Category Archives: Environment

Labor’s deal with gas exporters will lock in high prices, consumer groups say

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Agreement raises concerns transition to lower emissions energy sector will be harder and more expensive

Energy user groups have condemned the Albanese government’s agreement with gas exporters saying it will lock in high prices that will force businesses to close, hurt households and hobble the transition of the electricity sector off fossil fuels.

The resource minister, Madeleine King, on Thursday said the government had signed a new agreement with the big gas exporters from eastern Australia that would ensure there was sufficient supplies to meet local demand.

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NSW renames national park over pastoralist Ben Boyd’s links to slavery in Pacific

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New name Beowa means orca in Thaua language and comes after consultation with Aboriginal and South Sea Islander communities

A national park in New South Wales that was named after a pastoralist linked to the slave trade has been renamed.

The move to rename Ben Boyd national park was announced last year and new signs were installed at Beowa national park near Eden on Friday.

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Could a digital twin of Tuvalu preserve the island nation before it’s lost to the collapsing climate?

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With rising seas expected to submerge the nation by 2100, official says ‘we should always be able to remember Tuvalu as it is, before it disappears’

When Tuvalu vanishes beneath rising seas, its diaspora still want somewhere to call home – and that could be a virtual version of the tiny Pacific nation.

Global heating is threatening to submerge Tuvalu by the end of the century, and its 12,000 inhabitants are considering the future.

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NSW on alert after more than a dozen cane toads found an hour north of Sydney

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Agriculture minister says size of colony in Mandalong indicates there could be many more of the toxic intruders in the area

New South Wales is on alert after more than a dozen cane toads were found on a private property an hour’s drive north of Sydney.

The state’s Department of Primary Industries (DPI) biosecurity helpline confirmed a report had been made by a member of the public on 19 September after a “number” of cane toads were found at a property in the rural town of Mandalong, west of Lake Macquarie.

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More than 1,700 environmental activists murdered in the past decade – report

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Figures likely to be an underestimate, says Global Witness, as land defenders are killed by hitmen, crime groups and governments

More than 1,700 murders of environmental activists were recorded over the past decade, an average of a killing nearly every two days, according to a new report.

Killed by hitmen, organised crime groups and their own governments, at least 1,733 land and environmental defenders were murdered between 2012 and 2021, figures from Global Witness show, with Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico and Honduras the deadliest countries.

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AGL will close Victoria’s coal-fired power station Loy Yang A a decade early

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Energy company accelerates its exit from coal, although timeline for closure of Bayswater in the NSW Hunter Valley remains unchanged

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AGL Energy will shut down Australia’s biggest single carbon polluting power plant a decade earlier than planned, changing the closure date of its coal-fired Loy Yang A power station in Victoria from 2045 to 2035.

The company, Australia’s biggest electricity generator and polluter, is accelerating its exit from coal, according to plan released to the stock exchange on Thursday. . The strategy details its transition to renewable energy after opposition from its largest shareholder, billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, forced it in May to ditch plans to demerge.

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Cop27: Egyptian hosts urge leaders to set aside tensions over Ukraine

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Organisers call on nations to carry on crucial climate negotiations despite differences on geopolitical issues

The Egyptian hosts of the next UN climate summit have issued a plea for countries to set aside tensions and animosity over the Ukraine war for the sake of focusing on the climate crisis.

Egypt will host the Cop27 conference in Sharm El-Sheikh in November, intended as a forum for companies to fulfil the promises they made at the landmark Cop26 summit in Glasgow last year.

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Nord Stream gas leaks may be biggest ever, with warning of ‘large climate risk’

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‘Colossal amount’ of leaked methane, twice initial estimates, is equivalent to third of Denmark’s annual CO2 emissions or 1.3m cars

Scientists fear methane erupting from the burst Nord Stream pipelines into the Baltic Sea could be one of the worst natural gas leaks ever and pose significant climate risks.

Neither of the two breached Nord Stream pipelines, which run between Russia and Germany, was operational, but both contained natural gas. This mostly consists of methane – a greenhouse gas that is the biggest cause of climate heating after carbon dioxide.

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Will Labour’s energy plans work?

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While there are questions about the pace of Labour’s proposals, criticism in rightwing newspapers is bizarrely wide of the mark

Labour’s ambitious plan for zero-carbon power by 2030 raises legitimate questions – which we’ll come to shortly – but the commentary in rightwing newspapers is bizarrely wide of the mark.

Perhaps the strangest was a Daily Telegraph editorial that claimed Labour’s plan “would make the country more dependent on imported gas, not less”. As should be obvious, the opposite is true.

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Queensland government pledges to end reliance on coal-fired power by 2035

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Annastacia Palaszczuk says state is facing a ‘climate emergency’ while unveiling $62bn energy plan

Queensland will end its reliance on coal-fired power by 2035 under a 10-year $62bn energy plan to create a clean “super-grid” of solar, wind and hydroelectric power.

In a historic announcement for a state known for its coal mining, the premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, said Queensland was facing a “climate emergency” and a bold vision was needed.

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Germany delays exit from nuclear power to offset energy shortfall

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Two nuclear plants’ lives extended as country copes with loss of Russian gas and shortage of French electricity

Germany’s planned exit from nuclear power by the end of this year has been officially delayed in order to shore up energy supplies during an expected shortfall this winter, the economic minister, Robert Habeck, announced on Tuesday.

The decision follows a shortage in supplies of electricity coming from France due to the fact that more than half of its nuclear power stations are offline, Habeck told journalists in Berlin.

