate change is influencing the events that affect us the most. This table summarises each event and whether climate change played a role.

Across the globe, extreme heat events are linked with climate change, although El Niño provided a boost in 2015 leading to more records being broken. The human influence on rainfall and drought is less strong but we can see it in many events that were studied.

Our influence on the climate extends beyond temperature and rainfall. In the UK, the chance of very sunny winters (which sounds like an oxymoron!) has increased due to climate change. The record low sea ice extents, which have continued into 2016, are strongly associated with human influences.

While the majority of studies have been done on the developed world, more analyses of developing countries are included this year than in the past. Through collaborations between local experts and teams in the United States and Europe, a greater emphasis on extreme events in the developing world was possible.

This is important because the impacts of extreme events are often more severe in these areas than in wealthier regions.

The effects of climate change on extremes spread far and wide as human activities have radically altered our climate. We can expect to see more extreme events with a clear fingerprint of human-caused climate change in the coming years and decades.

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

There is a great opportunity and imperative for Australia and Indonesia to join forces to solve critical challenges facing the ocean and coastal regions. Lkzz/www.shutterstock.com

In many ways, Australia and Indonesia represent ocean superpowers. The two neighbouring countries share huge marine resources and opportunities. At the same time both face increasing challenges to their oceans and coastal regions brought about by climate change and over-exploitation.

Recently, marine scientists from Australia and Indonesia identified possible areas of collaboration for their countries to solve these challenges.

The scientists came together at the inaugural Australia Indonesia Science Symposium organised by the Australian and Indonesian scientific academies. We were conveners for the two-day discussion between the Australian and Indonesian marine experts.

The scientists highlighted at least eight potential areas of collaboration on marine science and climate change:

1. Scientists from both countries believe it’s important for Australia and Indonesia to work together to understand the impact of climate change on marine resources, and to create solutions. Climate change is causing rising sea levels and surface temperatures as well as ocean acidification. These have resulted in the bleaching of corals and mortality that affect livelihoods in both countries. Both scientific communities urge their governments to do more to rapidly reduce greenhouse gases.

2. They pointed out that Australia and Indonesia should look into developing a strategy to reduce CO₂ and other emissions by maximising their coastal ecosystems and oceans as carbon sinks.

3. The scientists recommended the two countries explore ways to increase cooperation and knowledge sharing in new technologies for the rapid monitoring of key marine resources. Many breakthroughs in technologies, such as image recognition, neural networks and machine learning, are set to rapidly reduce the time and costs of detailed reef monitoring.

4. The two scientific communities also suggested the countries work together to advance the sciences to better manage migratory species such as turtles, sharks and other megafauna.

5. They recommended a holistic approach to developing coastal fisheries. These fisheries require the development of whole-of-system thinking, with integrated management/governance that recognises the multiple uses and activities across space and time.

6. They noted that development of national parks has been successful to a substantial extent in both countries. But more work must be done in both countries. Baseline datasets need to be developed in order to detect and respond to present and future impacts.

7. The scientists see a need for Indonesia and Australia to develop greater cooperation on research, innovation and business development. The links between science and innovation and the blue economy need to be strengthened and reinforced.

8. They identified a need and interest to develop a regional partnership to collaborate on problem solving in the ocean space and to develop databases that readily available to multiple cultural and language groups.

Why is this important?

Both Australia and Indonesia are heavily dependent on their extensive coastal regions and oceans for their food, income and well-being. The ocean holds enormous economic potential, which runs into billions of dollars each year.

Australia’s ocean spans over 13 million square kilometres – an area twice that of Australia’s landmass. Indonesia’s ocean stretches across almost 2 million square kilometres and the country is endowed with one of the longest coastlines of the world – almost 100,000km long!

An estimated 70% of Indonesia’s population, or around 180 million people, lives on this coastline. Similarly, 85% of Australia’s population lives within 50km of the coast.

But marine ecosystems of both countries are facing threats of over-exploitation and destruction.

Pollution from chemicals and plastics has begun to choke entire coastlines, destroying ecosystems and opportunity. At the same time, ocean ecosystems such as coral reefs, kelp forests and mangroves are disappearing at rates up to 2% per year from many coastal areas.

Most fisheries are under-performing. According to the FAO, 80% of the fish stocks are fully exploited or are collapsing. That is, we are getting much less than the sustainable yield should give us.

On top of this, ocean ecosystems and fisheries are severely threatened by climate change – through ocean warming and acidification. These impacts – from the deepest sea to our coasts – are threatening to foreclose on our future ocean wealth and opportunity.

The blue economy

The World Wildlife Fund recently estimated the asset value of the ocean to be US$24 trillion – which if it were a country would be the seventh-largest economy on the planet. This oceanic “wealth” fund delivers US$2.5 trillion in benefits to humanity each year – an economic activity associated with the marine economy that is growing three times faster than Australia’s GDP.

Increasingly, countries and businesses are turning to the ocean to generate novel industries and opportunities for food and income. Termed the “blue economy”, there is increasing focus on better using ocean resources to feed our hungry world.

By 2050 the world’s population will have added 3 billion people and will reach 9 billion. To feed those extra 3 billion people the Food and Agriculture Organisation has indicated that food production must increase by 70%.

The FAO has said that 80% of the required production increases will have to come from increases in crop yields, with only 20% coming from new farmlands.

But the stark reality is that the rate of growth in yields of the major cereal crops has been steadily declining – from about 3.2% per year in 1960 to 1.5% today. Consequently, we must find another alternative or risk ecological disaster as we turn more and more parts of the world’s crucial ecosystems into food production systems.

And it is much more than a matter of simply finding more food.

For industries, such as tourism, new fisheries, energy production and the development of new pharmaceuticals, the blue economy represents an enormous untapped potential.

Tackling the future as Marine Team Indonesia and Australia

It is critical to strike a balance between harvesting the economic potential of our ocean and safeguarding its longer-term health and well-being.

Unfortunately, despite the economic value of these opportunities, the marine resources of Australia and Indonesia are at serious risk of being degraded before we develop these opportunities.

There is a great opportunity and imperative for Australia and Indonesia to join forces to solve these critical challenges.

But to solve the problems, we need greater knowledge about our ocean wealth. We also need to build the capacity to understand and sensibly exploit these ocean resources.

All this means more people and infrastructure. We also need to promote greater regional knowledge and regional information exchange. We need to come together much more regularly to swap ideas and develop new solutions and approaches.

And if we do, then the power of our respective oceans will be unleashed for the greater good.

