The Conversation

Australia's oceans are feeding grounds for many wildlife species, including seabirds. Ed Dunens/Flickr, CC BY

More of Australia’s oceans should be placed under high protection, according to the long-awaited review of Commonwealth marine reserves released yesterday. The review, launched in 2014 by then prime minister Tony Abbott, largely vindicates the original planning process. It recommends zoning changes to 26 of 40 reserves, and reductions to the area available to mining, while reducing the impact on commercial fisheries.

The Commonwealth marine reserves were meant to be an easy win for the then-Labor federal government when they were declared in November 2012. All are in Commonwealth waters, from three nautical miles (about 5.5km) from the coast to 200 nautical miles (370km). Their generally remote location meant that few people would be affected.

Declaring the reserves fulfilled national and international commitments, a feat achieved by very few marine jurisdictions in the world. Australia was leading the way.

The reserves were also hugely popular. A sophisticated social media campaign run by international and national environmental groups had harnessed massive public support, especially for the declaration of a huge, no-fishing (or “no-take”) zone in the Coral Sea.

But criticisms of the parks emerged quickly leading up to and following their declaration. Predictably, commercial and recreational fishers protested the loss of fishing access. But some scientists also questioned whether these huge parks were the best way to protect our seas.

These same concerns have been raised in response to the world’s largest marine park – the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii, announced last week by US President Barack Obama.

So in 2013 the incoming Abbott government suspended the parks' management plans, making the reserves, at least temporarily, “paper parks”.

The review has restated the importance of no-take zones and recommended an increase in some of the reserves and a decrease in the Coral Sea.

So will the recommendations appease the critics?

Australia’s marine reserves as proposed in 2012. Department of Environment, CC BY Balancing act

The review panels had a challenging job of balancing conservation with emerging uses of marine space. Planning marine reserves is far more complex than agreeing to protect a certain amount of our oceans.

We don’t yet know a lot about ocean ecosystems. Researchers are trying to understand in more detail how marine species are connected and how they reproduce and feed in water and seabed habitats. Different species and communities have different needs and vulnerabilities.

A precautionary approach would suggest protection of large areas. But this begs the question of whether it’s most effective or fair to stakeholders to close large tracts of remote ocean to all forms of fishing, compared (for example) with infrequent, often seasonal, surface trolling of open ocean species by commercial or recreational fishers.

It is easy for planning processes to get caught up in a highly polarised debate between fishing and conservation interests. Part of the problem comes from a narrow understanding of benefits and impact, which focuses purely on numbers of people using an area and economic losses versus benefits.

Focusing on these questions alone fails to recognise the important role that values, emotion and identity play in framing the ways people respond to marine reserves.

For example, conservation groups have been perplexed by the opposition of recreational fishing groups to remote marine parks. Why would recreational fishers oppose parks that are well outside the usual fishing spots for the average fisher?

Conversely, fishing groups often feel that their interests should be prioritised over the tens of thousands of people who made submissions in support of the reserves – many of whom may never visit these areas.

A better understanding of why people fish, sail, dive, surf, do business, get involved in conservation campaigns and care about marine management will improve our understanding of what drives individual, group and community values and attitudes. We need to understand these emotional responses better before we can adequately evaluate the impact of marine reserves.

Without these data available now, the review panel has recommended adapting to new knowledge as it becomes available. It remains to be seen how fishing and environment groups will respond to these proposed changes. But it is likely they will still spark opposition despite the huge amount of time and resources that have gone into them.

How do you look after a remote marine park?

Another problem with large remote marine reserves is the high cost of managing and monitoring them.

Having people actively engaged in making use of these remote areas in low-impact ways can contribute to monitoring environmental health and discouraging illegal activities.

Other cost-effective solutions include technologies such as vessel-monitoring systems (which automatically track and survey boats), satellite monitoring, remote instruments and voluntary citizen science.

Along with the benefit of understanding how people use and value marine reserves, vessel-monitoring systems would increase safety and reduce costs of search, rescue and routine surveillance. While all Commonwealth-managed fisheries have these systems as a management requirement, most state fisheries do not. This is one example of the potential and the challenge of developing a coordinated system for managing and funding Australia’s coastal and ocean waters.

Inshore areas and many fisheries operating in Commonwealth waters are state and territory responsibilities. Many of the impacts affecting remote marine reserves come from these coastal areas.

So the success of the final zoning arrangements in achieving conservation objectives will require looking beyond state versus Commonwealth and fishery versus environment disputes.

Humpback whales migrate along Australia’s coasts. Whale image from www.shutterstock.com Where to from here?

Regardless of where you sit in this highly polarised debate, the final zoning of Australia’s marine reserves should not be seen as the end of the story.

There’s growing interest in Australia’s “blue economy”. It is time to revisit the need for a national oceans policy – a partnership between states and the Commonwealth that addresses the complexity of managing our seas. The development of Australia’s Oceans Policy in 1994 came close.

This was originally designed to address a range of issues, which included, but were not limited to, biodiversity conservation and the Commonwealth marine reserve network. Issues with negotiations prevented the policy coming to fruition.

With the reserve network now close to completion, it is time to turn attention to the range of other challenges that lie on the horizon for our oceans. No-take marine reserves provide sanctuaries and reference sites for understanding our impact on marine environments and are part of the solution to sustaining them.

It’s now time to move on, provide certainty for industry and stakeholders, and shift attention to the challenge of managing these reserves and the waters that surround them in a sustainable, productive and inclusive way. A great deal of work remains to be done.

Michelle Voyer has been involved in a number of projects that have received funding from the Commonwealth Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, the NSW Recreational Fishing Trust and the NSW Department of Primary Industries.

Richard Ambrose Kenchington has received funding from CSIRO as part of a Coastal Cluster study of barriers to the application of science in Coastal Zone management.

Wild horses are wreaking havoc in Australia's mountains Long Road Photography (formerly Aff)/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

The fate of wild horses in Australia’s alps is once again stirring passions, particularly the idea of shooting them. The suggestion has prompted street protests against it, and public statements from academics (including myself) endorsing the idea.

Victoria and New South Wales have not yet made decisions on what to do about the horses. In New South Wales, public comment has closed on the Kosciuszko National Park Draft Wild Horse Management Plan 2016, and now public servants have to weigh up the comments, take heed of political fears and sensitivities, and come up with a way forward.

Victoria’s Greater Alpine National Parks management plan has been tabled in parliament, arguing for feral horse control but leaving options open.

The evidence that wild horses need to be removed from Australia’s alps because of their impact on high country ecosystems and species is very strong. The debate now revolves around the ethics of how to remove horses, and their role in Australian culture.

Horse welfare

This issue of horse welfare has recently been substantially clarified in a report as part of reviewing the Kosciuszko plan. The report, prepared by an Independent Technical Reference Group, scores the welfare outcomes of a full range of horse control, considering pursuing horses, capturing and transporting them, and their ultimate fate.

Although a common perspective is that it would be nice to round up the horses and move them out of the national park, it turns out that this would result in one of the worst animal welfare outcomes.

The vast majority of horses captured (82%) in Kosciuszko National Park are not re-homed, but killed in abattoirs. The long journey to abattoirs in South Australia and Queensland was ranked as having a severe impact on horse welfare, rated seven out of a maximum score of eight.

In contrast, aerial shooting, when properly implemented by well-trained pilots and marksmen, had a moderate effect on horse welfare during the short chase (rated four out of eight), and there were no concerns about suffering when the horse is shot, as it is quickly killed.

Even fertility management had an impact rated six out of eight (and cannot be implemented at the scale needed to solve the Kosciuszko horse problem).

Animal welfare in the environment

There are around 10,000 wild horses in Australia’s alps, and 6,000 in Kosciuszko. By eating and trampling habitat, horses likely cause many individual native animals to suffer. These impacts are generally unseen, and are typically neglected when considering the ethics of culling horses.

Horses have a negative impact on alpine ecosystems, upon which native species depend, including the broad-toothed rat and the alpine water skink(critically endangered in Victoria).

In all arguments about culling invasive animals (or over-abundant native animals) it is a fundamental logical mistake to ignore the impacts of pests on the welfare of other animals, on the viability of populations and on the risk of species' extinction.

In his article A “Practical” Ethic for Animals, animal welfare expert David Fraser proposes four principles that, if applied, would ensure full consideration of the ethics of culling horses.

There are:

(1) to provide good lives for the animals in our care

(2) to treat suffering with compassion

(3) to be mindful of unseen harm

(4) to protect the life-sustaining processes and balances of nature.

This set of principles gives weight to both humane control methods, as well as suffering of other species if the culling is not undertaken, impacts on populations and risks of extinction.

While it is nicer if you don’t have to kill horses, when you weigh up the misery horses suffer if left in the wild, the unseen impacts on native animals, the damage to ecosystems and the likely heightened risk of extinction of already threatened species, leaving horses in the Australian alps is not a choice with ethics on its side.

Part of Australian culture

A cultural affiliation with horses is widespread around the world, including in the US, Spain and many South American countries.

Australia is no exception, epitomised by the poem “The Man from Snowy River)” by Banjo Paterson. This stock horse culture is widely celebrated in Australia. We saw it at the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony where stock horses were celebrated alongside those other classic Australian icons of lawnmowers and clothes lines.

Culture can be celebrated in a range of ways. We don’t celebrate the Gallipoli landing using actual violence, we don’t celebrate anniversaries of the moon landing by sending astronauts there.

We don’t need to celebrate Australia’s stock-horse culture by having horses in fragile alpine ecosystems where they cause environmental damage. There are other ways to celebrate culture, including through the network of mountain huts, many originally built for men rounding up cattle or horses. Indeed, there is already extensive signage highlighting this cultural history at huts around Victoria.

There may also be ways to maintain small wild-horse populations through collaborations across private properties around the mountains of NSW and Victoria. These would open up opportunities for tourism by providing “man-from-snowy-river” cultural experiences in places more appropriate than our national parks.

Australia has one of the largest feral horse populations on the planet, with 400,000 horses roaming the country. Areas set aside for nature cover less than 10% of New South Wales and 17% of Victoria. There is plenty of space outside reserves for horses, but conversely, very little area set aside for our natural heritage.

Considering the ethics of balance, one that takes into account humane treatment of horses, native wildlife, species and ecosystems, horses should be rapidly and humanely removed from alpine parks in Victoria and New South Wales.

Don Driscoll is affiliated with the Ecological Society of Australia and the Society for Conservation Biology.

When President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping announced their countries’ ratification of the Paris climate agreement ahead of last weekend’s G20 meeting in Hangzhou, they boosted its chances of coming into force by the end of this year, some 12 months after the deal was brokered last December.

To enter into force, the Paris Agreement requires ratification by at least 55 nations which together account for at least 55% of global greenhouse emissions. It will then become legally binding on those parties that have both signed and ratified it. These thresholds ensure that the deal has broad legitimacy among states, but are also low enough to limit the opportunities for blocking by states that may oppose its progress.

Aside from China and the United States – the world’s two largest emitters, which together produce 39% of the world’s emissions – another 24 countries have ratified the agreement.

To get over the threshold, it now only needs the support of a handful of major emitters like the European Union (a bloc of 27 countries producing some 10% of global emissions), India, Russia or Brazil. Ratification by countries such as Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom (each of which contributes about 1.5% of emissions) would also contribute significantly to this momentum.

A new impetus

The contrasts with earlier times could not be greater. Although the Paris Agreement’s predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, was finalised in 1997, it was resoundingly rejected by the US Congress. Its main objection was that the treaty did not impose emissions targets on developing countries, including China and India.

This blocking, predominantly by the United States (although Russia also stalled for eight years), delayed its coming into force until early 2005. Even after that, the United States – by far the world’s largest emitter at the time – continued trenchantly to oppose it for another decade.