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Great British Energy: what is it, what would it do and how would it be funded?

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The details behind Keir Starmer’s proposed publicly owned energy company when Labour take power

The key pledge of Keir Starmer’s Labour conference speech was the proposed launch of Great British Energy, a publicly owned energy company to invest in clean UK power as part of the party’s commitment to “fight the Tories on economic growth”. But how does it work, and is it the same as renationalising energy?

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Australia urged to adopt 75% emissions reduction target by 2035 if it is to reach net zero

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Investor Group on Climate Change says clear price on carbon needed and removal of all fossil fuel subsidies by 2050

Australia needs an ambitious 75% emissions reduction target by 2035, a clear price on carbon, and to remove all fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 in order to unlock the investment needed to reach net zero by 2050, according to a new report.

The Investor Group on Climate Change has released its policy priorities report for 2022-2025, outlining key areas for reform that would align Australia’s emissions target to the Paris goal of limiting warming to 1.5C and ensure the country was able to manage an “orderly” retreat from coal.

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NSW convenes first meeting of disaster taskforce ahead of more wet weather

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Task Force Hawk formed to address issues raised in an independent inquiry into floods earlier this year

Emergency agencies will brief a New South Wales government taskforce set up to improve the state’s response to disasters on Wednesday as residents brace for more wet weather in the third consecutive La Niña.

The meeting will be the first for Task Force Hawk – the newly formed permanent crisis committee of cabinet ministers and officials from the state’s emergency management agencies to learn from mistakes made during the February and March floods.

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Keir Starmer promises to launch publicly-owned UK energy company as he hails ‘Labour moment’ – UK politics live

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Latest updates: the Labour party leader used his conference speech to spell out his plan for the UK

The decision to pay Liz Truss’s new chief of staff, Mark Fullbrook, through a private company has been dropped after criticism from within the Conservatives as well as from opposition parties.

The government admitted over the weekend that Fullbrook would be paid through his lobbying firm, a move that could have helped him avoid paying tax. He had previously claimed the firm had stopped all commercial activities.

The world we are heading for is a bumpy few weeks. The chancellor is now going to have quite a tough time because he has now set out plans to balance the books in November. That is going to be very hard.

Actually balancing the books in November is going to be harder than it would have been to show you are balancing the books last week because higher interest rates will make it harder to do. You might need £15bn worth of tough choices now that you didn’t need last Friday.

In the end, lower taxes will mean worse public services, or other people’s taxes having to go up, and it is those choices and ducking those choices that markets are looking at and saying that is not what serious policymaking looks like.

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Slug numbers appear to shrivel after UK heatwave

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Zoologists say they have never seen this low a number, after unprecedented hot weather

As dewy dawns break across the UK’s pumpkin patches and allotments, gardeners across the land are waking up to the absence of at least one slippery pest. Slug numbers appear to have shrivelled as a result of the ongoing drought.

“I went to survey a woodland site last week and it took me over 30 minutes to locate a slug. Usually, I would expect to find them under almost every log in that habitat,” said Jake Stone, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge. “I thought that there would be fewer around, but I’ve never seen this low a number. But I suppose that’s to be expected, because it’s rarely been this hot and dry.”

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Weak controls failing to stop illegal seafood landing on EU plates, investigation shows

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EU financial watchdog blames small fines and feeble controls in some states for amount of illegal seafood


Illegally fished seafood continues to end up on the plates of EU citizens due to weak controls and insignificant fines in some member states, auditors have found.

The European Union, the world’s largest importer of fishery products, requires member states to take action against fishing vessels and EU nationals engaged in illegal fishing activities anywhere in the world.

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Climate complacency has left firefighters ill-prepared, says union chief

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Matt Wrack of Fire Brigades Union says ‘historic cuts’ have angered and demoralised his members

A “horrible complacency” about the impact of the climate emergency on the fire service has left it under-funded and ill-prepared, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union has warned.

Matt Wrack said firefighters were at the sharp end of tackling the impact of climate change and warned that this summer’s wildfires had to act as a “wake-up call” to the UK government to engage with those on the frontline.

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‘It’s a murder scene’: feral pigs torment residents in New Zealand capital

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Farm just minutes from centre of Wellington estimates it has lost about 60 kid goats in past few months

Marauding feral pigs have blighted a central suburb in New Zealand’s capital, killing kid goats at an urban farm, intimidating dogs and turning up in residents’ gardens.

The owners of a goat milk farm in the hills of the suburb of Brooklyn, 10 minutes from the centre of Wellington, has lost about 60 kid goats to pigs in the past few months. Often, all that is left of them are gnawed bone fragments and parts of the hooves or head.

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Weather tracker: how did Hurricane Fiona maintain intensity so far north?

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Tropical systems often strengthen in warmer areas of Atlantic, but can also intensify elsewhere in certain conditions

Late last week, Canada’s Atlantic coast was hit by Hurricane Fiona, with maximum sustained winds in the region of 90mph (145km/h). Hurricanes rarely maintain such an intensity that far north. Why? Hurricanes are fuelled by high sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and ideally high sea temperatures over a large depth. As you move away from the tropics, SSTs typically reduce.

But hurricanes are not confined to the warmer areas of the Atlantic, such as the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Tropical systems often strengthen in these regions, but can sometimes sustain or even strengthen elsewhere given favourable conditions. Ocean currents can transport warmer water poleward which can produce regions at higher latitudes that have higher SSTs than their surroundings. Tropical systems that track northwards over warmer seas can maintain intensity or even strengthen, such as happened with Hurricane Fiona.

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