Professor Hoegh-Guldberg undertakes research on coral reef ecosystems and their response to rapid environmental change, which is supported primarily by the Australian Research Council (Canberra), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Washington, D.C.), Catlin Group (London), and Great Barrier Reef Foundation (Brisbane). He works at the University of Queensland and did not receive salary for writing this article.

Jamaluddin Jompa receives research funding from the Government of Indonesia and USAID. He is affiliated with Hasanuddin University and Indonesian Young Academy of Science.

Increasing interest in animal welfare means that there are a range of options for where your ham comes from this Christmas. What should you look for if you want to tuck into a ham from an ethically raised pig?

You’ll find hams from four main production systems on supermarket shelves this year: conventional hams, sow stall free, free range and “outdoor bred, raised indoor on straw”. So what do these labels mean?

Conventional hams

Conventional hams come from pigs farmed in intensive systems, where both sows (mother pigs) and piglets (the pigs that your Christmas ham comes from) are housed indoors.

Piglets are weaned at around three to four weeks of age. They are then housed in group pens on slatted or concrete floors (sometimes with straw or litter) until they are turned into ham and other pork products at around four months.

Some of the main animal welfare issues in intensive pig farming relate to the confinement of mother pigs. During their pregnancy, mother pigs are housed in “sow stalls”. These metal stalls are about the length and width of a fully grown sow and allow little movement.

Pigs are intelligent and social animals, and this confinement can cause stress and injury. There is evidence that other types of pig housing can also lead to stress and injury.

Before giving birth, sows are moved to a farrowing crate, where they remain until their piglets are weaned. Farrowing crates are designed to prevent mother pigs crushing the piglets. The mother pig has just enough room to lie down, meaning that her movement is severely restricted.

Sow stall free

Around 75% of pig production in Australia is now “sow stall free”, after the pork industry introduced a voluntary phase-out of sow stalls. Coles brand pork products are sow stall free, and Woolworths has committed to using stalls for less than 10% of the sow’s pregnancy (of around 115 days).

In some countries, including New Zealand, sow stalls have been totally or partially banned by law. They are also banned in the ACT.

Confusingly, “sow stall free” doesn’t mean that sows are free of all systems of confinement. Sows can spend up to five days in “mating stalls” after they have been mated (for Coles’ own brand products, it’s less than 24 hours). Sows are still housed in farrowing crates until their piglets are weaned.

Free-range

There are some free-range Christmas hams in the major supermarkets this year. However, just 5% of the Australian pig herd is free range.

In free-range systems, such as the RSPCA-approved outdoor system and Australian Pork Certified Free Range, both sows and piglets live outside in paddocks. They have access to shelters, wallows and shade.

Sows in these free-range systems aren’t confined in sow stalls or farrowing crates, and have the opportunity to express natural behaviours.

Most large-scale free-range pig production takes place in the south of Western Australia, which has ideal soil, water and climate conditions. Free-range pig farming is challenging in many parts of Australia, because of the hot climate.

Pig farming can also have environmental impacts. These include the degradation of soil and water systems through nutrient overload from manure.

You can buy free-range hams from farmers’ markets, specialist butchers and small-scale pig producers. When you buy at a farmers’ market, ask about how the pigs are raised and whether they are free-range.

Outdoor bred

There are a few hams around labelled “outdoor bred, raised indoors on straw”. These used to be labelled “bred free range”, until the ACCC took action against some producers using this label for misleading and deceptive conduct.

Hams with this label come from production systems where the sows live outside. They live under free-range conditions and are not confined to sow stalls or farrowing crates.

Piglets are born outside, but are moved inside after weaning and raised in group pens on straw or other litter, before being butchered for products including Christmas hams.

So what ham should I buy?

You can vote for better animal welfare by buying the most ethical ham you can afford, whether that’s a sow stall free ham from one of the major supermarkets or a free-range one from a small-scale producer at a farmers’ market.

Supermarkets are setting higher animal welfare standards for their own-brand pork products in response to increasing customer interest. These higher standards have the potential to influence new Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for pigs, which are likely to be developed in the next few years.

Up to two-thirds of processed pork (including ham and bacon) is imported as boneless frozen pork. If you want to buy an Australian ham, look for ham on the bone, a label such as “Made from 100% Australian pork”, or the square pink “Australian Pork” label.

If you’re looking for an ethical ham that also scores on taste, check out the Good Food Christmas Ham Taste Test. Seven of the top ten hams were from free-range pigs.

Rachel Carey is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne on the project 'Regulating Food Labels: The case of free range food products in Australia', which is funded by the Australian Research Council. She is also a Research Fellow on the project Foodprint Melbourne, which is funded by the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation.

Christine Parker's research is funded by the Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant, Regulating Food Labels: The Case of Free Range Food Products in Australia (DP150102168).

Gyorgy Scrinis' research is funded by the Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant, Regulating Food Labels: The Case of Free Range Food Products in Australia (DP150102168).

Donald Trump’s presidential victory on November 8 came as a shock to many, and has alarmed scientists, NGOs and governments around the world. As we write in Nature today, the global environmental community is particularly concerned by Trump’s anti-climate and broader anti-environmental stance during his presidential campaign.

Trump’s more extreme campaign statements may not eventuate. But there will most likely be substantive changes in how the United States engages with the world on environmental, and many other, issues.

Yet the environmental movement must not wallow in despair at the prospect of President Trump. It must instead actively look for opportunities under a post-Obama administration.

What if the US leaves international treaties?

The United States has provided important, albeit intermittent, leadership for the global environmental movement since the 1970s. Yet President-elect Trump campaigned on a strong anti-environmental platform.

Certainly, given the consistency of his campaign promises on the issue, the next US president may actively withdraw his nation from the Paris Agreement on climate change.

In an indication of this, Myron Ebell, the head of the transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is a known, vocal climate change denier, and Scott Pruitt, the nominated head of the EPA, has actively opposed Obama’s policies to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions.

However, the environmental movement should not see reduced US support for multilateral environmental treaties such as the Paris Agreement as all doom and gloom. This would also provide other powerful nations like China with an opportunity to provide greater leadership.

China is already a signatory to more than 50 international environmental treaties, including the Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity, which has never been ratified by the US. Domestically, China has implemented numerous policies in support of its international environmental commitments. This includes setting up the world’s largest carbon trading market.

Critics will argue that China’s environmental commitments and policies, both domestically and internationally, have many shortcomings. But China has shown much greater initiative on challenges like climate change in recent years.

