Australia has the opportunity to be a renewable energy superpower, Professor Ross Garnaut said last week. “Nowhere else in the developed world are wind and solar so abundant,” he told and Energy Conference in South Australia. Separately, the renewable energy economic newspaper, RenewEconomy, predicted that the renewable energy market will explode during 2017 with the Continue Reading →
The Great Barrier Reef is at “elevated and imminent risk” of widespread coral bleaching again this year, according to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. The authority told the Queensland Government in a briefing note that an “unusually warm winter and a second warm summer has resulted in more heat stress accumulating in more Continue Reading →
The John James Newsletter 163 25 February 2017 We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands is not going to be allowed Secretary of State Tillerson We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years, aren’t Continue Reading →
Philippines environment secretary, Regina Lopez, last week cancelled one third of new mining contracts on environmental grounds. She also rejected calls to reverse her earlier decision to close 23 of the existing 41 mines in the Philippines on the grounds they are polluting drinking water. “You kill the watershed, you kill life” she told media Continue Reading →
Incredible levels of toxic organic compounds have been discovered in the Mariana and the Kermadex Trench in the mid Pacific. The toxins were found in crustraceans collected between 8,000 and 10,000 metres below sea level at levels higher than the most polluted mines in Australia, Japan and the Philippines. Their use is banned in most developed Continue Reading →
Researchers at Edith Cowan and Monash Universities wrote last week that alcohol remains the major cause of violence in Australia, despite the media focus on methamphetamines (ICE) and demonization of party drugs. Stephen Bright and Martin Williams report that 47% of homicides involve violence and nine times as many people reporting violence as a result Continue Reading →