Political turbulence around Kyoto stymied the development of a coherent global approach to greenhouse-gas reduction for more than a decade. This contributed significantly to the debacle at the 2009 climate negotiations in Copenhagen, where the United States and China were visibly at loggerheads.

After Copenhagen, a new approach began to evolve – one that better reflected the emissions contributions of fast-emerging economies. This included an inclusive, voluntary approach in which both developed and developing nations nominated their own preferred emissions targets.

These elements, enshrined in the Paris Agreement, were attractive to the United States and China. Moreover, as a treaty carefully crafted to allow countries to draft their own national mitigation commitments and to permit the use of existing laws, the Paris Agreement did not need to be passed by the US Congress. It could be approved by President Obama alone.

It has been widely observed that the recent level of cooperation on climate politics between China and the United States has counterbalanced growing tensions between the competing superpowers in other spheres, such as trade and geopolitical influence (especially in the South China Sea). The unprecedented joint announcement on climate change in November 2014 indicated the two nations' mutual resolve to reach a deal. The joint ratification ceremony last weekend further consolidates this narrative of unity of national purpose on global warming.

Such cooperation has helped Obama cement his legacy with regard to action on climate change and provides an opportunity for China to ameliorate perceptions of its nationalistic unilateralism on other issues.

It also underscores the urgency of bringing the Paris Agreement into force. The treaty as it stands is largely aspirational – it is a promissory note, promising that everyone will ramp up their ambition together, rather than setting an ambitious course from the outset.

Its overarching goal of holding global warming to well below 2℃ and as close as possible to 1.5℃ can only be met if parties revise and toughen their national commitments. (Presently, aggregate commitments will lead to warming of 3℃ and possibly higher.)

However, the agreement contains mandatory mechanisms for ratcheting up collective action. For instance, it requires parties to strengthen their national targets every five years. Increasing funding transfers to developing countries for mitigation and adaptation will be propelled by its coming into force.

Both these elements are urgent if they are to be effective.

Australia left as a laggard

The US-China announcement not only increases the momentum for ratification, but also increases pressure on Australia. With the Kyoto Protocol, Australia loyally supported the United States and refused to ratify until 2007. This time, similar recalcitrance is likely to be met with strong international disapproval.

However, ratification is only the beginning. Australia will then be required to revise and toughen its targets for 2030 and beyond. Its weak 2030 mitigation target is accompanied by policies inadequate to meet this goal.

The Paris Agreement, once in force, will require a more robust Australian target to be announced by 2023 at the latest. This in turn will further highlight the gap between current and sufficient implementation measures.

The US-China ratification announcement is the next step along a path that must see Australia climb – or be dragged – out of its current climate policy torpor.

Peter Christoff 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.

Protected areas, like national parks and wildlife refuges, are the cornerstones of global conservation efforts. So making sure they achieve their mission is fundamental to our goal of halting biodiversity declines.

Unfortunately, how well protected areas maintain their biodiversity remains poorly understood. While there is clear evidence that protected areas, such as Egmont National Park in New Zealand, can prevent deforestation, there is much less evidence of how well they protect our wildlife.

Our work, published in the journal Nature Communications, examined trends for more than 500 species of birds and mammals in protected areas in 72 countries. The good news is that most animals are doing well, more so for birds than mammals. But that’s no reason to become complacent.

Land surrounding Egmont National Park has been cleared to its edges. NASA/USGS Winners and losers

On the whole, birds are doing better than mammals, and species in Europe better than those in Africa. Species doing well include hippopotamus, northern hairy-nose wombats and waterfowl across Europe such as flamingoes in the Camargue region of France.

Those declining in protected areas include bushbuck in Selous National Park and other antelope like kob. Common birds such as common teal and European skylark are not immune, nor are a number of shorebirds globally. Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys are declining in Na Hang National Park in Vietnam, Tucuman parrots in Argentina, and the delightful mallee emu-wren declined to precipitously low levels in Ngarkat National Park, before being wiped out in South Australia in a single fire.

As a result of this monitoring data, many of the declining populations we studied have now been targeted for management – for instance, wetland birds across Europe. Others, like shorebirds, are faced with an intimidating cocktail of hard-to-manage international threats.

A few surprises

Unexpectedly, we also found the biggest animals were doing the best. Species like giraffes and zebras have more positive populations than smaller species like jackals.

This is surprising since larger animals tend to be slow to grow, mature and reproduce. As a result they are often slow to recover from population suppression.

Large animals often act as flagships for particular ecosystems. For instance, orang-utans are a flagship for Indonesia’s rainforests. The implication of our research is that focusing on these species is not enough to make sure all species will survive.

While more than half of protected areas we studied are getting better, there remain many protected areas where declines are still occurring worldwide. Despite this, conditions that deliver success for wildlife in protected areas are poorly understood. So, we investigated which parks were doing best and why.

The Camargue’s greater flamingos are doing well. Megan Barnes Making better reserves

Wildlife in protected areas is going better in wealthier, more developed countries (Europe) compared to developing countries (like in West Africa). It is hard to tell, though, if the difference is due to more resources available in developed countries, or increasing threats in developing nations.

National-scale socioeconomic conditions were also far more important in influencing how well parks protect wildlife than factors such as size, design or type. This shows it’s important to tailor management to social and political conditions. Over long timescales, the design of protected areas is likely to remain important, but our results show the importance of managing parks for more immediate threats.

A pygmy hippo. Ben Collen

Our results suggest that active management – like managing invasive predators, preventing poaching and reducing conflict between people and wildlife – helps animals with low reproductive rates and mitigates the greater threat faced by larger species of birds and mammals due to their slow reproductive rates. Parks still need to be well-managed, though, and threats can’t become too severe – as in the recent poaching crisis.

The tools to ensure good outcomes from protected areas exist — but the will and capacity to implement them must be strengthened if we expect them to act as refuges for all species forever.

This week at the World Conservation Congress, members of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and NGOs will vote on policies to halt biodiversity declines by 2020. To date, conservationists have focused on increasing the size of the global protected area estate, but simply establishing more protected areas is not enough.

Instead, we need a radical change in commitment. To do this we need to address shortfalls in management. Ensuring both sufficient and secure finances for management and appropriate and equitable governance is just the beginning. Otherwise we’ll keep creating more parks, but wildlife will keep declining.

Megan Barnes has received funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmrntal Decisions

The Climate Change Authority's latest report has divided its membership. Shutterstock.com

As Members of the Climate Change Authority who have participated fully in the Special Review of Australia’s Climate Goals and Policies, we reached the conclusion, after much consideration, that we could not in good conscience lend our names to its report, published last week.

Rather than resign from the Authority we decided to write a minority report. Here we present edited extracts from our report, which is released today.

The basis of our disagreement with the majority report is its failure to recognise the importance of the constraint put on all future emissions-reduction targets and policies by Australia’s carbon budget. The carbon budget is the total emissions that Australia can release between now and 2050 while still contributing its fair share in holding the global temperature rise to less than 2℃ – a key goal of the Paris climate agreement negotiated last December.

The majority report should, but does not, address the relationship between its recommendations and Australia’s carbon budget, consistent with a fair and equitable national contribution to the global carbon budget.

This is all the more regrettable because the requirement to do so is embedded in the Special Review’s terms of reference and was analysed in the First Report of the Special Review released in April 2015 (before the appointment of six new Members to the Authority in October 2015).

The budget constraint

In 2014 the Authority recommended an Australian emissions budget of 10.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases for the period 2013-2050. On this basis, it advised that Australia should set an emissions-reduction trajectory for 2030 in the range of 45-65% below 2005 levels. Contrast that with the current 26-28% target set by the Abbott government.

Against the constraints of the carbon budget, the majority report accepts – explicitly in some places, implicitly in others – the government’s current target.

But accepting this less ambitious target for 2030 is consistent neither with the Authority’s own advice to government, nor with Australia’s commitment under the Paris Agreement to play its role in holding warming below 2℃.

The graph below shows the carbon budget for Australia put forward by the Climate Change Authority in its earlier report. (The budget is the area under the curve.)

The embedded pie chart shows the sliver of emissions that would remain to cover the 20-year period after 2030 if there is no change from the 26-28% target. More than 90% of Australia’s carbon budget to 2050 would be used up by 2030. Australia’s emissions would have to decline precipitously and reach net zero by 2035.

Such a dramatic reduction would be impossible to achieve. So the current target of 26-28% lacks credibility because it is wholly inconsistent with Australia’s international obligations. If pursued it is likely to lead to a policy crisis within a decade or less.

Political independence

In our view, the failure of the majority report to make this clear to government and the public contravenes the Authority’s legislated obligation to deliver independent advice and to recommend measures that are “environmentally effective” and based on science.

We believe that the effect of the majority report will be to sanction further delay and a slow pace of action, with serious consequences for the nation. Those consequences include either very severe and costly emissions cuts in the mid-to-late 2020s, or alternatively a repudiation of Australia’s international commitments, and free-riding on the efforts of the rest of the world.

As we see it, the recommendations of the majority report are framed to suit a particular assessment of the prevailing political circumstances. We believe it is inappropriate and often counterproductive to attempt to second-guess political negotiations, especially for a new and uncertain parliament.

The unduly narrow focus of the majority report, seemingly based on a reading from a political crystal ball, has ruled out policies, such as a strengthened renewables target and stronger land clearing restrictions, that have a proven capacity to respond most effectively to the nation’s climate change goals.

Policy recommendations

At the centre of the majority report’s recommendations is the retention of the current Direct Action policy as the basis for further action. Its two pillars are the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) and its incorporated Safeguard Mechanism, which sets an upper limit on emissions from major polluters.

The report also recommends a new emissions trading scheme for electricity generation, based on an emissions-intensity baseline. Such a scheme would have lower price rises than the kind of cap-and-trade scheme favoured everywhere else in the world, and which Australia would have now if not for the Abbott government. After the rancour that engulfed the carbon price, the intensity-based scheme is presumably seen as more appealing to nervous politicians.

The majority report downplays the drawbacks of emissions-intensity schemes and the Safeguard Mechanism. There is not space to discuss them here, but we would like to comment on the flaws in the ERF because the majority report recommends that it be hugely expanded.

Flaws in the ERF

Under an expanded ERF policy, the cost to the federal budget would increase sharply, and even more so if Australia adopted tougher emissions targets in line with the science. Using the ERF in this way would be, in Professor Ross Garnaut’s words, “an immense drain on the budget”.

We believe it is unwise to make Australia’s climate policy hostage to disputes over fiscal policy.

As a rule, the replacement of the widely accepted “polluter pays” principle with the ERF’s “pay the polluter” principle is bad economics, bad ethics and bad policy. The practical drawbacks include the need for an expert bureaucracy to evaluate each prospective project and then to monitor, over several years, each successful project to ensure that the promised emissions reductions actually happen.

There are also serious and continuing concerns about the issue of “additionality”. Under the ERF, it is hard to know whether the Commonwealth is wasting money by paying for emissions reductions that would have taken place anyway – that is, projects that are not additional. Bear in mind that businesses plan energy-saving projects all the time, so why wouldn’t they try to get a subsidy if one is on offer?

Surveys show that a large majority of Australians want stronger action to reduce Australia’s emissions. The role of the Climate Change Authority is to advise on how that desire can be realised, in a way that is consistent with the best scientific and economic evidence.

The full minority report can be read here.

David Karoly receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He also shares in funding from the European Commission for his role as a Research Director in the EU Centre on Shared Complex Challenges at the University of Melbourne. He is a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

Clive Hamilton 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.

Sperm whales, like many other species, use echolocation which can be hampered by noise. Gabriel Barathieu/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Ask most people about pollution, and they will think of rubbish, plastic, oil, smog, and chemicals. After some thought, most folks might also suggest noise pollution.

We’re all familiar with noise around us, and we know it can become a problem – especially if you live near an airport, train station, highway, construction site, or DIY-enthusiast neighbour.