Provided that a critical mass of other countries stand together with China, the global environmental agenda can continue to strengthen in spite of weakened US support.

For example, Indonesia, Australia and many other countries have indicated that they will press ahead with the Paris Agreement together with China, regardless of what President Trump does in the coming years.

It isn’t just about national governments either. A less environmentally minded Trump administration is an opportunity to strengthen initiatives that are independent of the US federal government. Examples include environmental commitments by subnational units of government, cities, and companies, as well as community groups.

In fact, reduced US federal government support for global environmental treaties may create the space for greater experimentation, innovation and learning by actors at levels other than national government. A sign of a greater role by non-US government actors under Trump is the surge in donations to environmental NGOs following the election result.

Beyond the US

Trump was elected on a campaign promise of trade protectionism unseen since the second world war. But protectionism could also present an opening to strengthen environmental safeguards.

Global commerce facilitated by international trade poses many threats to biodiversity. So trade protectionism could be used to support environmental protection. For example, nations could take action against importing products that threaten key ecosystems or species.

At present, such restrictions are determined by consumers and companies making choices along the supply chain. National legislation could be much stronger.

But strong protectionism also presents great uncertainties and risks. Today’s global conservation and environmental movement was established in the space provided by the US-led global security and economic order after the second world war.

If a Trump administration does shift the US away from this leadership role, the global power relationships could change radically. The environmental movement will need to be proactive and adapt quickly.

For example, a post-US-led world order may allow alternatives to the US-style capitalist form of social organisation to become more influential. Alternative models, based on goals that include the environment and wellbeing, may have more space to establish themselves. Examples include the Genuine Progress Indicator and Gross National Happiness.

The next four years will be challenging. Environmentalists will need to be vociferous in raising concerns with the US government.

The uncertainties of a Trump presidency call for a proactive and flexible approach that can cope with the risks and seize the opportunities. President Trump represents an opportunity to strengthen the environmental movement, not just for the next four years, but for the years after that too.

Hugh Possingham, Chief Scientist of the Nature Conservancy, and Director of the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, University of Queensland; Bram Buscher, Professor and Chair at the Sociology of Development and Change group, Wageningen University; and Ray Ison, Professor of Systems, Open University, all contributed valuable thoughts and insights in the development of this piece.

Duan Biggs receives funding from Australian Research Council and Luc Hoffmann Institute and is affiliated with the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Hubert Cheung receives scholarship funding from the Lee Shau Kee Foundation.

James Watson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is also the Director of Science and Research Initiative at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Kent Redford 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.

Electricity bills are set to rise further for households, according to a report from the Australian Energy Markets Commission (AEMC).

The report, released this week to coincide with the December meeting of the COAG Energy Council, forecasts that electricity bills will increase by an average of A$78 by 2018 in the five eastern states and the ACT. Together these comprise the National Electricity Market (NEM).

The AEMC has prepared these three-year reports each year since 2010. But no report has received as much publicity as this one. This is largely because the latest report comes hard on the heels of the announcement that Victoria’s Hazelwood power station is to close – the largest power station closure ever in Australia.

It also follows the release of a specially commissioned report by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel that opens with the words: “The physical electricity system is undergoing its greatest transition since Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison clashed in the War of the Currents in the early 1890s.”

So what does the latest report really say?

What’s the forecast?

The AEMC’s 2016 residential price report projects moderate increases in the average price paid by households in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT over the next two years, and moderate decreases in Queensland and Tasmania.

These overall movements result from the interaction of the three major cost components of the total cost of electricity supply.

The three components are:

• the regulated network costs (transmission and distribution)

• what the AEMC calls environmental costs (the large and small renewable energy targets, together with various state- and territory-specific programs), which are also set by regulation

• what the AEMC calls competitive market costs, comprising wholesale market cost and retail margin.

This approach to estimating total prices was established in the 2010 report and has been fundamentally unchanged ever since. The sophistication and detail of the analysis have, however, increased considerably over the years.

The biggest factor affecting the prices projected in the 2016 report is the planned closure of Hazelwood next March. This is in addition to last May’s closure of the Northern power station in SA. These closures are particularly important for Victoria, SA and Tasmania.

State of the states

In Victoria, Tasmania and SA, a combination of Victorian brown coal and Tasmanian hydro and wind supplies most electricity traded in the wholesale market.

Gas is important in SA, but its cost has greatly increased because of higher gas wholesale prices. Demand peaks are supplied by gas plants and Snowy hydro.

Australia currently has more electricity capacity than demand. But the power station closures shift this much closer to balanced supply and demand. Consequently, wholesale prices are expected to increase and flow through to retail prices in Victoria and SA.

In Tasmania, large decreases in network costs, based on regulatory determinations already made by the Australian Energy Regulator, are expected to more than offset wholesale prices increases. Network costs in the other two states are expected to change little.

The Hazelwood closure will also affect NSW prices. The first consequence of reduced generation in Victoria will be a reduction, or even reversal, of the current strong overall south-to-north energy flow on the Victoria-NSW interconnection.

Low-cost brown coal generators in Victoria are often the marginal source of supply in the NSW market. This puts downward pressure on NSW wholesale prices (and also leaves significant spare coal-fired capacity in NSW for much of the time).

The removal of spare capacity in Victoria will mean that nearly all NSW supply will be sourced from higher-cost black coal generators within NSW. Spare capacity will be reduced and wholesale prices will therefore tend to increase.

Over the past couple of years Queensland has been the only state where demand for electricity has grown substantially (mainly because of electricity use in coal seam gasfields). That growth is now slowing and it is expected that the balance of supply and demand will remain much as it is now. Consequently, wholesale prices will remain relatively unchanged.

Network costs are also expected to stay roughly constant in both NSW and Queensland. The overall outcome projected by the AEMC is therefore a modest price increase in NSW and a small decrease in Queensland.

End of an era?

Stepping back from this state-by-state picture, what we see is the approaching end of an era of generation oversupply in the NEM, stretching back to the early 1990s.

This situation was originally caused by too many power stations being commissioned in the 1980s in NSW and Victoria. It was then prolonged by three factors:

• the extension of the operating life of older coal-fired power stations well beyond that anticipated when they were built

• the reduction and near-cessation of growth in demand for electricity

• the construction of new renewable generation (mainly wind power) under the Renewable Energy Target (RET) legislation.

