Year in, year out, there's a good chance someone in politics has suggested nuclear power as an answer to Australia's energy problems. Guardian Australia's Matilda Boseley explains why. Modern-day nuclear energy is climate friendly compared with coal and gas. But going nuclear isn't practical for Australia – and it's an idea that's more than likely coming directly from the Coalition's 'delaying action on climate change' handbook
Dutton’s blast of radioactive rhetoric on nuclear power leaves facts in the dust
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/29/2024 - 16:46
04/29/2024 - 13:00
Exclusive: New documents reveal NSW government division over controversial program as data reveals death toll
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More than 90% of marine animals caught in shark nets off New South Wales beaches over the summer were non-target species, with new documents revealing division within the government over the controversial program.
More than half of the 208 non-target species – such as turtles, dolphins and smaller sharks – that were caught in the nets over the past eight months were killed, data obtained by conservationists show.
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04/29/2024 - 08:23
RHS Wisley garden manager says composting at home saves money and creates habitat for hedgehogs and invertebrates
Get rid of your green waste bin if you want to make your soil more healthy and save money, a Royal Horticultural Society expert has said.
Sheila Das, a garden manager at the charity’s Wisley site, removed her garden waste bin “some years ago” in order to recycle nutrients into her garden soil, she told the RHS spring conference. She said: “I thought, why am I sending my stuff away? This [the grass cuttings and plant trimmings] is gold dust!”
Start composting. The RHS recommends that where space is limited, consider using a “Dalek” bin made from recycled plastic or a HotBin.
Make use of fallen leaves. These can be used as leaf mould which is a useful mulch, soil improver, and potting compost ingredient. Collect fallen leaves from lawns and paths in autumn, place them in a jute leaf sack, old compost bag or bin bag, and in about two years you will have a bag of leaf mould, often referred to as “black gold”. This can be shared with other gardeners around you if you don’t have the space to keep it all.
Felled trees and waste wood can be used to make mulch. Many arborists have mobile chippers and will be happy to leave you the wood chips. Woodchippers are also available for hire. Wood chips can be used as a surface for informal paths or as a mulch around established plants.
Matchstick mulching. With hand shears or a hedge trimmer, cut the old stems of grasses or herbaceous perennials into matchstick-length sections and spread them evenly around plants as a layer of mulch.
Use logs to create pathways, borders, seats and create homes for wildlife.
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04/29/2024 - 06:27
Motion sets out worldwide target in alignment with Paris agreement to limit global heating to 1.5C
Countries are for the first time considering restrictions on the global production of plastic – to reduce it by 40% in 15 years – in an attempt to protect human health and the environment.
As the world attempts to make a treaty to cut plastic waste at UN talks in Ottawa, Canada, two countries have put forward the first concrete proposal to limit production to reduce its harmful effects including the huge carbon emissions from producing it.
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04/29/2024 - 05:15
Some crops completely wiped out and dramatic falls in yields being predicted in county which reflects crisis in rest of UK
With his farm almost entirely surrounded by the banks of the River Severn in north Shropshire, Ed Tate is used to flooding on his land – but this year, the sheer level of rainfall is the worst he has ever seen.
He points to a field where about 20% of wheat crops have failed as they have been covered with rainwater that has pooled in muddy puddles, in areas that would usually be a sea of green by now.
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04/29/2024 - 02:30
Murrawah Johnson recognised for role in landmark legal case to block coalmine backed by Clive Palmer
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For Murrawah Johnson, the impacts of the climate crisis and the destruction of land to mine the fossil fuels that drive it are more than simple questions of atmospheric physics or environmental harm.
“What colonisation hasn’t already done, climate change will do in terms of finalising the assimilation process for First Nations people,” the 29-year-old Wirdi woman from Queensland says.
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04/29/2024 - 02:30
Andrea Vidaurre helped persuade regulators to adopt rules that will improve air quality for millions in one of US’s smoggiest areas
A grassroots organizer from one of the US’s smoggiest communities has been awarded the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activists, after leading a successful campaign to clean up California’s trucking and railway sectors.
Andrea Vidaurre from Inland Empire, a sprawling metropolitan region in southern California, helped persuade state regulators to adopt two historic transport regulations that will improve local air quality for millions of people – and accelerate the country’s transition away from greenhouse gas-spewing vehicles.
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04/29/2024 - 02:28
Government tells operators they must join cooperatives by Tuesday and gradually replace their vehicles with greener options
A three-day strike by drivers of jeepneys in the Philippines began on Monday as transport groups warned that thousands could be pushed off the roads by government modernisation plans.
The jeepney is the backbone of the Philippines’ transport system. The customised, privately-owned buses, which look like a cross between a Jeep and a van and are decorated in flamboyant colours, ply routes in neighbourhood streets and city centres, offering rides for as little as 13 pesos (23 US cents). They have featured in pop songs and films – Pope Francis even travelled through Manila in a jeepney-inspired popemobile.
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04/29/2024 - 01:52
Large parts of islands could be uninhabitable by 2050, federal court told in first climate class action taken by Australian First Nations people
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Torres Strait Islanders could be forced to leave their homes within the next 30 years if urgent action is not taken on the climate crisis.
This would mean a loss of country, sacred sites and culture, the federal court has been told.
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04/29/2024 - 01:00
From an eagle to Elton John, the Played and Remade project enables artists to ‘make something magical’ from free materials
The task of loading once-loved but now unwanted pianos into a van and carting them off to the recycling centre is a disheartening and melancholy one. So a music shop in Bath that scraps as many as 300 redundant and unfixable pianos a year has launched a project to repurpose the thousands of parts that make up each instrument into pieces of art.
The Piano Shop Bath is inviting artists to take their pick for free from the varied materials that make up each piano – wood, cast iron, brass, felt, copper, steel wires and so on – and turn them into pieces that can then be hung in its showroom.
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