But most people don’t think that noise is a problem under water. If you’ve read Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea you might imagine that, maelstroms excepted, life is pretty quiet in the ocean. Far from it.

When we put a hydrophone (essentially a waterproof microphone) into the water, no matter where in the world’s oceans, it’s never quiet. We hear wind blowing overhead and rain dropping onto the ocean surface – even from hundreds of metres deep. In Australian waters we can also detect the far-off rumbles of earthquakes and the creaking of Antarctic ice thousands of kilometres away.

Wet and noisy

Water is much denser than air, so its molecules are packed tighter together. This means that sound (which relies on molecules vibrating and pushing against one another) propagates much further and faster under water than in air.

This also applies to human-produced sound. Under water we can hear boats and ships and even aeroplanes. Large vessels in deep water can be detected tens of kilometres away. We can be far offshore doing fieldwork, the only people around, with nothing in sight but water in any direction. Yet when we switch the engines off and put a hydrophone into the water, we hear ship noise. Sometimes, whole minutes later, the vessel we heard might appear on the horizon.

Seafarers have known about another source of sound for thousands of years: marine life. Many animals produce sound, from the tiniest shrimp to the biggest whales. Many fish even communicate acoustically under water – during the mating season, the boys start calling. Whales do it, too.

Light doesn’t reach far under water. Near the surface, in clear water, you might be able to peer a few metres, but in the inky depths you can’t see at all. So many marine animals have evolved to “see with sound”, using acoustics for navigation, for detecting predators and prey, and for communicating with other members of their species.

The thing is that man-made sound can interfere with these behaviours.

The effects of noise on marine animals are similar to those on us. If you’ve ever been left with ringing ears after a rock concert, you’ll know that loud noise can temporarily affect your hearing or even damage it permanently.

Noise interferes with communication, often masking it. Can you talk above the background noise in a busy pub? Long-term exposure to noise can cause stress and health issues — in humans and animals alike.

Excessive noise can change marine creatures' habits, too. Like a person who decides to move house rather than live next door to a new airport, animals might choose to desert their habitat if things get too noisy. The question is whether they can find an equally acceptable habitat elsewhere.

There is a lot more research still to be done in this field. Can we predict what noises and vibrations might be released into the marine environment by new machinery or ships? How does sound propagate through different ocean environments? What are the long-term effects on marine animal populations?

One positive is that even though noise pollution travels very fast and very far through the ocean, the moment you switch off the source, the noise is gone. This is very much unlike plastic or chemical pollution, and gives us hope that noise pollution can be successfully managed.

We all need energy, some of which comes from oil and gas; most of our consumer goods are shipped across the seas on container vessels; and many of us enjoy eating seafood caught by noisy fishing boats, some of which even use dynamite to catch fish. We want to protect our borders, making naval operations a necessity. Then there’s the ever growing industry of marine tourism, much of it aboard ever-bigger cruise ships which need large ports in which to berth.

There are a lot of stakeholders in the marine environment, and all speak a different language, all make different claims, and all make noise. Knowing precisely how much noise they make, and how it affects marine life, will help to ensure our oceans and their resources last well into the future.

September 3-11 is SeaWeek 2016, the Australian Association for Environmental Education Marine Educators’ national public awareness campaign.

Christine Erbe receives funding from offshore petroleum companies, defence departments, environmental groups.

The ACCC is taking VW to court. VW image from www.shutterstock.com

Yesterday the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced that it has instituted proceedings against Volkswagen (VW). The ACCC is pursuing VW for allegedly misleading consumers (in contravention of Australian Consumer Law) around emissions from its diesel cars.

In 2015, VW admitted it had installed software in certain diesel-engine cars that ensured the cars met US standards for nitrogen oxide emissions in testing, but turned off in real road driving conditions. This meant that the diesel engines were dirtier than consumers realised. The affected cars were sold globally, including in Australia.

It has been reported that in the United States, VW has agreed to buy back cars affected by the emissions scandal.

In Australia, affected consumers have been offered corrective software, although just what that software will achieve and how well it will do that is disputed.

The ABC reports VW as saying that “the ACCC’s action did not provide any practical benefit to consumers". VW says this is because “the best outcome for customers whose vehicle is affected is to have the voluntary recall service updates installed.”

What’s in it for VW owners?

The ACCC proceedings may appear to offer little direct benefit for disgruntled VW owners who have purchased cars without the features that were represented to them. However, contrary to VW’s suggestion, those consumers might want more by way of redress than the installation of new software to correct the original problem.

The attractions of low-emission diesel engines that were kinder to the environment may well have been central to affected consumers' decision to purchase the VW car models in question. Without those benefits consumers might have purchased a different car.

Such consumers may be disgruntled by finding their VW is not what they had expected and they may also be facing a reduced resale value of their affected car. They may therefore want compensation for loss of value, lost opportunities and even disappointment and distress.

The ACCC is seeking “declarations, pecuniary penalties, corrective advertising, findings of fact and costs” against VW.

Penalties awarded for breaches of the Australian Consumer Law may be considerable, amounting to A$1.1 million for each contravention. However, any penalties that the court determines VW will have to pay for its alleged misleading conduct will be imposed as a punishment for contraventions of the law, not to compensate affected consumers.

It is interesting that the ACCC does not appear to be relying on its powers itself to seek compensation for disgruntled consumers, or to seek a refund and damages on behalf of consumers for possible failures by VW to comply with the consumer guarantee regime in the Australian Consumer Law.

This may be for the practical reason that it would be difficult for the ACCC in this kind of action to show the required levels of causation and loss on the part of individual consumers that would be required in seeking redress on their behalf.

Nonetheless, the ACCC action is not entirely without benefit to consumers, albeit in a more indirect manner. The action sends a strong reminder to businesses operating in Australia about the need for “fair play” in the Australian market.

Moreover, any findings of fact or declarations may be made by a court in response to the ACCC action may be useful in establishing the alleged baseline wrong in private litigation by VW-owning consumers, including under the class action filed in the Federal Court by law firm Maurice Blackburn seeking financial redress for a group of affected consumers.

Jeannie Marie Paterson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

The Climate Change Authority’s latest report outlining a recommended climate policy “toolkit” is a reflection of what is seen by many as politically feasible in Australia now. But it is piecemeal and lacks a vision for the longer-term policy framework needed to get Australia on track to a low-carbon economy.

After years of political fighting over carbon pricing, a conventional emissions trading scheme - the instrument of choice in many other countries - is widely seen as politically impossible in Australia. And both major parties are scared of any policy that is seen as raising electricity prices.

The CCA seems to take this political situation as a starting point, and makes a series of judgements about specific policy options. The intent clearly is to help policy progress in the medium term. But it risks locking in a policy suite that will not deliver much, or may cost too much.

If the CCA’s recommendations are misconstrued as being ambitious, we could end up with policy that falls far short of these recommendations. And if its political judgements are off the mark, the CCA’s specific recommendations could become an obstacle for the government’s 2017 policy review.

Electricity intensity scheme

The CCA’s “toolkit” suggests a mix of different policy instruments for different sectors of the economy, with quite specific suggestions in some areas and less detail in others.

For the power sector, the recommendation is for an “emissions intensity scheme”, designed to create a carbon price signal in electricity production while limiting the effect on power prices. This is its main selling-point: it would result in less price uplift than a standard emissions trading scheme or carbon tax.

The flipside is that this does not encourage households and businesses to save energy, and so without other interventions it will be less efficient.

Another serious downside is that the government earns no money from the scheme because all permits are given out for free to industry. So there is no source of income to cut other taxes and help low-income households, as there was under the Gillard government’s carbon price.

Such a power sector scheme is in line with what Labor took to July’s election, so there may be hope for bipartisanship. It is a scheme you choose if you are afraid of political backlash over power prices, and if you are prepared to forego fiscal revenue.

Its effectiveness will depend on its credibility and ambition. The CCA envisages it as a stand-alone scheme without trading links (except possibly sales of “white certificates” from energy efficiency schemes). The CCA recommends baselines going linearly to zero before 2050, which could drive significant change in power generation. But whatever trajectory is mandated is certain to be economically less efficient than a standard emissions trading scheme with flexibility between sectors and over time.

Renewables, innovation and coal exit

The report notes that uncertainty over the future of an emissions intensity scheme “could affect investor confidence” and cause cost increases and delays, and that this is an argument for continued support for renewable energy deployment policies. However it recommends that the Renewable Energy Target not be continued beyond the present commitment to new investments until 2020 and support for existing plants until 2030.

On innovation for low-emissions technologies, the CCA calls for government support both through debt and equity funding, as well as public funding for research, development and demonstration. The former is currently done through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the latter by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). This recommendation runs counter the government’s present plan – possibly supported by Labor – to withdraw A$1.3 billion in funding from ARENA.

Mechanisms to facilitate closure of high emissions power stations have received much support in the debate over the last year. The idea of a regulated closure scheme is rejected by the CCA, on the basis of modelling of a version of the proposal that would not allow any flexibility. The proposal for a market-based scheme to help shut down the highest-emitting power stations is mentioned only in the CCA’s accompanying electricity report, where it is dismissed without analysis.

Emissions Reduction Fund and more complexity

Outside the power sector the CCA proposes evolving the existing Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), a patchy scheme of subsidies paid to businesses for projects presumed to cut emissions.

It suggests that industries that burn fossil fuels or otherwise release greenhouse gases should be covered by an ERF with “enhanced safeguards”. Companies that exceed a specific benchmark emissions intensity (falling over time) would have to buy emissions credits, while companies can earn credits for projects that meet the ERF’s criteria. But companies that remain below the benchmark and do not engage in projects would not be involved at all and have no incentive to cut emissions.

The government would continue to buy credits from land sector projects. This means continued payments of taxpayer dollars to businesses, and continued doubts over whether the emissions reductions are real.

For energy efficiency, yet another approach is recommended, by harmonising existing state-based “white certificate” schemes that award credits for energy savings, and then feeding those credits back into the electricity supply scheme. Selective efficiency standards are also supported, along with emissions standards for cars and perhaps trucks.

Setting our sights higher

The CCA’s report focuses heavily on Australia’s existing emissions target, of a 26-28% reduction on 2005 levels by 2030. But in reality, Australia will have to do more as part of the Paris Agreement ratcheting process. The existing target is too weak to meet the Paris deal’s global warming limit of below 2℃. The goal must be a net zero-emission economy around mid-century.

The more hodge-podge our climate policy regime, the weaker the signals to promote investment in modern, clean technologies. The incrementalism of the CCA’s proposed approach contrasts starkly with the need to drive a fundamental transformation to a low-carbon economy, and is at odds with the Authority’s own recommended carbon budget.

An apt comparison is with Australia’s economic reforms of the 1980s. The road to success was fundamental change such as floating the dollar and dismantling tariffs, not timid tinkering. Today, neither side of politics shows such vision or determination. So it is all the more important that independent bodies raise everyone’s sights to the larger possibilities.

The CCA’s judgements

The “policy toolkit” report is not supported by two of the CCA’s board members, Clive Hamilton and David Karoly, who have made it known that they will issue a dissenting minority report.

Under its previous board the CCA provided strongly principled advice for ambitious climate policy, such as its recommendations for emissions targets and a carbon budget. A report on climate policy instruments that put principle over political circumstance would almost inevitably recommend a comprehensive carbon pricing scheme as its core.

The hope for this week’s report is that it might help achieve some convergence on climate policy, albeit at a lower denominator, and encourage the government to embark on reform.

The initial signals from the government are not positive. Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg was quick to distance the government from the report. He said that there are no plans to change baselines for the “safeguards”, which would be required for the main aspects of the CCA plan.

Meanwhile the CCA has ruled out a number of options, making it harder for the government to pick up these options if it wanted to.

The pragmatic gamble could backfire.

Frank Jotzo has received grant funding from various organisation including the Australian government. He has been a member of various advisory bodies. None of the funding or affiliations impinges on the subject of this article.