For most of this period, average wholesale prices in this oversupplied market have been well below the cost of new power stations. They are now expected to move gradually up towards that replacement cost level, when it will be economic to add more power stations to the market.

It is ironic that conservative voices who blame the RET for forcing coal-fired power stations to close are often the same voices who claim that higher electricity prices are forcing businesses to close and contributing to the cessation of demand growth.

If they had their way and there was no wind generation, and the Kurri Kurri and Point Henry aluminium smelters had not closed, then demand would have outstripped supply some years ago.

This would allow higher-cost power stations to be competitive, and wholesale prices would have already been at or above the levels projected by the AEMC in this report.

And what would have been the lowest-cost generation technology available (which hasn’t been competitive in the over-supplied market until now)? Based on the most recent data, probably wind.

Hugh Saddler is a member of the Board of The Climate Institute

This week, Qantas announced that passengers will soon be able to fly non-stop between Perth and London – the first ever air service to link Australia and Europe directly. Seats on the new route will go on sale in April 2017, with flights starting in March 2018.

It’s a journey made possible by the technological advancements of long-haul aircraft – in this case, the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner.

The Dreamliner (with capacity to carry 236 passengers) will take 17 hours to complete the 14,498-kilometre journey. It’s the longest Qantas route and the third-longest passenger flight in the world.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce described the announcement as a watershed for travel, tourism and trade. But while the travel opportunities are indeed potentially game-changing, the environmental benefits are less so.

The non-stop footprint

Of course, non-stop flights are generally better for the environment than flights that stop en route. Flying a long-haul route non-stop produces less greenhouse gas than stopping along the way, largely because the aircraft can take a more direct route.

The additional fuel needed to carry the weight of extra fuel required for ultra long-haul flights does, however, contribute to the overall emissions of the flight (and may very well lead to an increased cost to passengers).

Fuel efficiency is crucial, because aviation fuel (kerosene) is the primary source of aviation emissions. Researchers have calculated that total aviation emissions in 2006 were 630 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. By 2050, those emissions are projected to be between 1 billion and 3.1 billion tonnes, depending on the growth in air traffic and the success of efforts to reduce emissions through fuel effiency, biofuels and offsetting.

A flight’s environmental impact grows exponentially whenever the aircraft is required to make a stop. During take-off, more fuel is consumed (and more emissions produced) than at any other stage of the flight. On short flights, take-off accounts for as much as 25% of total fuel consumption.

Fuel efficiency from Perth to London

So is the advent of super-range passenger aircraft the solution to the aviation emissions problem?

The rate of fuel consumption varies widely between aircraft models, ranges and manufacturers; fuel efficiency even varies between aircraft of the same model, depending on the condition, age and use of the aircraft and its engines.

Boeing estimates that its 787 family “uses 20-25% less fuel on a per passenger basis than the airplanes they replace”.

The 787-9 Dreamliner itself offers a range of efficiencies in terms of kilometres travelled and stops required, while carrying more passengers and cargo than its predecessor, the 787-8.

So, as noted above, the Perth-to-London non-stop route will generate fewer greenhouse emissions than the most direct existing routes, which stop in various Middle Eastern locations including Dubai and Doha.

But how much of an impact will this have on the reduction of aviation emissions? Not very much.

Short stuff

The availability of super-long routes does nothing to curb the ongoing expansion of short-haul aviation. For instance, roughly half of all flights within the European Union are shorter than 500km, while hundreds of short-haul routes are available in the United States. These routes typically fall a long way short of the most fuel-efficient flight length, which has been estimated at 4,300km – or three-quarters of the way from London to New York.

Bear in mind that air travel is the most carbon-intensive form of travel. Regardless of what the aviation industry achieves in terms of emission reductions, these will be overwhelmed by its predicted growth.

This growth will outweigh the improvements delivered even by dramatic measures to cut emissions. What’s more, those measures are a still long way off – and if you’ll pardon the pun, improving aviation’s environmental impact will be a long haul.

Rebecca Johnston 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.

Habitat loss is the most insidious of all threats facing land-living wildlife, and protected areas like national parks are one of the best ways to combat the destruction. But in research published recently in Conversation Letters, we show that in some places the pace of protected areas isn’t keeping up with the losses.

We found that since 1992, an area of natural habitat two-thirds the size of Australia has been converted to human use (such as farms, logging or cities). Half of the world’s land area is now dominated by humans.

When we looked at specific habitats (or “ecoregions”), we found that in almost half of them, more habitat has been lost than has been protected. Of developed nations, Australia is performing the worst.

This week, 196 signatory nations of the Convention of Biological Diversity, including Australia, are meeting in Cancun, Mexico, to discuss their progress towards averting the current biodiversity crisis.

While topics will vary widely from dealing with climate change, invasive species and illegal wildlife trade, a chief issue will likely be one that has been central to the convention since its ratification at Rio in 1992: how best to deal with habitat loss.

The view from space

Human activity affects the planet on a scale so vast it can be easily seen from space. Whether it’s deforestation in the Amazon, urban development in Asia, or mining in the Arctic, humans have modified Earth’s land area dramatically.

For almost all wild species on Earth, once the places they live have been dramatically altered, they are unable to survive in the long term. The number of vertebrate species extinctions has been 53 times higher than normal since 1900, and the majority of them are associated with direct habitat loss.

The best tool we have at our disposal to combat habitat loss, alongside strict land regulation, is the creation of large, well-connected protected areas, especially in places that are likely to be at risk of future destruction.

When well managed and strategically placed, protected areas work at protecting biodiversity from destructive actives such as agriculture, mining and urbanisation.

In the two and a half decades since the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992, there has been a dramatic increase in protected areas. Now 15% of the land is placed under protection - an area greater than South and Central America combined.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that it may not be enough.

Half Earth

Using the latest update of the global human footprint, we discovered that while 75% of the world has a clear human footprint, more than 50% of the world’s land area has been significantly converted to human dominated land uses.

The degree of degradation varies across the major ecosystems. Some areas such as the tundra have been only slightly modified. Other ecosystems have been decimated: 90% of mangroves and sub-tropical forests have been converted to human uses.

Concerningly, since the convention was ratified in 1992, an extra 4.5 million square kilometres of land has been converted from natural habitat to human land uses. And much of this loss occurred in areas that already faced considerable losses in the past.

As a consequence, almost half of the world’s 800 ecoregions – those places that have distinct animal and plant communities – should be classified at very high risk, where 25 times more land has been converted than protected.

