Earlier this week, Marrickville City Council in suburban Sydney blocked an attempt to mine coal seam gas on privately owned land in the inner-city area of St Peters. The Council imposed a condition on…
Koalas face some serious threats, and listing them as "vulnerable" is an important step to saving them.
AAP
This week, the Australian Government listed several koala populations as “vulnerable”, giving them special protection. As a koala researcher and conservation planner, I am most impressed with Minister…
The current environmental impact regulations often produce nothing more than a big pile of paper.
liz west
The last few weeks have seen an extraordinary cross party agreement that environmental regulation of development needs reform. The Prime Minister wants coordination with the states streamlined; the Leader…
'Green tape' is an emotive term that tries to make condemning environmental protection look like common sense.
Bill Rogers
With only inverted commas signalling the spin, the news media have happily re-cycled the term “green tape”, the latest rhetorical gambit by those decrying environmental protections as unnecessarily delaying…
Who's responsible for this? Better disaster law could answer that question.
AAP
On 28 March the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its full report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX).
The IPCC’s…
A new national partnership agreement could allay a lot of CSG worries, if the states sign up.
kateausburn/Flickr
A new national agreement designed to protect water resources from coal seam gas extraction and coal mining could offer a level of protection so far unseen in Australian environmental legislation. Any states…
There's more to this Act than environmental protection.
Cam Pervan/Flickr
The debates and controversy around the Wild Rivers legislation can be perplexing. As John Holmes has argued, the Act’s significance stems from “the durability and intractability” of pre-existing contests…
Could more plantations help reduce emissions? It depends if they're done right.
esagor
DURBAN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE: One of the topics under discussion at Durban is the role carbon farming and other forestry measures could have in reducing emissions. With the possibility that negotiations…
Farmers have been shocked to find coal seam exploration companies can enter their property.
kateausburn
All over Australia, landowners are fighting to keep mining companies off their property.
From the Darling Downs to the Liverpool Plains, farmers have been locking out coal seam gas extraction companies…
Environmentalists are getting off the streets and into the courts in an effort to stop coal.
Takver
The bill creating the carbon price has passed through Parliament. However, the campaigning efforts of the environmental lobby will not pause. More than ever, the coal industry is in its sights, with court…
There's a lot of detail in the carbon price legislation, but it comes down to six key points.
Australian Government
Australia’s carbon price mechanism has become law. But how does it work? There are six key points:
1. Australia’s emissions trajectory
Australia has committed unconditionally to reduce its greenhouse…
Demanding climate data won't provide a new window into global warming.
nasa hq photo/flickr
When it comes to obtaining research data, Canadian academic Steve Easterbrook said it best:
“Any fool knows you don’t get data from a scientist by using FOI requests, you do it by stroking their ego a…
With the release of the US Government’s “Report regarding the causes of the Macondo Well blowout”, it may be time to take another look at whether Australian legislation can prevent a Deepwater Horizon…
Building a wind farm in India offsets emissions here: but did the locals want a wind farm?
danishwindindustryassociation/Flickr
If climate change ever was in equal part a moral, economic and environmental challenge, then it is no longer so. Morality has fallen from attention.
The economists have long dominated the climate change…
Poor regulation overseas has set the stage for disaster.
AAP
The last week has seen the Australian coal seam gas (CSG) industry come under increasing scrutiny. Triggered by a gas explosion in the Darling Downs in Queensland, and legal action against BHP in the US…
The availability of oil has led to changes in Arctic governance.
AAP
Recent Wikileaks cables detailing diplomatic jostling over the Arctic region only confirm how hotly contested it has become.
There are three principal reasons for this tension:
-The dynamic created by…
The Tarkine is our largest cool temperate rainforest, but will that be enough to save it?
Flickr/leonrw
Once a place is heritage listed, it’s protected, right? Wrong. Politics and a flawed statutory regime are undermining the independence of the listing system, and threatening Australia’s national treasures…