“For thrill seekers and chill seekers” – that’s the phrase the Today Tonight television program used to show areas in Bali as a freshly rebranded holiday destination, in its recent Brand New Bali series.

But beneath the glamorous surface of cocktails, swimming pools and beach holidays lies an environmental threat that may cause the island to face a water crisis in less than four years.

One segment of Brand New Bali focused on the area of Canggu, hailed as the new “place to be”, after Kuta, Legian and Seminyak.

Showcasing one newly opened Australian-owned beach club at Berawa beach, the segment shows Australian visitors, the Australian beach club manager and a local businessman named Ketut talk about the splendours of Canggu and its rise from a small fishing village to a trendy international surf destination.

The beach club sits on an aquifer, underground layers of rock that contain water that can surface through natural springs or be extracted using pumps. Like most tourism businesses and households in the area, the beach club relies on groundwater for daily water consumption.

Lack of management and overconsumption of water can cause aquifers to face groundwater depletion and land subsidence. Although Bali is a lush, tropical island with rich volcanic soil and a more than 1,000-year heritage of rice production, researchers estimate the island will run dry by 2020.

Stress on waterways is more than just a local issue to Bali. It is of global concern, as UNICEF’s current campaign World Water Week seeks to highlight.

Balinese opposition to outside investors

Bali’s struggle against cashed-up outside investors is most prominent in the “Tolak Reklamasi” movement. Thousands of supporters have joined the movement to reject land reclamation in Benoa Bay, where investors from Jakarta are planning to build hotels and casinos on artificially-built islands.

Protesters claim this will have negative environmental consequences such as flooding, place stress on water and waste management, and destroy dozens of Hindu sacred sites.

While there are many - local residents included - who welcome the booming tourist scene in Canggu and the economic opportunities this offers, researchers warn about rapid and uncontrolled development. Balinese tourism researcher I Nyoman Darma Putra has addressed the shift from cultural tourism to marine tourism and notes the increasing demand for marine leisure activities by tourists. He cautions against the rapid development of coastal spaces and urges developers to consider Balinese people’s religious relationship with the sea, as well as the sustainable management of environmental resources.

Tourism and water

An estimated 60% of Bali’s water is consumed by the tourism industry. This not only affects water sources but can disadvantage neighbouring users too.

Stroma Cole’s research shows how wealthy tourism operators can afford better technology to access deeper groundwater resources. While most households have wells up to 40 metres deep (some only 12m), resorts are reported to drill deeper wells - 60m and more - literally sucking up their neighbours’ water. The neighbours are then forced to dig deeper or look elsewhere for freshwater.

Although there are laws that regulate water consumption, they are rarely enforced. Most users are unaware of these regulations. As a result, those with financial resources can buy themselves an advantage in accessing resources.

Water tables across Bali have dropped up to 50m in the past 10 years in parts of Bali and 60% of its watersheds are declared dry. The damage could become irreversible once aquifers suffer saltwater intrusion, rendering the groundwater useless for domestic purposes.

Bali tourism: who really benefits?

So what benefit may this beach club have to the area? Surely, large developments can bring economic prosperity to semi-urban areas?

The prospects seem bleak. Beach vendors, who have been selling cold drinks and snacks on this stretch of sand in Berawa for years, were forced to move to make way for the new mega-club, and are left fearing for their business. Many of those beach vendors have families to feed. The assumption that more tourism business means more wealth for Balinese residents is also misleading: an estimated 85% of tourism businesses are owned by non-Balinese..

The Today Tonight segment does well in highlighting the popularity of places like Canggu and touches on the special place Bali holds towards its Australian audience. Australians in particular have a close connection to Bali through decades of mass tourism and the market seems to be changing from a budget, all-inclusive version, to a glossy, exotic marine tourism destination.

While an exclusive cocktail in the newest popular beach bar will look good on any traveller’s social media feed, consumers, developers and residents alike must consider seriously measures of environmental sustainability, so that generations to come can enjoy the beauty of this wonderful island.

The author makes no claim of representing or speaking on behalf of a Balinese community. Some of the information is based on ethnographic field research the author undertook in the Canggu area between 2015 - 2016 as part of his PhD project.

Thomas Wright does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Overfishing can teach us valuable lessons about ecosystem resilience. Andreas Altenberger/Shutterstock.com

As we head into the Anthropocene epoch, the era in which humankind has become the prevailing influence on our planet, we often stand accused of inadvertently running “global experiments” through our effects on wildlife, food chains, landscapes and the climate.

But what if these experiments are exactly the kind of science we need?

Of course, we’re not suggesting we deliberately trash the planet in the name of science. But if these phenomena are happening anyway, the least we can do is learn something along the way. That’s what experiments are for, right?

With science budgets shrivelling, the apparent alternative is to channel funding into ever smaller, shorter and cheaper experiments. But good luck recreating the complex tapestry of life in a coral reef, say, when all you have is a 10-cubic-metre tank.

Our research, published in the journal Ecosystems, argues that one of the only feasible solutions to the current intellectual and financial crisis lies in “large-scale, unreplicated natural experiments”, or LUNEs. These “off-the-shelf”, expansive experiments have inadvertently been created by humanity and nature.

Think tsunamis, deep earthquakes, oil spills, shark finning, alien invasions (yellow crazy ants, not Martians), and the construction of the Suez Canal.

Together, these rare but powerful manipulations of the environment can be tapped by scientists to test important hypotheses about how the world works.

Letting nature and human activity do the “dirty work” when it comes to experimental design has its advantages: it’s cheap, it’s realistic, and in many cases it’s the only ethical or logical way to study a particular question. In cases of human activity, it also allows us to understand the ecosystem response to these “interventions”.

There is also a growing consensus that no matter how many small-scale or theoretical studies we churn out, things often play out alarmingly differently when we examine ecological processes at large scales.

For example, you might be forgiven for thinking that an invasion of poisonous cane toads would be bad news for the snakes that eat them (and that’s what most studies have suggested). But a recent large-scale analysis found not just that many snake species were unperturbed by invasive toads, but that some lucky groups even increased in abundance.

Why else should we give LUNEs a chance? For statistical reasons, they are a particularly powerful tool when they operate across an ecological gradient, potentially allowing us, for example, to identify “tipping points” within ecosystem function.

In addition, gradual accumulations of LUNEs can ultimately power meta-analyses that can be used to draft robust “rules of thumb” about how ecological processes work.

For example, you might think that marine protected areas (MPAs) are a no-brainer when it comes to generating environmental and economic benefits. But this has been surprisingly difficult to prove scientifically. However, a 2014 meta-analysis of 87 MPAs showed conclusively that they help fish grow bigger and more abundant, particularly when these marine reserves are old, large, well-enforced, and have no-take fishing rules.

Deliberate oil spills?!

But LUNEs constitute a Faustian bargain, damaging the natural world in return for more knowledge. That also means they’re generally impossible to replicate, because it’s hard to run the experiment for a second time, even if you were mad enough to want to.

The US government is unlikely to green-light a second Deepwater Horizon oil spill, earthquakes are unpredictable and different each time, and we’re (hopefully) unlikely to experience another Big Bang any time in our near future.

An important question LUNEs raise is whether the conventional scientific need for experimental replication surpasses the urgent need to understand humanity’s effects on the planet.

We argue that the “conceptual” replications LUNEs offer are far more valuable than exact, controlled scientific replications, which when carried out on small scales can be highly misleading anyway.

Here’s an example. Water quality declined in many North American rivers and lakes in the 1960s, turning them green with nutrient-driven algal blooms. Small-scale experiments pointed the finger at nitrogen and carbon, but when researcher David Schindler began deliberately injecting whole lakes in western Ontario with different nutrients, he realised that phosphorus was the crucial factor.

His research didn’t use traditional scientific replication. But the results were eventually enough to persuade the Canadian government and several US states to ban phosphorus, which is now recognised as the major culprit.

In other cases, LUNEs have not overturned scientific consensus, but have proved crucial in highlighting the seriousness of the issues. There was 20 years' worth of evidence from small-scale lab experiments and modelling studies about the dangers of chlorofluorocarbons used as refrigerants and aerosol propellants. But the world only moved to ban them after the discovery that these chemicals had punched a large hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.

Together, these examples suggest that LUNEs and other large-scale studies can play a crucial role in galvanising the policy changes that avert environmental crises.

Homo sapiens derives from the Latin sapientia, meaning “wisdom”. But our ongoing failure to use our planet’s resources sustainably suggests that we are still a long way from living up to our name.

Fast-tracking LUNES and other large-scale studies, and placing value on their findings, may help us develop the far-sightedness we’ll need to survive the Anthropocene epoch.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Of the many devastating pictures to come out of central Italy after last week’s deadly earthquake, the clock tower of Amatrice standing defiantly amid the rubble of the town has become an iconic image.

The clock tower was reportedly built in the 13th century and its solid stance defies us to understand how this remarkable structure has evaded destruction at least twice in the past 800 years.

But perhaps surprisingly, it’s not unusual for tall, ancient structures to survive earthquakes.

Unlikely survivors Nepal’s Dharawara tower in 2013, before it was destroyed in the 2015 earthquake. KATHMANDU NEPAL FEB 2013, CC BY-SA

Similar towers are relatively commonplace in Italy and part of the country’s charm. The town of San Gimignano, about 200km from the centre of the Amatrice earthquake, has 14 towers that date as far back as the 12th century – and have consequently survived many earthquakes big and small. Other towers can be seen in Alba in northern Italy.

Further afield, a memorable image of the Izmit earthquake in Turkey in 1999 was of the tower of the Golcuk Mosque standing forlornly among the ruins.

Photos from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake show a slender tower and an array of chimneys standing in the rubble of the city.

In many instances, however, the towers fall, as happened to the Dharahara tower during the magnitude-7.8 Nepal earthquake in April 2015.

Why do some of these slender icons survive repeated earthquakes and others fall? An article in The Economist suggested that the clock tower was better constructed than the surrounding buildings, pointing out that it even survived better than a modern school and hospital. The L'Aquila experience suggests that this is probably one part of the story.

However, the reality is more complex. Other factors can and do contribute to the resilience of buildings.

On shaky ground

It is very likely that the clock tower’s survival was influenced by the relationship between the frequency of the earthquake waves and the natural resonance of the building. To understand why, we have to consider how earthquakes interact with buildings.

Earthquakes generate seismic waves that pass through the ground. Like ocean waves, they have peaks and troughs. The frequency of the wave is related to its “period” – the time taken for one complete waveform (including a peak and a trough) to pass.

A building has a natural period that causes it to vibrate back and forth. Think of a child on a swing – a swing with short ropes will complete a full cycle much more quickly than a long swing.

The same is true of buildings with different heights. A building is effectively an upside-down pendulum and taller buildings have longer natural periods of oscillation (swinging back and forth).

The ground also has a preferred period at which it oscillates. Soft sediment in a river valley will oscillate over longer periods, and hard bedrock over shorter ones.

High-frequency (short period) earthquake waves are therefore amplified in bedrock, such as the site of Amatrice, and are the dominant frequency radiated by small to moderate and shallow earthquakes such as last week’s.

Low-frequency (long period) earthquake waves are amplified in sediment and form a greater part of the seismic energy radiated by larger earthquakes, such as the Tohuku earthquake in Japan and the Nepal quake that felled the Dharahara tower.

When the resonant frequency of the ground coincides with the resonant frequency of the building, the structure will undergo its largest possible oscillations and suffer the greatest damage. The rigidity and distribution of mass along the height of a building also have a big effect on the likely damage sustained in a given earthquake, as this governs the way the induced forces are distributed.

You can try this for yourself by experimenting with a broom handle and a 30cm ruler. Held vertically, the top of the broom handle will do little if you vigorously shake its base with small movements, whereas the ruler will oscillate under the same shaking.