Forty-one of these ecoregions are in crisis, where humans converted more than 10% of the little remaining habitat over the past two decades and there is almost nothing left to protect.

41 of the world’s ecoregions are in crisis.

These crisis ecoregions are concentrated in Southeast Asia (Indonesia and Papua New Guinea), and Africa (Madagascar, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola). It’s crucial that we establish protected areas in these places, but conflict and corruption make them some of the hardest places for conservation to work.

Australia: world expert in land clearing

While crisis ecoregions are mostly confined to the developing world, arguably the most concerning outcome of our research is that in many developed countries, like the United States and Canada, the proportion of protected areas to habitat loss is slipping.

And Australia is the worst performing developed nation of them all. Habitat loss greatly outpaced protection in 20 of Australia’s most wildlife-rich ecoregions. The most threatened ecoregions now include savannas in the southeast and southwest of Australia, and southeast temperate forest ecosystems.

Our analysis shows massive habitat loss occurred in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia during the past two decades, driven by land clearing for pasture, agriculture and urbanisation.

Australia has extremely high land-clearing rates and is the only developed nation now containing a deforestation front.

Arguably, things will continue to get worse without land-clearing law reform, but this is challenging, as shown by the recent failure of Queensland’s vegetation law changes and the poor vegetation-offset reforms in New South Wales.

Time for global action

As nations meet in Mexico to discuss their progress towards the Convention of Biological Diversity’s 2020 strategic plan, it is now time for them to undertake a full, frank and honest assessment on how things are progressing.

This means recognising that the current situation, where nations only report on protected area expansion, clearly tells half the story – and it is jeopardising the chance for halting the biodiversity crisis.

Australia must take the lead. It is time for this nation – one of the most wildlife-rich in the developed world - to account fully for both conservation gains and losses, and as such formally report on how much habitat is being destroyed. This is the necessary first step to identify ways to mitigate these losses and prioritise conservation actions in those regions that are at risk.

At the same time, all nations must recognise that the integrity of habitat within existing protected areas must be maintained, especially in those areas that contain imperilled species. Allowing activities which cause habitat loss to occur in protected areas is a backwards step for conservation, and governments must enforce their own environmental policies to stop this.

A good example is Springvale Station in Queensland, where mining is being considered within a newly purchased protected area, clearly threatening its biodiversity.

We need to change how we report on, and deal with, habitat loss, otherwise the mission of the convention - to stop the global extinction crisis – will fail.

James Watson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is also the Director of Science and Research Initiative at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Eve McDonald-Madden receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Environment Science Program.

Richard Fuller receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Environment Science Program.

James Allan, Kendall Jones, and Moreno Di Marco 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.

Giraffes' future is much less secure than many people had imagined. Craig Fraser/Shutterstock

Pardon the pun, but it’s time to stick our necks out for giraffes. We have mistakenly taken the world’s tallest mammal for granted, fretting far more about other beloved animals such as rhinos, elephants and great apes.

But now it seems that all is not well in giraffe-land, with reports emerging that they may be staring extinction in the face.

Why? For starters, thanks to modern molecular genetics, we have just realised that what we thought was one species of giraffe is in fact four, split into between seven and nine distinct subspecies. That’s a lot more biodiversity to worry about.

The current distribution of recognised giraffe species and subspecies. Narayanese at English Wikipedia

Even more disturbing is the fact that giraffe populations are collapsing. Where once they roamed widely across Africa’s savannas and woodlands, they now occupy less than half of the real estate they did a century ago.

Where they still persist, giraffe populations are increasingly sparse and fragmented. Their total numbers have fallen by 40% in just the past two decades, and they have disappeared entirely from seven African countries.

Among the most imperilled is the West African giraffe, a subspecies now found only in Niger. It dwindled to just 50 individuals in the 1990s, and was only saved by desperate last-ditch efforts from conservationists and the Niger government.

As a result of these sharp declines, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature recently changed giraffes’ overall conservation status from “Least Concern” to “Vulnerable”. In biological terms, that’s like a ship’s pilot suddenly bellowing “iceberg dead ahead!”

Tall order

Why are giraffes declining so abruptly? One reason is that they reproduce slowly, as might be expected of a big animal that formerly had to contend only with occasional attacks by lions, hyenas and tribal hunters, and as a result is not well adapted to our hostile modern world.

Giraffes today are being hit by much more than traditional enemies. According to the United Nations, Africa’s population of 1.1 billion people is growing so fast that it could quadruple this century. These extra people are using lots more land for farming, livestock and burgeoning cities.

Blocked by fences: a giraffe held in a small game reserve in South Africa. Bill Laurance

Beyond this, Africa has become a feeding ground for foreign corporations, especially big mining firms from China, Australia and elsewhere. To export bulk commodities such as iron, copper and aluminium ore, China in particular has gone on a frenzy of road, railway and port building.

Fuelled by a flood of foreign currency, Africa’s infrastructure is booming. A total of 33 “development corridors” – centred around ambitious highway and rail networks – have been proposed or are under active construction. Our research shows that these projects would total more than 53,000km in length, crisscrossing the continent and opening up vast expanses of remote, biologically rich ecosystems to new development pressures.

Proposed and ongoing ‘development corridors’ in sub-Saharan Africa, ranked by the relative conservation value of habitats likely to be affected by each corridor. Bill Laurance/Sean Sloan

Meanwhile, giraffes are struggling to cope with poachers armed with powerful automatic rifles rather than customary weapons such as spears. As shown in this poignant video, giraffes are commonly killed merely for their tails, which are valued as a status symbol and dowry gift by some African cultures.

Time to act

For a group of species about which we had been largely complacent, the sudden shift to “Vulnerable” status for giraffes is a red flag telling us it’s time for action.

Giraffes’ sweeping decline reflects a much wider trend in wildlife populations. A recent WWF report forecasts that we are on track to lose two-thirds of all individual birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish on Earth by 2020. Species in tropical nations are doing especially poorly.

What can we do? A critical first step is to help African nations develop their natural resources and economies in ways that don’t decimate nature. This is an urgent challenge that hinges on improving land-use planning, governance and protection of nature reserves and imperilled wildlife.

Woodland clearing for agriculture in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. Jeremy Hance

We can also use emerging technologies to help us. For example, it is now possible to monitor illegal deforestation, road-building and other illicit activities virtually in real time, thanks to remarkable advances in satellites, drones, computing and crowdsourcing.

What’s more, affordable automatic cameras are being widely used to monitor the status of wildlife populations. These are particularly useful for giraffes, which have individual mottling patterns as distinctive as human fingerprints.

