The Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half of its corals since 1995 due to warmer seas driven by climate change, a study has found. Small, medium and large coral populations have all declined, largely because of bleaching events in 2016 and 2017.
In the year of Australia’s worst bushfire crisis, the just-announced budget provides little in the way of new funding for environmental protection while throwing a lifeline to coal. Our world is facing irreversible destruction and still there’s no urgency in Australian climate policy.
The next federal budget will allocate $33.5 million to nature-tourism projects and reef conservation work. It’s welcome news for Great Barrier Reef which suffered its largest bleaching event in February. Now, the first step to conserving the Great Barrier Reef is understanding what lives there.
We usually think of urban areas as a cause of species extinctions. A new analysis of 12 million (!) tree planting records has turned these assumptions on its head. Turns out urban areas aren’t quite the concrete wastelands we thought it was. Quite the opposite.
Some very important reports about the environment have just been published. Missed it? We nearly did too. With COVID, the US elections and the tensions with China all taking out the number-one spot for newspaper headlines, some other big stories were easily overlooked. Here, we look at some of them.
Industry leaders with close ties to the government are calling for an urgent climate response. Will threats to Australia’s prosperity mean we will finally see action on climate change? Signs indicate that might just be the case…
Greenland lost more than a million tonnes of ice every minute in 2019. This photo diary shows the haunting contrast between Greenland’s astonishing beauty and the devastation at its surface – an alarming trend that could see sea levels rise by 6 metres if it were to melt away entirely.
Even though we are living through one of the toughest times in our lives, we still have trouble admitting that we’re lonely – even to ourselves. Here, we are looking at our need for connection, how to recognise signs of loneliness and what you can do to manage it.
The world has pulled to a stop but the fight to tackle climate change is rolling on. This week, we step away from the COVID-19 doom and gloom to highlight some of the positive contributions made to help the planet take a turn for the better.
Nearly three billion koalas, kangaroos and other native Australian animals were killed or displaced by last year’s black summer bushfires, a study by the WWF shows. It is almost three times an earlier estimate released in January.
Australia is facing two major crises: COVID-19 and climate change. Now, a new report says tackling recession and climate change could create 76,000 Australian jobs. Created over three years they would focus on 12 areas including creating large-scale renewable energy projects and retrofitting inefficient public buildings.
ICYMI: a review of Australia’s environment laws has been handed over – just not to the public. That didn’t stop a stream of critics speaking out: our environmental protection laws are failing badly and must be overhauled urgently.