Slow the shaking down and the handle will begin to whip back and forth while the ruler settles down. Place a large mass on the end of either the ruler or the broom handle and the characteristics will change.

The concept is beautifully demonstrated in a video by Robert Butler of the University of Oregon.

A resonant problem

Of course, real structures and real earthquakes are far more complex. Real structures have many natural frequencies, and earthquakes vibrate across a spread (or spectrum) of frequencies.

Destruction occurs when any of a buildings’s natural frequencies coincide with any of the dominant frequencies of the earthquake. In some situations, there may be just a few structures that avoid this dangerous combination, such as the clock tower at Amatrice, or the chimneys of San Francisco.

The characteristics of shaking at Amatrice have not yet been published, but it is highly likely that the tower is standing not only because it was built well in the first instance, but also because it is just the right size and shape to survive the frequency of shaking that occurs during Italy’s moderate-magnitude earthquakes.

This process is equally important in other regions. The magnitude-6.8 Myanmar earthquake on August 24 damaged many historic temples in the Irrawaddy Valley, but none appears to have collapsed. These high-but-squat structures are susceptible to high-frequency shaking, whereas the passage of earthquake waves through alluvium is likely to have amplified mainly low-frequency earthquake waves.

Notably, much of the damage to the temples seems to have occurred as a result of the collapse of recent cheap “restorations”.

Building practices are extremely important in mitigating the effect of shaking on buildings. Modern buildings are commonly fitted with devices to reduce the effects of resonance. Engineered solutions are available to retrospectively enhance the performance of unreinforced masonry buildings, with little impact on their aesthetics.

In Italy, this retrofitting needs to be done as quickly as possible before the next earthquake. This will be a costly exercise. Even apparently resilient medieval towers may require retrofits, because they have commonly accumulated a degree of damage.

However, Italy is a globally important cultural and tourism hub, and her earthquake-prone buildings, like those in Myanmar, are part of our collective heritage. Italy should not be left to struggle alone with the management of earthquake-prone building hazards.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

It may not be coal for Christmas for Adani, unless it gets its foot in the ground. Coal image from www.shutterstock.com

The rejection by the Federal Court of the most serious remaining legal challenges to the proposed Carmichael mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin means it is finally time for the project’s proponent, Adani Mining, to put its money where its mouth has been.

For several years, Adani has been blaming its failure to proceed with the mine on legal obstacles. Most of these obstacles were cleared by 2015. A report in February cited a “top Adani Group executive” saying that operations should start in August 2016.

By the time of the final approval from the Queensland government in April, the group was talking about unspecified “secondary approvals” and saying “we hope that construction would start any time in 2017”.

This timetable was repeated after the most recent court decisions. While some court challenges to government approvals remain, it does not appear that any of these would prevent a start to construction, given that the approvals are now in place.

Coal price waning

At the same time, the incentives for an early start are stronger than they have been for some time. The price of thermal coal has risen by 30%, primarily as a result of action by the Chinese government to close uneconomic mines and support the profitability of those that remain.

Few analysts expect this rise to be sustained indefinitely. China has signalled its intention to limit its reliance on coal-fired electricity. This is both because of its contribution to global warming and because of the health effects of burning coal in urban areas, which causes tens of thousands of deaths every year.

The same is true of the Indian market, for which Adani’s exports are supposed to be destined. India’s coal imports have grown rapidly but are now being squeezed on both the supply and demand sides of the market.

On the supply side, the publicly owned monopoly Coal India is expanding production and private firms are being allowed access to coal reserves.

On the demand side, coal-fired electricity is facing increasingly stiff competition from renewables, most notably solar PV.

Adani Enterprises, from which Adani Mining was spun off last year, is among the major investors in renewables. And, a little later than in China, the Indian government and people are waking up to the disastrous health effects of burning coal. Several “ultra mega power projects” (massive coal-fired power plants) were cancelled recently. More are likely to follow.

So the long-term trend for coal demand and coal prices can only be down from the current peak, itself far below the A$120 per tonne that prevailed when the Galilee Basin project was first put forward in 2010. It follows that there is no time to lose in developing the Carmichael mine, if it is ever to be profitable.

Woes for Galilee coal

But before construction can begin, Adani needs to undertake substantial engineering design work, hire contractors and secure billions of dollars in financing. There is no sign that this is happening.

The engineering team from Worsley Parsons and the construction group from Korean steelmaker Posco (also a supposed equity partner) were sacked in 2015. A A$2 billion announcement of work for Downer EDI seems to have vanished into thin air.

The situation with finance is even worse. A long list of banks and other funding sources have announced they won’t finance the project, or have pulled out of announced and existing finance arrangements.

The list includes the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (formerly a big lender to Adani), NAB, the Queensland Treasury and global banks, including Standard Chartered (another former big lender), Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Barclays, as well as BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Societe Generale. The US and Korean Export-Import banks and the State Bank of India have been touted as possible sources, but appear to have backed away.

It gets worse. The Carmichael mine is part of a larger plan to develop five megamines in the Galilee Basin. The economics of the rail line and port expansion needed to transport coal from Carmichael depend on the assumption that the costs will be shared across these mines.

But these projects are in far worse straits than Adani’s. GVK, the Indian conglomerate that owns the Alpha, Kevin’s Corner and Alpha West deposits, is in deep financial trouble. Its Australian partners, Aurizon (the privatised Queensland Rail) and Hancock Prospecting (owned by Gina Rinehart), have written off their investments. GVK’s March 2016 financial statements did not even mention the Galilee Basin assets.

GVK looks healthy compared to the other major owner of Galilee Basin assets, Clive Palmer. In a desperate attempt to stave off the bankruptcy of his Queensland Nickel corporation, he tried to offload the coal deposits owned by his Waratah Coal company onto Adani, and use the mooted sale proceeds to secure credit from Aurizon. Neither party was interested.

Until now, Adani has blamed the endless delays in its project on legal challenges. But the time for excuses has run out. Adani should admit that this economically and environmentally disastrous project will never go ahead, and focus its attention completely on the renewable energy technologies in which it is already a major player.

John Quiggin is a Member of the Climate Change Authority. He has appeared as an expert witness on behalf of the Environmental Defenders Office, but not in any cases related to the Galilee Basin.

The biggest issue is still getting the kids to eat them. MNStudio/Shutterstock.com

When it comes to fruit and vegetables, the most common battleground (for parents and public health experts alike) is getting people to eat them. But there’s a battle over semantics too, because many of the things we call “fruit” and “vegetables” … aren’t.

In botanical terms, a fruit is relatively easy to define. It is the structure that develops from the flower, after it has been fertilised, and which typically contains seeds (although there are exceptions, such as bananas).

But while there is no doubt that tomatoes, cucumbers and pumpkins are fruits in the botanical sense, any linguist will tell you that language changes and words take on the meaning that people broadly agree upon and use. We live in a linguistic democracy where the majority rules.

Hence a tomato is still usually called a vegetable – although many people take pride in calling it a fruit, while overlooking other “vegetables” with similar claims to fruit status. If this makes your inner pedant bristle, that’s just tough – trying telling the nearest five-year-old that a pumpkin’s a fruit and see how far you get.

Berries, by definition, are many-seeded, fleshy fruits which are often brightly coloured. They may have a soft or tough outer skin, but they must be fleshy. Oddly, strawberries and raspberries are not really berries at all, because they originate from a single flower which has many ovaries, so they are an aggregate fruit.

True berries are simple fruits that develop from a single flower with a single ovary. Tomatoes and grapes are technically berries, as are avocados, watermelons, pumpkins and bananas. Citrus fruits are also berries and their flesh is renowned for being acidic, which makes the flavour bitter.

Nuts are generally dry, woody fruits that contain a single seed. However, as you might have come to expect by now, things are not always so simple; the word “nut” is often used to describe any woody fruit. So a Brazil nut is actually a seed, whereas the walnut is botanically a “drupe” – a fleshy fruit with a hard inner layer that often persists when the flesh is lost (other drupes include peaches, mangoes and olives).

We all know fruits are good for us, but why are they typically more appetising than vegetables (certainly to kids)? Fruits are often the means by which seeds are dispersed and so the plant, in competition with other plants, needs to attract the right insect, bird or mammal to spread its seeds. This is why fruits are often brightly coloured and rich in nutrition (or at least high in sugar). It is not just humans who like a flash of colour and a soft, sweet sugar hit.

On the other hand, in the case of many leafy vegetables, plants need to protect their leaves from grazing animals and insects. The leaves are valuable and productive assets and so contain chemicals that are often unpalatable. They may be bitter or very strongly flavoured, which may explain why kids are inclined to stay away from them. Luckily, proper cooking and good recipes can often save this situation.

Now eat your veggies

So if fruits are, with a few exceptions, seed-bearing organs, what are vegetables? Here the definition is less clear, because the word “vegetable” has no real botanical meaning.

To a botanist, if the word vegetable is used at all, it would simply mean any plant, in much the same way that plants are collectively referred to as “vegetation”. So we could apply the term vegetable to almost any part of any plant if we wanted to. Hence the term tends to encompass a wide range of foods, particularly green leafy ones.

Cabbage, lettuce, zucchini and cucumber are all described as vegetables (despite the latter two being fruits), and the term has generally come to refer to a specific group of plant parts that are commonly used as foods in various societies. Of course, different cultures eat different parts of different plants. But, generally speaking, in Anglophone cultures the term vegetable is used for plant materials used to make a main meal, while fruits are typically associated with breakfast or dessert.

Alleged veg. NK/Shutterstock.com

Among the group that is loosely classed as vegetables, there are some interesting and diverse structures. Bulbs, such as onions and garlic, are highly modified shoots that develop as fleshy underground organs from which new plants can develop. They are a form of asexual reproduction, a natural kind of cloning.

The bulb contains all of the ingredients required for the production of a new plant, such as roots, leaves and flower buds. The food reserves it contains – usually starch or sugar – allow a new plant to develop rapidly at the appropriate time, hence the sweetness of onions and the fact that they caramelise so beautifully. Bulbs such as garlic can also contain pungent defensive chemicals to ward off insects or fungi.

The flowers and stems of many vegetables can also be tasty and nutritious. The flowering heads of broccoli and cauliflower are prized, as are the stems of celery and rhubarb. Once again the richness and diversity of flavours arise from the different chemicals that the plants produce to protect their valuable assets from the ravages of grazing by insects and other animals.

Tubers are formed from swollen stem or root tissue, and it’s relatively easy to distinguish between the two because stem tubers have buds, or “eyes”. Potatoes are typical stem tubers, whereas carrots are root tubers. All tubers are storage organs and last only a year. They are rich in starch, which is often readily converted to sugar to fuel the plant’s growth.

These plant-nourishing characteristics also make tubers very nutritious for us. What’s more, their high fibre content and homogeneous internal structure mean they can be cooked in a wide variety of ways: boiled, mashed, chipped, baked or roasted – even though you and I might not necessarily see “eye to eye” on which is tastiest (with all due apologies for the cheesy potato pun).

While the definitions may be debated and the words may have different meanings for different people, one thing is undeniable: whichever way you slice it, fruit and veggies are very good for you. So eat up.

Gregory Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

A healthy devil. Menna Jones

For the past 20 years, an infectious cancer has been killing wild Tasmanian devils, creating a massive challenge for conservationists. But new research, published today in Nature Communications, suggests that devils are evolving rapidly in response to their highly lethal transmissible cancer and that they could ultimately save themselves.

Cancer is usually a disease that arises and dies with its host. In vertebrates, only two known types – Canine Transmissible Venereal Cancer in dogs and Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) – have taken the extraordinary evolutionary step of becoming transmissible. These cancers can grow not just within their host but can spread to other individuals. Because the cancer cells are all descendants of one mutant cell, the cancer is effectively immortal.