But all the technology in the world won’t save wildlife if we don’t address the fundamental drivers of Africa’s plight: its booming population and desperate needs for equitable social and sustainable development.

Ignoring these basic needs while tackling poaching and illegal road-building is akin to plugging the holes in a dam while ignoring the rising flood-waters that threaten to spill over its top.

We have to redouble our efforts, pushing for conservation and more sustainable societies all at once – plugging the holes while at the same time building the dam higher.

For the stately giraffe and the rest of Africa’s declining wildlife, it’s time for us to stand tall – or else wave goodbye.

Giraffes on the Serengeti Plain of Tanzania. Bill Laurance

Bill Laurance receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other scientific and philanthropic organisations. He is the director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University, and founder and director of ALERT--the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Thinkers.

Australia's average house size has more than doubled since 1950. Melbourne houses image from www.shutterstock.com

Australia’s houses are getting bigger, but usually not more sustainable. In our recent study, we looked at the energy use of Australian houses, including the energy required to build, maintain and power our homes.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found that more energy goes into bigger houses. This is bad news not just for the environment, but also for our wallets. But these considerations are not always built into sustainability ratings.

So whether you’re building, buying, or just curious, what are the most important things to consider? And how much does house size affect total energy use?

Houses getting bigger

Over the past 60 years Australian homes have more than doubled in size, going from an average of around 100 square metres in 1950 to about 240 square metres today. This makes them the largest in the world, ahead of Canada and the United States.

At the same time, the average number of people living in each household has been declining. This means that the average floor area per person has skyrocketed from 30 square metres to around 87 square metres.

We know that larger houses require more heating and cooling and result in higher energy bills. They also need significantly more materials to build and maintain, and more energy to manufacture and replace these materials.

But how much more? That’s what we set out to find out.

Bigger houses, more resources

To systematically assess the relationship between house size and resource use, we analysed a typical new 6-star brick-veneer house in Melbourne’s climate.

We then modified the house size from 100 square metres to 392 square metres using 90 different size configurations (we’ve only shown four in the graphic below).

For each size, we measured both the energy embodied in the building materials and the energy required for replacing these over 50 years.

We also calculated the operational energy use over 50 years for two, three, four and five occupants. Finally, we accounted for energy losses across the energy supply chain.

Results show that larger houses use much more energy, but also that as size increases, the energy used in building and maintaining the house grows by more than the energy used to operate the house.

For instance, the energy embodied in a 392-square-metre house alone is larger than both the embodied and operational energy demands of a 100-square-metre house with three occupants, over 50 years. Logically, more occupants mean less energy per person, as the resources are shared.

The amount of additional resources needed for larger houses can be huge. Authors Own Benefits of smaller, better-designed dwellings

Smaller dwellings tread more lightly on the planet and on your pocket. Based on data from Rawlinsons, each additional square metre of brick-veneer house in Victoria costs on average an extra A$1,245 for construction.

Combined with the resulting heating, cooling and lighting energy bills over 50 years, the total cost per square metre exceeds A$1,988. Removing a 12-square-metre bedroom from your next house can therefore save around A$24,000 and avoid the use of huge quantities of resources.

You might be thinking that smaller dwellings mean lower-quality dwellings. That’s not the case.

Examples of small, well-designed dwellings are all around us. These can be designed for durability and low energy use, as in-fill in dense urban surroundings, favouring natural daylight and ventilation, in symbiosis with nature or as smart urban apartments.

It is important for developers and architects to provide homes that are better designed for comfort and the environment while still being affordable.

The benefits of smaller dwellings go beyond the household itself and have repercussions at the city scale. Small homes – perhaps a mix of small houses on small plots, together with some larger apartment buildings – can save valuable space that can be used for communal infrastructure.

This would have to be done considering walkability, access to amenities and other factors, but can lead to much more efficient neighbourhoods from an infrastructure and transport perspective. So what needs to happen?

How do rules need to change?

Current energy efficiency regulations don’t account for the energy embodied in building materials, and so fail to adequately capture house size.

Most energy efficiency regulations also only measure energy use per square metre. Using this metric, larger houses appear to be more efficient because energy use increases at a slower rate than house size.

The Australian 6-star standard does include house size when considering heating and cooling, but other certifications don’t. Under these other certifications, a larger house would therefore be easier to certify, considering everything else constant.

This is ironic since larger houses use significantly more resources, both for construction and operation. We need to revise current energy efficiency regulations to include embodied energy and other measures of energy if we are to reduce the total energy and broader resource demands associated with buildings.

While our research investigated the relationship between house size and life cycle energy use, it did not consider apartment units. With a growing number of apartment buildings being constructed in Australia, the next steps include investigating a range of apartment design factors and their environmental implications.

By deepening our understanding of how to design better dwellings, we will ultimately help reduce resource use. We’ve studied house size, but that is not the end of the story.

André Stephan receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Robert Crawford receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Australia needs to spend millions of dollars more to eradicate one of the nation’s worst invasive species, the fire ant, according to recent reports.

Fire ants, first detected in Brisbane in 2001, pose a major health and agricultural risk. A recent independent review of the eradication program recommended that A$380 million be spent over 10 years to eradicate the ants, on top of the A$330 million already spent since 2001.

Improvements in knowledge and control methods mean that eradicating the Australian invasion is challenging, but still potentially feasible. We now face a stark choice.

Lessons from previous attempts

The fire ant eradication program began in September 2001 after the species was detected at two locations in Brisbane. By that time, it may have been present for at least five years or perhaps even longer, and large areas were already infested. Fire ants had never been eradicated from areas this large.

However, improved eradication methods mean we have increased the chances of eradicating larger invasions.

Most of the original funds were spent on pesticides and monitoring areas with likely infestations. Monitoring information was used to estimate how far the invasion had spread (“delimitation”) and management efforts were focused on the delimited area.

The early years of the program showed that large infestations, such as those at the Port of Brisbane and Yarwun, can be eradicated when the geographic range of the infestations is known.

However, when this is not the case, undetected nests beyond the known infested area can spread unchecked. In a published reconstruction of the invasion we estimated that undetected nests existed a relatively short distance beyond the delimited area.

Had those nests been detected by monitoring a larger area over the first few years of the program, the ants may already have been eradicated. However, the initial focus on intensively treating known infestations rather than expanding the monitored area reflected the best available scientific advice at the time.

