Archived material from historical editions of The Generator
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1897602.htm Debate on the possible expansion of the controversial wind farm industry in the Monaro and Snowy Mountains is under way again. Business group Cooma Unlimited says the community needs to make up its mind regarding wind farms and their effects on the landscape. The Snowy River Shire Council has already approved plans for a Continue Reading →
Federal Treasurer Peter Costello has defended the Federal Government’s cautious approach on deciding whether or not to adopt a national carbon trading system.
State and territory leaders are disappointed they did not get Commonwealth support for a national emissions trading scheme at yesterday’s Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in Canberra.
But newspaper reports today suggest Prime Minister John Howard has hinted at considering a national emission trading scheme in the future.
A little over four years ago, when the forces of deregulation were riding high, this page observed that the federal courts could turn out to be the last, best hope for slowing the Bush administration’s assault on the body of bipartisan environmental law established over the last four decades and, by extension, on the environment itself.
As things have turned out, this is pretty much what has happened. In the last few weeks alone, federal judges at the district or appellate level have:
¶Rejected efforts to weaken protections for the national forests, including the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest.
¶Overturned a government plan that would have hastened the decline of endangered salmon in the Pacific Northwest.
¶Rebuffed challenges to clean air laws governing pollution from older power plants.
¶Invoked the Clean Water Act to prevent mining companies from laying waste to streams and valleys in Appalachia.
In some cases the courts have done more than just play defense. In the Supreme Court ruling on global warming two weeks ago, the court not only protected existing law but aggressively enlarged its reach, ruling that the Clean Air Act all but required the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases.
Australia’s Environment Minister says water meters will become a key part of Australian agriculture in the next few years. Malcolm Turnbull yesterday unveiled an $18 million water efficiency scheme in north-west Tasmania. Hydro Tasmania’s new meter measures up-to-the-minute water use and availability. Results are sent to a central database where more Continue Reading →
New work by Kai Rothkamm and Markus Loebrich show that low level ionising radiation may be more likley to cause cancer than previously thought. Until now the response ofthe human body to radiation has been based on studies of people at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl, who were exposed to extremely high levels of radiation. The Continue Reading →