To grow in the new host, the tumour cell must evade detection and rejection by the immune system. Both the devil and dog transmissible cancers have sophisticated mechanisms for hiding from the host’s immune system. Our research suggests that the devil is nevertheless evolving resistance to the disease.

Ecological disaster

The Tasmanian devil is too important to lose – and this would seem careless following the extinction of the thylacine, the world’s largest marsupial predator, in the 1930s. Since the thylacine’s extinction, devils have stepped up to the role of top marsupial predator, keeping numbers of destructive feral cats at bay in Tasmania. With the decline of the devils, invasive species have become more active.

Since it was first detected in northeastern Tasmania in the mid-1990s, DFTD has spread slowly southward and westward. It will reach all parts of Tasmania within a few years; only the far northwest coast and parts of the southwest are still disease-free.

Devil Facial Tumour Disease has spread across the island over two decades. Menna Jones

Devil populations have declined by at least 80%, and by more than 90% in some areas within six years of local disease outbreak.

DFTD kills most devils at sexual maturity. Before the disease arrived, most devils produced three litters over their lifetime. Most now raise only one.

The cascading effects of the loss of Tasmania’s top predator on the rest of the ecosystem could lead to loss of further species. Already, feral cats have increased activity and small mammals on which cats prey have declined.

Cats may also be preventing recovery of the eastern quoll. Brushtail possums behave as if devils were already extinct, grazing freely on pasture in the open.

Evolution in action

Our research has been a truly international effort. We used data collected by Menna Jones at the University of Tasmania since 1999. This archive of tissue samples now represents one of the best resources globally for studying evolution of an emerging infectious disease in wildlife.

Andrew Storfer at Washington State University and Paul Hohenlohe at the University of Idaho compared the frequency of genes in devils in regions before DFTD arrived to devils 8-16 years after DFTD arrived.

We identified significant changes in two small regions in the DNA samples of devils from regions with DFTD. Five of seven genes in the two regions were related to cancer or immune function in other mammals, suggesting that Tasmanian devils are indeed evolving resistance to DFTD. Evolution is often thought of as a slow process, but these changes have occurred in as few as 4–8 generations of devils since disease outbreak.

Devils are surviving at our long-term sites, despite models that predicted extinction. Previously, studies have shown that devils with lower rates of DFTD showed specific changes in their immune response. Our genetic results might explain why.

New infectious diseases put strong pressure on their hosts to evolve, leading to rapid changes in resistance or tolerance. Rapid evolution requires pre-existing genetic variation. Our results are surprising because Tasmanian devils have low levels of genetic diversity.

Evolution doesn’t just act on the devils; it also also acts on the disease. The disease evolves to not kill the host before it can spread to another host, but also to overcome the host’s defences. Over the long term, pathogen (the cause of the disease) and host usually evolve to live together as rabbits and Myxoma virus have evolved together.

Our results suggest that devils in the wild may save themselves though evolution. However, it is essential for managers to develop strategies that help the devils do so. For example, releasing fully susceptible devils that have had no exposure to the disease into populations where resistance is developing is likely to be counterproductive.

DFTD presents a unique opportunity to study the early stages of the evolution of a new disease and transmissible cancer with its animal host. Ultimately, through future research, we may understand how cancers can become transmissible and how their hosts respond.

Menna Elizabeth Jones receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the US National Science Foundation and the Save the Tasmanian Devil Appeal.

Andrew Storfer receives funding from US National Science Foundation

Hamish McCallum receives funding from the US National Science Foundation, the Australian Research Council and the Queensland Government.

Paul Hohenlohe receives funding from the US National Science Foundation and the US National Institutes of Health.

Rodrigo Hamede receives funding from University of Tasmania Foundation, the US National Science Foundation and the Save the Tasmanian devil Program. School of Biological Sciences, University of Tasmania. Australia

The Victorian government has announced it will permanently ban unconventional gas, often produced through the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”. Legislation to implement the ban will be introduced this year.

This ban follows a 2015 report on unconventional gas. Following extensive review, committee members were split over whether to implement a full ban or extend the moratorium on onshore gas development by five years.

The ban announced by the government won’t apply to offshore gas. The government will also legislate to extend a moratorium on onshore conventional gas until 2020. Any future decision to approve onshore conventional gas exploration and production will be subject to review by an expert panel.

So will the ban make a difference?

Where did the ban come from?

The moratorium has been in place since 2012. It applies to all types of onshore gas (tight, shale, coal seam and conventional gas) and to any approval for fracking, exploration drilling activities and the use of chemicals us in fracking.

Last year the Victorian government examined the ban and consulted farmers and other landholders, environment and community groups, the gas industry, gas market analysts, hydrogeologists, manufacturers, tourism operators, local governments and the general public.

The final report was the product of more than 1,600 submissions over a six-month period, as well as the findings of the Victorian Auditor-General Report on Unconventional Gas.

The rationale for the ban comes from two core factors. The first is the significant degree of community concern about the social and environmental impacts of onshore unconventional gas, particularly those associated with hydraulic fracturing.

Secondly, the future economic benefits connected with unconventional gas development did not appear, from the findings of the reports, to outweigh those risks. Indeed, the final report found that it was unlikely that strong unconventional gas reserves were present in large commercial and extractable qualities in Victoria’s brown coal fields.

On the other hand, any development would be highly likely to have a dramatic effect on the region’s agriculture and tourism sectors.

Can fracking be permanently banned?

The existing regulatory framework does not recognise any ban on onshore unconventional gas. Indeed, the provisions in the Mineral Resources Sustainable Development Act explicitly include exploration and mining licences for coal seam gas projects.

However, these regulatory frameworks are being completely overhauled. It is clear that the new provisions will introduce a permanent prohibition on unconventional exploration and development in Victoria. The scope and nature of the ban will depend upon the wording of these provisions.

Any law that is introduced cannot be overridden at the national level because the ownership and management of all onshore minerals and hydrocarbons, including gas, are vested in the state.

Pros and cons

The ban will end the strong environmental concerns that continue to exist around unconventional gas production. It will also alleviate some of the emerging conflicts over land allocation and water usage that have emerged between regional food, tourism and energy sectors.

The ban will also ease climate concerns connected with the generation of energy from fossil fuels. In Australia, fugitive emissions from coal mining, oil and gas production account for approximately 8% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Gas extraction, whether conventional or unconventional, can result in significant methane seepage. To date, very few baseline studies are available to compare seepage from drilling and fracking with natural methane seepage.

The ban is likely, however, to have a negative impact on supply, which may affect domestic gas pricing. This is particularly the case if the moratorium on onshore conventional gas production continues and no policy is implemented requiring gas producers to reserve a percentage of produced gas for domestic usage.

The 2015 Gas Market Report, released in March this year, showed that the nexus between international gas prices and east coast LNG production for export, domestic demand and domestic gas prices has become increasingly complex.

Theoretically, eastern Australia has enough reserves to supply the domestic and export markets for the next 20 years. But if the market is divided into the north (Queensland and Cooper Basin) and the south (Victoria and New South Wales) there is unlikely to be enough reserves in the south to meet forecast demand, particularly following the ban.

This will inevitably require the development of more gas reserves in other areas of the south, or imports from the north. If international gas prices and demand support more east coast LNG production, things will get worse as this supply will not be available in the north.

Victoria will, however, continue to utilise gas exploration and production in offshore gas wells in Bass Strait. There are 23 offshore platforms in the strait and ExxonMobil has held these titles for many years.

The offshore gas wells have traditionally supplied most of Victoria’s domestic gas market. Consequently, if the ban did apply to offshore gas exploration and production, it would have a profound effect on domestic gas supply.

Such a ban is, however, unlikely. First, it could not apply to offshore wells located beyond the territorial sea because these come under Commonwealth jurisdiction.

Second, a ban could not be applied retrospectively. Hence it would not affect established offshore title holders who have been supplying the domestic gas market for many years.

Samantha Hepburn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

The following is an open letter to parliamentarians from 182 members of Australia’s solar research community.

Dear Members of Australia’s 45th Parliament,

The federal government is proposing to strip the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) of most of its funding, and with it its ability to make grants. This is an existential threat to renewable energy research, innovation and education in Australia.

We call upon all political parties to support the retention of ARENA.

The solar photovoltaic (PV) industry now provides one quarter of all new generation capacity installed worldwide each year and is growing at 20-30% per year. Together, PV and wind energy constitute half of all new generation capacity installed worldwide, and all new generation capacity installed in Australia.

A renewable energy revolution is in progress and Australia is currently at the forefront. However, debilitation of ARENA directly threatens our leadership position.

For 30 years there has been an Australian renewable energy funding agency in one form or another. This has led to phenomenal success in generation of technology and provision of education. The worldwide PV industry owes its existence in large measure to Australians who were supported by grants from government renewable energy agencies.

Billions of dollars of benefits have accrued to Australia in the form of dramatically reduced costs of PV systems, rapidly growing renewable energy business activity in Australia, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, royalties, shares and international student fees. For example, the Australian-developed PERC solar cell has annual sales of $10 billion and will soon dominate the worldwide solar industry.

If ARENA is debilitated then hundreds of people would lose their jobs within a year or two. In the longer term, Australia’s leadership in solar energy would vanish. This would be completely at odds with the government’s innovation agenda and its commitment at the Paris climate conference to double clean energy R&D by 2020 under the international Mission Innovation program, and with the ALP’s Climate Change Action Plan launched in 2015 at UNSW Australia, and reinforced by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten at ANU also in 2015.

Support for research and innovation at universities lies at the heart of accelerated growth of the renewable energy industry. It supports later-stage commercialisation directly through technology development. Additionally, university research groups underpin education and training of engineers and scientists.

Echoing the words of another prime minister of a decade ago, Malcolm Turnbull has described budget repair (in which cuts to ARENA are lumped) as a “fundamental moral challenge” because debt should not be passed onto our children and grandchildren.

How ironic if parliament fails to appreciate the many costs to future generations of failing to address climate change now with solutions such as renewable energy.

Yours sincerely,

UNSW Australia: Benjamin Phua, Henner Kampwerth, Mark Keevers, Ziv Hameiri, Catherine Chan, Craig Johnson, Kyung Kim, Li Wang, Mark Silver, Trevor Young, Richard Corkish, Robert Patterson, Binesh Veettil, Christopher Whipp, Dirk Konig, Renate Egan, Bram Hoex, Joyce Ho, Simba Kuestler, Martin Green, David Payne, Robert Taylor, Shira Samocha, Supriya Pillai, Timothy Lee, Udo Romer, Belinda Lam, Natasha Hjerrild, Evatt Hawkes, David Jewkes, Thalia Arnott, Leslie Lay, Muriel Watt, Carlos Vargas, Nathan Thompson, Robert Dumbrell, Daniel Lambert, Nicholas Shaw, Nathan Chang, Anita Ho-Baillie, Ben Wilkensen, Ned Western, Yan Zhu, Lingfeng Wu, Stuart Wenham, Ran Chen, Thilini Ishwara, Steven Limpert, Rolando Vargas, Brett Hallam, Allen Barnett, Santosh Shrestha, Xiaowei Shen, Xiaojing Hao, Saratchandra Tejaswi, Fangzhao Gao, Zhongtian Li, Ivan Perez Wurfl, Qiangshan Ma, Alec Tan, Murad Tayebjee, Ya Zhou, Liam Parnell, Luke Marshall, Jack Colwell, Mable Fong, Alan Yee, Lawrence Soria, Kian Chin, Kamala Vairav, Nancy Sharopeam, Graeme Lennon, Zoe Hungedfold, Bernhard Vogal, Jill Lewis, Ya Zhou, Erny Tsao, Feng Qingge, Yin Li, Thorsten Trupke, Alison Wenham, Ashraf Uddin, Chang Yan, Kaiwen Sun, Yajie Jiang, Yuansim Liao, Marjorie Owens, Shujuan Huang, Sassan Vahdani, Jialiang Huang, Brianna Conrad, Zi Ouyang, Jae sun Yun, Alex Li, Kate Lindsay, Nitin Nampalli