It also reflected an urgent need to protect people from the potentially serious health consequences of coming into contact with fire ants in areas known to be infested.

Is eradication still possible?

Although the invasion now occupies a larger area than it did when the program began, fire ant numbers have effectively been suppressed and some individual infestations have been eradicated. These facts, and the availability of a cheaper monitoring method involving remote sensing with airborne cameras, have kept alive eradication hopes.

A recent meeting of agricultural ministers agreed with the finding of the independent review that eradication remains technically feasible.

The review’s recommendation that eradication program funding be increased is a logical response to the invasion’s expansion. The expansion not only increased the area that requires management, thus increasing costs, but also showed that the areas previously searched and treated each year were too small to achieve eradication, implying there was insufficient annual funding.

Geographic expansion of the invasion cannot continue much longer without the invasion becoming too large to eradicate. The review panel’s finding that increased funding should be made available soon is therefore timely.

A lack of monitoring during the early years of the program led to the erroneous conclusion in 2004 that eradication was imminent, when in fact the invasion was expanding in area. To avoid this mistake being repeated, substantial monitoring will be required beyond known infestations and monitoring data will need to be assessed with reliable statistical methods.

In a recent report we wrote to help the eradication program, we showed that the invasion boundary can be estimated with a high degree of confidence if adequate monitoring data are available.

Pesticide treatment and monitoring will underpin eradication efforts. We need highly sensitive monitoring methods, including sniffer dogs and trained spotters, to confirm absence of fire ants in and near treated locations.

A large enough area should be monitored to ensure all fire ant colonies are found and removed. We need continued support for community members to report fire ants, particularly in urban areas. Remote sensing will be needed in less developed areas where contact between people and fire ants is less likely.

A stark choice

The choice is to continue eradication efforts or live with fire ants forever. Living with fire ants will incur large costs for agricultural producers and households.

The most recent cost-benefit analysis of the program estimated that if these costs were added up over each of the next 70 years they would exceed A$25 billion in today’s dollars.

Over half these estimated costs arise from damage to agricultural activities, with household losses being of a similar magnitude.

Large numbers of people are likely to come into contact with fire ants if the species is left unchecked. Environmental damages could also be substantial. These losses far exceed estimated eradication costs.

The review panel’s report makes it clear that we face an urgent choice between increased eradication funding or living with fire ants. There is not much time left to make this choice.

Daniel Spring previously received funding from Biosecurity Queensland and conducted analysis for the Independent Review of the National Red Imported Fire Ant Eradication Program.

Jonathan Keith has previously received funding from Biosecurity Queensland to model the spread of fire ants.

Tom Kompas was part of a team that received research funding from ABARES for work on RIFA.

Australia's electricity network needs reform to reduce carbon emissions. Michelle McFarlane/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s preliminary report on the National Electricity Market (NEM), released on Friday, sets the scene for a comprehensive review of the electricity network.

The report identifies that energy and emissions reduction policy must be brought together. There is no doubt that the electricity sector will be central to any emissions-reduction efforts in Australia.

However, the report also appears to see the rise of renewable energy in the electricity system as a disturbance rather than an opportunity.

The report discusses how the NEM should be reformed in response to a changing mix of generators – coal, gas and renewables. But it does not proactively seek to discuss the role of the NEM in achieving the emissions reductions and renewable energy targets of federal and state governments.

Transition doesn’t have to break the grid

The new National Transmission Network Development Plan 2016 by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) shows what such a proactive approach might look like. It shows that transmission investment within and across state borders will be crucial for Australia’s energy transformation.

International examples can provide insights into what these strategic investment solutions could be. The Finkel report mentions, for instance, the proactive designation and connection of wind zones in Texas. Other examples are the facilitation of offshore network development in the UK, and the German north-south interconnectors.

A similar mechanism could allow the NEM to access renewable energy resources in new areas, as well as upgrade existing networks to increase renewable uptake. As the AEMO plan shows, these types of measures can “smooth the impact of variable renewable energy” and “improve system resilience”.

Efficiency, reliability and reduced emissions

The Finkel report queries whether the National Electricity Objective (NEO) needs to be amended to achieve the integration of energy and emissions-reduction policy. The current objective is:

…to promote efficient investment in, and efficient operation and use of, electricity services for the long-term interests of consumers of electricity with respect to – price, quality, safety, reliability and security of supply of electricity; and the reliability, safety and security of the national electricity system.

The objective sets the parameters for developing electricity market rules and limits the scope of regulatory decision-making.

It reflects the purpose of the NEM at the time it was introduced. The NEM was initially introduced as a market-based governance framework to achieve the public service of electricity as efficiently and reliably as possible.

The report states that we need to find solutions to address the so-called “energy trilemma”. Energy policy needs to strike a balance between “security, affordability and environmental objectives”.

While the first two of these objectives are covered in the electricity objective, the last – environmental objective - is not. The NEO should reflect these changed consumer expectations.

In the age of climate change, we expect our electricity system to be reliable, affordable and green. A rephrasing of the NEO would allow for more innovative approaches to proactively develop market rules to facilitate renewable energy.

Expanding the objective would also see Australia in good company. Both the UK and German regulatory objectives contain express links to emissions reductions (UK) or environmental compatibility and renewable energy (Germany).

Putting the puzzle pieces together

The report argues for a “whole-of-system approach” to developing the energy system. The report discusses especially to what degree states and other institutions in energy markets need to work together to achieve this.

However, we also need national oversight to develop the grid. More advanced energy transition experiences in Europe show such a refocus of market reform.

Coordinated planning across the NEM will be crucial to achieve this whole-of-system perspective. While the market operator, AEMO, has a limited planning role in the NEM – identifying opportunities for network investment – there is currently no mechanism to encourage planning for the reliability and security of the whole of the NEM. Network businesses invest to ensure the reliability within their networks – contained within state borders.

Germany provides an example of how a whole-of-system approach could be achieved. German law compels the different network businesses to cooperatively develop a national grid development plan based on scenario frameworks and overseen and approved by the Federal Network Agency. Similar cooperative mechanisms could be introduced in the NEM regulatory framework.

What about climate adaptation?

The report mentions two examples of the challenges climate change might pose to the network, the black-out in South Australia and the drought in Tasmania. In both cases, a natural event combined with an interconnector (transmitters between states) fault triggered a challenge to energy security. Not mentioned in the report are the 2009 bushfires in Victoria, when a significant number of devastating fires were caused by failed electrical assets.

