The Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) in San Francisco brought together an unprecedented gathering of forward-thinking leaders from different sectors including business, finance, cities and governments, academia and NGOs with the common goal of tackling the climate crisis. The event received very little press attention as far as I’m aware, overshadowed by a nine-year-old Australian...
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Author: Gwenda Tavan, Associate Professor, Politics and International Relations, La Trobe University This week, nine-year-old Queensland school girl, Harper Nielsen, was threatened with suspension by her school for refusing to sing the Australian national anthem. The heated and at time preposterous reaction to the...
Brisbane, Australia: The Victorian Government is making it illegal to dump e-waste in landfill from 1 July 2019. According to Sustainability Victoria, an estimated 15 million electronic items were sent to landfill in Australia in 2007-2008, and that number has steadily increased. Electronic waste, or e-waste, refers to any electronic item with a plug, battery or...
The Rise For Climate global day of action on September 8 brought together locals, concerned citizens and activists to demand a transition to 100 percent clean renewable energy. The event brought 250,000 people to over 900 events in 95 countries. Organised by 350.org and supported by various interest and advocacy groups around the world such as charities, unions,...
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Author: Frank Jotzo, Director, Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University and Salim Mazouz, Research Manager, Crawford School of Public Policy; and Principal at NCEconomics, Australian National University. Renewables are stealing the march over coal in Australia, and the international outlook is...
In 2016, 174 nation states (including Australia) and the European Union, agreed on the United Nations Paris Agreement on climate change. This global acknowledgement that humans are the primary drivers of climate change was a critical turning point in history. To avoid the most serious impacts of human-induced climate change, scientists estimated that the planet’s average temperatures could...
Ocean Conservancy’s 33rd annual International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) is on September 15. The world’s largest single-day volunteer effort to fight against ocean plastic pollution, this year the non-profit launches their new #SuitUpToCleanUp campaign encouraging people to suit up and head to their local beach or waterway to help pick up litter and plastic debris and...
UNITED STATES: On Tuesday, August 21, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled plans to roll back Obama-era regulations on emissions from coal-fired power plants and give states the power to regulate their own emissions. These rules would undo much of the progress the Obama administration made in the fight against climate change and cause catastrophic consequences on...
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Author: Sarah Graham, Honorary Associate, University of Sydney The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement was greeted with dismay around the world. Less well known, but probably just as damaging to emissions reductions, was freezing standards for carbon dioxide emissions from cars in July. The erosion of...
Recently, I came across a news article about drones and the Amazon. There was nothing unusual about this. When one thinks of drones, Amazon often comes to mind. Not only is this online marketplace one of the best places to buy drones, the tech giant has been one of the pioneers of drone technology and is...
A social enterprise is what the name suggests; it’s a free market enterprise that trades in order to make a profit, but unlike traditional free market enterprises, its profits are used to tackle social problems or protect the environment. According to the FASES report, there are approximately 20,000 social enterprises operating within Australia. These for-profit...
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Author: Bianca Fileborn, Lecturer in Criminology, UNSW “Another morning, another bit of casual misogyny & abuse,” ABC journalist Leigh Sales lamented last week after receiving a tweet accusing her of “virtually” performing sexual acts on her 7.30 guests. Sales’s comments draw our attention back to the abuse routinely encountered...