Australian National University: Andrew Blakers, Tom White, Marco Ernst, Fiona Beck, Jie Cui, Andres Cuevas, Erin Crisp, Chris Samondsett, Yimao Wan, Hemant Halmodi, Moshen Goodarzi, Sienpheng Phang, The Duong, Yiliang Wu, Xiao Fu, Kylie Catchpole, Chong Barngkin, Daniel Macdonald, Andrew Thompson, Josephine McKeon, Chang Sun, Kristen Anderson, Anyao Liu, Bin Lu, Matthew Staks, Bruce Condon, Jun Fpeng, Thomas Ratcliff, Hang Sio, Shakir Rahman, Judith Harvey, Klaus Weber, Ingrid Haedrich, Di Yan, Rowena Menkedow, Dale Grant, William Logie, Teck Kong Chong, Hieu Nguyen, Daniel Walte, Sachin Surve, Mark Savvnoeas, Harry Qian, N. Kaines, Nandi Wu

Monash University: Yi-Bing Cheng, Yasmina Dkhissi, Niraj Lal, Jianfeng Lu, Liangcong Jiang, Shannon Bonke, Wei Li, Gaveshana Sepadage, Wemon Mao, Feng Li, Xiangfeng Lin, Udo Bach, Dison Hoogeveen, Iacopo Benesperi, Francsco Paglia, Bin Li, Jiansong Sun, Chanjie Wang, Chunkiu Ng, Maxime Fournier, Boex Tan, Kira Rundel, David Mayeuleg, Jacek Jasieniak, Rebeeca Milhuisen, Masrur Morshed, Kedar Deshmukh, Susaha Frier, Mathias Rothmann

University of Melbourne: Ken Ghiggino, Roger Dargaville, Yann Robiou du Pont, Alex Nauels, Kate Dooley, Malte Meinshausen, Martin Wainstein

Other: Alan Pears (RMIT), Nicola Ison (UTS), Rhett Evans (Solinno), Michelle McCann (PV Lab Australia), Keith McIntosh (PV Lighthouse)

Andrew Blakers works for the Australian National University, which receives research funding from ARENA.

Hello humans. US Department of Energy/Wikimedia Commons

It’s literally epoch-defining news. A group of experts tasked with considering the question of whether we have officially entered the Anthropocene – the geological age characterised by humans' influence on the planet – has delivered its answer: yes.

The British-led Working Group on the Anthropocene (WGA) told a geology conference in Cape Town that, in its considered opinion, the Anthropocene epoch began in 1950 – the start of the era of nuclear bomb tests, disposable plastics and the human population boom.

The Anthropocene has fast become an academic buzzword and has achieved a degree of public visibility in recent years. But the more the term is used, the more confusion reigns, at least for those not versed in the niceties of the underpinning science.

Roughly translated, the Anthropocene means the “age of humans”. Geologists examine layers of rock called “strata”, which tell a story of changes to the functioning of Earth’s surface and near-surface processes, be these oceanic, biological, terrestrial, riverine, atmospheric, tectonic or chemical.

When geologists identify boundaries between layers that appear to be global, those boundaries become candidates for formal recognition by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). The commission produces the International Chronostratigraphic Chart, which delimits verified changes during the planet’s 4.5 billion-year evolution.

Earth’s history, spiralling towards the present. USGS/Wikimedia Commons

The chart features a hierarchy of terms like “system” and “stage”; generally, the suffix “-cene” refers to a geologically brief stretch of time and sits at the bottom of the hierarchy. We have spent the past 11,500 years or so living in the so-called Holocene epoch, the interglacial period during which Homo sapiens has flourished.

If the Holocene has now truly given way to the Anthropocene, it’s because a single species – us – has significantly altered the character of the entire hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, lithosphere and atmosphere.

The end of an era?

Making this call is not straightforward, because the Anthropocene proposition is being investigated in different areas of science, using different methods and criteria for assessing the evidence. Despite its geological ring, the term Anthropocene was coined not by a geologist, but by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000.

He and his colleagues in the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program have amassed considerable evidence about changes to everything from nutrient cycles to ocean acidity to levels of biodiversity across the planet.

Comparing these changes to those occurring during the Holocene, they concluded that we humans have made an indelible mark on our one and only home. We have altered the Earth system qualitatively, in ways that call into question our very survival over the coming few centuries.

Crutzen’s group talks of the post-1950 period as the “Great Acceleration”, when a range of factors – from human population numbers, to disposable plastics, to nitrogen fertiliser – began to increase exponentially. But their benchmark for identifying this as a significant change has nothing to do with geological stratigraphy. Instead, they ask whether the present period is qualitatively different to the situation during the Holocene.

Rocking out

Meanwhile, a small group of geologists has been investigating the stratigraphic evidence for the Anthropocene. A few years ago a subcommission of the ICS set up the Anthropocene working group, which has now suggested that human activity has left an indelible mark on the stratigraphic record.

The major problem with this approach is that any signal is not yet captured in rock. Humans have not been around long enough for any planet-wide impacts to be evident in Earth’s geology itself. This means that any evidence for a Holocene-Anthropocene boundary would necessarily be found in less permanent media like ice sheets, soil layers or ocean sediments.

The ICS has always considered evidence for boundaries that pertain to the past, usually the deep past. The WGA is thus working against convention by looking for present-day stratigraphic markers that might demonstrate humans’ planetary impact. Only in thousands of years' time might future geologists (if there are any) confirm that these markers are geologically significant.

In the meantime, the group must be content to identify specific calendar years when significant human impacts have been evident. For example, one is 1945, when the Trinity atomic device was detonated in New Mexico. This and subsequent bomb tests have left global markers of radioactivity that ought still to be evident in 10,000 years.

Alternatively, geographers Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin have suggested that 1610 might be a better candidate for a crucial human-induced step change. That was the year when atmospheric carbon dioxide dipped markedly, suggesting a human fingerprint linked to the New World colonists' impact on indigenous American agriculture, although this idea is contested.

Decision time

The fact that the WGA has picked a more recent date, 1950, suggests that it agrees with the idea of defining the Great Acceleration of the latter half of the 20th century as the moment we stepped into the Anthropocene.

It’s not a decision that is taken lightly. The ICS is extremely scrupulous about amending the International Chronostratigraphic Chart. The WGA’s suggestion will face a rigorous evaluation before it can be scientifically accepted by the commission. It may be many years before it is formally ratified.

Elsewhere, the term is fast becoming a widely used description of how people now relate to our planet, rather like the Iron Age or the Renaissance. These words describe real changes in history and enjoy widespread use in academia and beyond, without the need for rigorously defined “boundary markers” to delimit them from prior periods.

Does any of this really matter? Should we care that the jury is still out in geology, while other scientists feel confident that humans are altering the entire Earth system?

Writing on The Conversation, geologist James Scourse suggests not. He feels that the geological debate is “manufactured” and that humans' impact on Earth is sufficiently well recognised that we have no need of a new term to describe it.

Clearly, many scientists beg to differ. A key reason, arguably, is the failure of virtually every society on the planet to acknowledge the sheer magnitude of the human impact on Earth. Only last year did we finally negotiate a truly global treaty to confront climate change.

In this light, the Anthropocene allows scientists to assemble a set of large-scale human impacts under one graphic conceptual banner. Its scientific status therefore matters a great deal if people worldwide are at long last to wake up to the environmental effects of their collective actions.

Gaining traction

But the scientific credibility of the Anthropocene proposition is likely to be called into question the more that scientists use the term informally or otherwise. Here the recent history of climate science in the public domain is instructive.

Even more than the concept of global warming, the Anthropocene is provocative because it implies that our current way of life, especially in wealthy parts of the world, is utterly unsustainable. Large companies who make profits from environmental despoliation – oil multinationals, chemical companies, car makers and countless others – have much to lose if the concept becomes linked with political agendas devoted to things like degrowth and decarbonisation. When one considers the organised attacks on climate science in the United States and elsewhere, it seems likely that Anthropocene science will be challenged on ostensibly scientific grounds by non-scientists who dislike its implications.

Sadly, such attacks are likely to succeed. In geology, the AWG’s unconventional proclamation potentially leaves any ICS definition open to challenge. If accepted, it also means that all indicators of the Holocene would now have to be referred to as things of the past, despite evidence that the transition to a human-shaped world is not quite complete in some places.

Some climate contrarians still refuse to accept that researchers can truly distinguish a human signature in the climate. Similarly, scientists who address themselves to the Anthropocene will doubtless face questions about how much these changes to the planet are really beyond the range of natural variability.

If “Anthropocene sceptics” gain the same momentum as climate deniers have enjoyed, they will sow seeds of confusion into what ought to be a mature public debate about how humans can transform their relationship with the Earth. But we can resist this confusion by recognising that we don’t need the ICS’s imprimatur to appreciate that we are indeed waving goodbye to Earth as we have known it throughout human civilisation.

We can also recognise that Earth system science is not as precise as nuclear physics or geometry. This lack of precision does not mean that the Anthropocene is pure scientific speculation. It means that science knows enough to sound the alarm, without knowing all the details about the unfolding emergency.

The Anthropocene deserves to become part of our lexicon – a way we understand who we are, what we’re doing and what our responsibilities are as a species – so long as we remember that not all humans are equal contributors to our planetary maladies, with many being victims.

Noel Castree does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

This week’s first sitting of the 45th Parliament of Australia is considering a A$6.5 billion “omnibus savings bill”, including a proposed cut of A$1.3 billion to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). If adopted, it would effectively mean the end of ARENA and would devastate clean energy research in Australia.

From driving innovation and economic growth, to creating jobs, to addressing climate change and ensuring a reliable and affordable energy system for the future, ARENA plays a critical role. Most perversely, by reducing Australia’s role in the booming global clean energy industry, closing ARENA would likely reduce Australia’s capacity to balance its budget in years to come.

What is ARENA?

ARENA, an independent Commonwealth agency, has driven most of Australia’s innovative renewable energy projects in recent years. This includes Australia’s world-leading solar photovaltaics research centre at UNSW, the Carnegie wave energy pilot in Perth, AGL’s virtual power station trial and UTS’s own research into local electricity trading and network opportunity mapping.

ARENA has funded 60 completed projects and is managing a further 200. Many more are in the pipeline. It has also leveraged A$1.30 in private-sector R&D funding for every dollar of government funding – a fact that is often overlooked amid talk of budget savings.

Without ARENA’s grants and leveraged co-funding, very few of these projects would have happened. While its sister organisation, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, plays an important role in helping to finance established renewable projects and technologies, only ARENA can provide the research grant co-funding to develop these technologies in the first place.

ARENA was formed in 2012 as part of the Gillard government’s Clean Energy Future package. It drew together a range of clean energy programs and funds such as the Solar Flagships, the Australian Solar Institute and some, such as the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, which the Howard government established. ARENA was given the twin goals of:

1. Improving the competitiveness of renewable energy technologies

2. Increasing the supply of renewable energy in Australia.

ARENA was one of five key elements of the Clean Energy Future package slated for abolition by the Abbott government. While the carbon price and Climate Commission were cut, ARENA, the CEFC and the Climate Change Authority were saved by opposition and crossbench support, albeit with a A$435 million cut to ARENA’s original budget.

Now, three years on, the Turnbull government has chosen to keep the CEFC but its plan to slash ARENA’s budget remains. The Labor opposition has yet to announce its position on the proposed cut. Meanwhile, clean energy researchers across Australia are calling on all parties to support the agency.

ARENA’s innovation role

The process of energy technology innovation can be thought of as having a series of phases, which have different funding needs (see below).

The first phase is typically fundamental research and development. Two examples are the world-leading research programs at UNSW Australia and ANU, which have developed the world’s most efficient solar photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies. Both are ARENA-funded; neither could have been effectively funded by loans.