All of these kinds of extreme weather events can be linked to climate change. The need to adapt to more frequent and more severe weather events should be an essential part of a review into the security and reliability of the electricity sector.

While this is a preliminary report only, it picks up on many pertinent issues. This short analysis covers only some of the issues raised in the report. The prelimiary report is now open to public submissions. This provides an outstanding opportunity to consider and shape the future of the electricity network.

Anne Kallies 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.

Rice paddies are one of the major sources of methane in agriculture. Amir Jina/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Methane concentrations in the atmosphere are growing faster than any time in the past 20 years. The increase is largely driven by the growth in food production, according to the Global Methane Budget released today. Methane is contributing less to global warming than carbon dioxide (CO₂), but it is a very powerful greenhouse gas.

Since 2014, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have begun to track the most carbon-intensive pathways developed for the 21st century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The growth of methane emissions from human activities comes at a time when CO₂ emissions from burning fossil fuels have stalled over the past three years.

If these trends continue, methane growth could become a dangerous climate wildcard, overwhelming efforts to reduce CO₂ in the short term.

Methane concentration pathways from IPCC and observations from the NOAA measuring network (Saunois et al 2016, Environmental Research Letters). The projected global warming range by the year 2100, relative to 1850-1900, is shown for each pathway.

In two papers published today (see here and here), we bring together the most comprehensive ensemble of data and models to build a complete picture of methane and where it is going – the global methane budget. This includes all major natural and human sources of methane, and the places where it ends up in methane “sinks” such as the atmosphere and the land.

This work is a companion effort to the global CO₂ budget published annually, both by international scientists under the Global Carbon Project.

Where does all the methane go?

Methane is emitted from multiple sources, mostly from land, and accumulates in the atmosphere. In our greenhouse gas budgets, we look at two important numbers.

First, we look at emissions (which activities are producing greenhouse gases).

Second, we look at where this gas ends up. The important quantity here is the accumulation (concentration) of methane in the atmosphere, which leads to global warming. The accumulation results from the difference between total emissions and the destruction of methane in the atmosphere and uptake by soil bacteria.

CO₂ emissions take centre stage in most discussions to limit climate change. The focus is well justified, given that CO₂ is responsible for more than 80% of global warming due to greenhouse gases. The concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere (now around 400 parts per million) has risen by 44% since the Industrial Revolution (around the year 1750).

While CO₂ in the atmosphere has increased steadily, methane concentrations grew relatively slowly throughout the 2000s, but since 2007 have grown ten times faster. Methane increased faster still in 2014 and 2015.

Remarkably, this growth is occurring on top of methane concentrations that are already 150% higher than at the start of the Industrial Revolution (now around 1,834 parts per billion).

The global methane budget is important for other reasons too: it is less well understood than the CO₂ budget and is influenced to a much greater extent by a wide variety of human activities. About 60% of all methane emissions come from human actions.

These include living sources – such as livestock, rice paddies and landfills – and fossil fuel sources, such as emissions during the extraction and use of coal, oil and natural gas.

We know less about natural sources of methane, such as those from wetlands, permafrost, termites and geological seeps.

Biomass and biofuel burning originates from both human and natural fires.

Global methane budget 2003-2012 based on Saunois et al. 2016, Earth System Science Data. See the Global Carbon Atlas at http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org.

Given the rapid increase in methane concentrations in the atmosphere, what factors are responsible for its increase?

Uncovering the causes

Scientists are still uncovering the reasons for the rise. Possibilities include: increased emissions from agriculture, particularly from rice and cattle production; emissions from tropical and northern wetlands; and greater losses during the extraction and use of fossil fuels, such as from fracking in the United States. Changes in how much methane is destroyed in the atmosphere might also be a contributor.

Our approach shows an emerging and consistent picture, with a suggested dominant source along with other contributing secondary sources.

First, carbon isotopes suggest a stronger contribution from living sources than from fossil fuels. These isotopes reflect the weights of carbon atoms in methane from different sources. Methane from fossil fuel use also increased, but evidently not by as much as from living sources.

Second, our analysis suggests that the tropics were a dominant contributor to the atmospheric growth. This is consistent with the vast agricultural development and wetland areas found there (and consistent with increased emissions from living sources).

This also excludes a dominant role for fossil fuels, which we would expect to be concentrated in temperate regions such as the US and China. Those emissions have increased, but not by as much as from tropical and living sources.

Third, state-of-the-art global wetland models show little evidence for any significant increase in wetland emissions over the study period.

The overall chain of evidence suggests that agriculture, including livestock, is likely to be a dominant cause of the rapid increase in methane concentrations. This is consistent with increased emissions reported by the Food and Agriculture Organisation and does not exclude the role of other sources.

Remarkably, there is still a gap between what we know about methane emissions and methane concentrations in the atmosphere. If we add all the methane emissions estimated with data inventories and models, we get a number bigger than the one consistent with the growth in methane concentrations. This highlights the need for better accounting and reporting of methane emissions.

We also don’t know enough about emissions from wetlands, thawing permafrost and the destruction of methane in the atmosphere.

The way forward

At a time when global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels and industry have stalled for three consecutive years, the upward methane trend we highlight in our new papers is unwelcome news. Food production will continue to grow strongly to meet the demands of a growing global population and to feed a growing global middle class keen on diets richer in meat.

However, unlike CO₂, which remains in the atmosphere for centuries, a molecule of methane lasts only about 10 years.

This, combined with methane’s super global warming potency, means we have a massive opportunity. If we cut methane emissions now, this will have a rapid impact on methane concentrations in the atmosphere, and therefore on global warming.

There are large global and domestic efforts to support more climate-friendly food production with many successes, ample opportunities for improvement, and potential game-changers.

However, current efforts are insufficient if we are to follow pathways consistent with keeping global warming to below 2℃. Reducing methane emissions needs to become a prevalent feature in the global pursuit of the sustainable future outlined in the Paris Agreement.

Pep Canadell receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program - Earth Sciences and Climate Change Hub.

Ben Poulter receives funding from the United States National Science Foundation, the United State Geological Society, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Marielle Saunois a reçu des financements de la Commission Européenne.

Paul Krummel is employed by CSIRO and receives funding from MIT, NASA, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Department of the Environment and Energy, and Refrigerant Reclaim Australia.

Philippe Bousquet a reçu des financements de la Commission Européenne

Rob Jackson receives funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation and Departments of Energy and Agriculture. He is a member of Stanford's Natural Gas Initiative, an industry affiliates program, working to reduce methane emissions.