Technologies then need to be piloted in the real world – as in the case of the Carnegie Wave Energy project in Perth. This stage is often still too risky for most commercial lenders, so some public grant funding remains critical.

Next comes the large-scale demonstration phase – bringing technologies down the cost curve by developing viable business models and supply chains, with the aim of making them cost-competitive. Here, a mix of loan and grant funding is needed.

Australia’s large-scale solar industry is an example of a sector in this stage of development. In 2015, ARENA realised that despite having 1.5 million solar roofs and plenty of sunshine, Australia had a dearth of large-scale solar projects (only four operating and four in development). As such, it has committed A$100 million to help build more solar farms.

Finally, there are commercial renewable technologies that are already cost-competitive with other energy sources. Wind energy is the prime example of this, which is precisely why ARENA has not funded wind projects.

Our changing energy system

Innovation is not purely about technology development; it is also about addressing complex challenges such as how to manage the changing nature of our energy system. On a cents per kilowatt-hour basis, wind energy is now cheaper than new-build coal and solar power is cheaper than grid electricity. These two trends will continue, but our energy market is struggling to adapt to the new technology mix.

ARENA has a crucial role to play here. For example, it has funded the Institute of Sustainable Futures (ISF) at UTS to develop a set of Network Opportunity Maps. These show locations in the grid where demand management and decentralised generation (solar, storage etc) can help avoid costly grid upgrades.

ARENA has also funded ISF’s research into local energy trading (also known as peer-to-peer energy or virtual net metering). This is aimed at avoiding the predicted “energy death spiral”, by encouraging consumers and power companies to compromise in making the most of existing infrastructure, reducing consumers' bills and supporting local power generation.

Meeting our climate targets

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, ARENA is helping to meet Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions target, which calls for a 26-28% cut relative to 2005 levels by 2030.

The electricity sector is Australia’s largest carbon emissions source. ARENA has a vital role in delivering cost-effective emissions reductions. There are two main mechanisms to decarbonise the sector: increasing energy productivity and efficiency, and switching from fossil fuels to renewables. As outlined above, ARENA is a key player in the latter process and is primed to play a leading role in the former.

It would be a tragic error to cut funding to an agency that is making such an important and successful contribution to fulfilling Australia’s obligations under the Paris climate agreement, as well as driving innovation and energy affordability. No other agency combines all of these facets.

More renewable policy instability?

In a 2010 speech on low-carbon energy, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull acknowledged the role of government in supporting clean energy innovation, saying:

Government support for innovation and investment in clean stationary energy is important, particularly at the early stages.

The need for this support is not going to go away. If ARENA and its research grant funding is abolished, a similar organisation will doubtless soon need to be re-established. In the meantime, millions of dollars in opportunities would have been wasted and irreplaceable industry and research expertise lost.

After years of policy instability around renewable energy, which has held back the domestic development of one of the world’s fastest-growing industries, do we really want to embrace even more uncertainty?

To paraphrase former Harvard University president Derek Bok, if you think research is expensive, try ignorance.

Nicky Ison is a Senior Research Consultant at the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) at the University of Technology Sydney and a Founding Director of Community Power Agency. ISF undertakes paid sustainability research for a wide range of government, corporate and NGO clients. ISF has received several grants from ARENA which have helped to co-fund projects in clean energy research. Without ARENA co-funding, these projects would have been unlikely to proceed. For more information about these projects, please see: www.isf.uts.edu.au. Community Power Agency is a not-for-profit organisation working to grow a vibrant community energy sector. Community Power Agency is in regular contact with ARENA about how to best support the emerging Australian community energy sector.

Chris Dunstan is a Research Director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) at the University of Technology Sydney. ISF undertakes paid sustainability research for a wide range of government, corporate and NGO clients. ISF has received several grants from ARENA which have helped to co-fund projects in clean energy research. Without ARENA co-funding, these projects would have been unlikely to proceed. For more information about these projects, please see: www.isf.uts.edu.au

Storm damage and a high tide in Adelaide. Witness King Tides/Flickr

The wild storms that lashed eastern Australia earlier this year damaged property and eroded beaches, causing millions of dollars' worth of damage. As sea levels rise, the impact of storms will threaten more and more homes, businesses and services along the coastline.

CSIRO projections suggest that seas may rise by as much 82cm by the end of the century. When added to high tides, and with the influence of winds and associated storms, this can mean inundation by waters as high as a couple of metres.

As a community, we have to start deciding what must be protected, and how and when; where we will let nature take its course; how and if we need to modify the way we live and work near the coast; and so on. Many of these decisions fall largely to local governments.

We have launched a website to help local councils and Australians prepare for a climate change future. CoastAdapt lets you find maps of your local area under future sea-level scenarios, read case studies, and make adaptation plans.

How will sea-level rise affect you?

Using sea-level rise modelling from John Church and his team at CSIRO, CoastAdapt provides sea-level projections for four greenhouse gas scenarios, for individual local government areas. This also provides a set of inundation maps for the selected local government area.

Sydney’s possible sea level in 2100 under a worst-case scenario. Inundated areas shown in pale blue. NCCARF

The inundation maps (developed by the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information) show the average projected sea-level rise for a particular climate change scenario, combined with the highest tide. The method provides an approximation of where flooding may occur.

Because water is simply filled onto the map according to elevation, it doesn’t account for things like estuary shapes and water movement, the behaviour of waves and so on.

Brisbane’s possible sea level in 2100 under a worst-case scenario. Inundated areas shown in pale blue. NCCARF

But both the maps and the sea-level projections are a useful way to start thinking about where risks may lie in any given local government area.

CoastAdapt also looks at what we know about coastal processes in the present day. Understanding these characteristics helps us understand where and why the coast is vulnerable to inundation and erosion.

For instance, sandy coasts are much more vulnerable to erosion than rocky coasts. The information will help decision-makers understand the behaviour of their coasts and their susceptibility to erosion under sea-level rise.

Darwin’s possible sea level in 2100 under a worst-case scenario. Inundated areas shown in pale blue. NCCARF Local councils already adapting

Adaptation is already happening on the ground around Australian local councils. We have highlighted several of these on CoastAdapt.

In the small seaside town of Port Fairy in southeast Victoria, for example, an active community group is monitoring the accelerated erosion of dunes on one of their beaches. The council and community have worked together to prioritise protecting dune areas with decommissioned landfill to prevent this rubbish tip being exposed to the beach.

Other councils have already undertaken the process of assessing their risks and drafting adaptation plans.

Low-lying areas in the City of Lake Macquarie already experience occasional flooding from high seas. This is expected to become more common and more severe.

Lake Macquarie Council has successfully worked with the local community to come up with 39 possible management actions, which the community then assessed against social, economic and environmental criteria. The area now has a strategy for dealing with current flooding and for gradually building protection for future sea-level rise.

This approach has engaged community members and given them the opportunity to help decide the future of their community.

Melbourne’s possible sea level in 2100 under a worst-case scenario. Inundated areas shown in pale blue. NCCARF Getting prepared

What stumps councils and other coastal decision-makers is the scale and complexity of the problem. Each decision-maker needs to have some sense of the risk of future climate change to their interests, then develop plans that will help them to cope or adapt to these risks. Planners and adaptors must navigate uncertainty in where, when and how much change they must consider, and how these changes interact with other issues that must be managed.

To better understand the risk, decision-makers need access to timely, authoritative advice presented in ways and levels that are useful for their needs. This is particularly true for an issue such as climate science, which is technically complex.

Climate projections, particularly at the local level, come with a level of certainty and probability. The further we look into the future, the more extraneous factors are unknown – for example, will global policy succeed in bringing down greenhouse emissions? Or will these keep increasing, which will necessitate planning for worst-case scenarios?

Add to this the questions around legal risk, financing adaptation measures, accommodating community views and so on, and the task is daunting.

That’s the thinking behind CoastAdapt – the first national attempt to create a platform that brings together a range of data, tools and research that have been developing and growing over the last decade. As well as maps and case studies, we’ve also built an adaptation planning framework (Coastal Climate Adaptation Decision Support) and set up an online forum for people to ask questions, exchange ideas and even pose questions to our panel of experts.

The author would like to acknowledge the work of staff of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility. CoastAdapt is in beta version and is seeking feedback. The final version will be released in early 2017.

Sarah Boulter works for NCCARF. NCCARF receives funding from the Department of Environment and Energy.

In calling for an end to fossil fuel subsidies, critics of Australia’s fuel tax credits system have highlighted its cost to Australian taxpayers and the budget bottom line.

The Greens have said that ending fossil fuel subsidies to big mining companies would save Australian taxpayers A$21 billion over the forward estimates (the next four years). On the ABC’s Q&A program, Greens deputy leader Larissa Waters said her party advocated:

getting rid of the A$24 billion over the forward estimates – that’s four years – in free money that goes to the fossil fuel sector in things like cheap diesel and accelerated depreciation.

These numbers are drawn from policy costings produced by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) ahead of the July federal election.

The PBO’s 2016 post-election report, which details the budget impacts of various election commitments, notes that:

Parliamentary Budget Office, 2016 post-election report

The Greens propose abolishing fuel tax credits for all industries except agricultural businesses, ending accelerated asset depreciation for aircraft, the oil and gas industry and vehicles (except for those used for agricultural purposes), and a range of other measures.

Opinions differ on whether fuel tax credits constitute a “subsidy” or not.

Most fuel users have to pay a fuel excise of 39.5 cents per litre. But businesses can claim exemption from this obligation in certain circumstances. This exemption takes the form of a credit for the fuel tax (excise or customs duty) that’s included in the price of fuel.

These tax breaks include fuel excise exemptions for off-road use of fuel by the mining industry and primary producers. There’s also a partial rebate for large trucks (over 4.5 tonnes), the owners of which pay a road usage charge rather than the excise.

The PBO has estimated that the Australian Greens' proposal of abolishing the fuel tax credit for all industries except agricultural businesses would increase the budget balance by about A$4.5 billion a year.

Unpacking the assumptions

However, it’s worth detailing the assumptions that underpin these calculations.

First, the PBO says its costing assumes that business fuel usage does not change as a result of the policy. As the goal of a higher tax is to reduce fuel use and pollution, the PBO’s reported estimate will therefore be an overestimate of the revenue gain.

Also, uncertainty about the future means that all such revenue estimates are far from guaranteed. The PBO notes that:

Parliamentary Budget Office

Many consider the 39.5 cents a litre fuel excise a crude form of user-pays fee to cover the cost of government expenditures on public roads. The revenue raised by fuel excise of A$17.8 billion and state taxes on motor vehicles of A$9.5 billion for 2014-15 more than cover federal, state and local government spending on road construction, maintenance and other related costs.

This is the logical argument put forward by representatives of the mining industry for exemption from the fuel excise. They note that the mining industry builds and maintains its own roads. A similar argument applies for fuel used by primary industry for off-road purposes.

Others argue that fuel taxes help encourage people to use less of it, and thereby reduce pollution. However, a 39.5 cents per litre tax represents a very large tax per tonne of CO2 equivalent. If the fuel excise was regarded just as a tax on greenhouse gas emissions, the 39.5 cents per litre represents a tax of more than A$150 per tonne of greenhouse gas from the combustion of fuel – several times higher than the Gillard government’s A$24 per tonne carbon price, and the even lower European Union pollution permit price. It is stretching credibility to say the fuel excise is just a tax on pollution.

I’d argue in favour of the position taken in the 2010 Henry tax review, which recommended a roughly revenue-neutral reform package, replacing the current fuel excise and state motor vehicle taxes with a road user charge, a congestion tax and a pollution tax.

With this reform, the mining and agricultural industries would be exempt from the tax components on fuel for road funding and for congestion, but would pay a component for the external costs associated with greenhouse gas emissions.

John Freebairn 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.