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Australian tree frogs today make up over one third of all known frog species on the continent. Among this group, iconic species such as the green tree frog (Litoria caerulea) and the green and golden bell frog (Litoria aurea), are both beloved for their vivid colours and distinctive calls.

In the Early Eocene epoch, 55 million years ago, Australia’s tree frogs were hopping across the Australian continent from one billabong to the next through a forested corridor that also extended back across Antarctica to South America. These were the last remnants of ancient supercontinent Gondwana.

In new research published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, we identify Australia’s earliest known species of tree frog – one that once hopped and croaked around an ancient lake near the town of Murgon in south-eastern Queensland.

This research demonstrates tree frogs were present in Australia 30 million years earlier than previously thought, living alongside Australia’s earliest known snakes, songbirds and marsupials.

A common ancestor

Tree frogs (Pelodryadidae) have expanded discs on their fingers and toes enabling them to climb trees. Despite their name, however, they are known to occupy a wide range of habitats, from fast-flowing streams to ephemeral ponds.

Australia’s previously earliest tree frogs were recovered from Late Oligocene (about 26 million years old) and Early Miocene (23 million years old) fossil deposits. Late Oligocene frog fossils were found at Kangaroo Well in the Northern Territory and Lake Palankarinna in South Australia. They were also recently found in many deposits from the Riversleigh World Heritage Area in Queensland.

It has long been known that South American tree frogs and Australian tree frogs shared a common Gondwanan ancestor. What is unknown is when this common ancestor lived.

Based on some molecular data, it has been estimated that the two groups separated from this common ancestor as recent as 32.9 million years ago.

A diverse fossil deposit

Our new study was based on frog fossils from a deposit near the town of Murgon, located on the traditional lands of the Waka Waka people of south-eastern Queensland. These fossils accumulated some 55 million years ago. This was between the time when a colossal meteorite took out the non-flying dinosaurs and the time when Australia broke free from the rest of Gondwana to become an isolated continent.

As well as ancient frog fossils, the Early Eocene freshwater clay deposit also contains fossils of ancient bats, marsupials, snakes, non-marine birds and potentially the world’s oldest songbirds.

We used CT scans of frogs preserved in ethanol from Australian museum collections to compare the three-dimensional shape of the fossil bones with those of living species. This method is called three-dimensional geometric morphometrics. It has only been used on fossil frogs once before.

Using these new methods, we can unravel the relationships of these fossils to all other groups of frogs – both living and extinct.

Pushing back the evolutionary tree

From its diagnostic ilium (one of three paired pelvic bones), we identified a new species of Litoria from the family Pelodryadidae. We named this species Litoria tylerantiqua in honour of the late Michael Tyler, a renowned Australian herpetologist globally celebrated for his research on frogs and toads.

Litoria tylerantiqua joins the only other Murgon frog discovered so far, the ground-dwelling Platyplectrum casca, as the oldest frogs known from Australia. Both species have living relatives in Australia and New Guinea. This demonstrates the remarkable resilience over time of some of Australia’s most fragile creatures.

Our new research provides crucial new understanding that helps to calibrate molecular clock studies. This is a method scientists use to estimate when different species split from a common ancestor based on the calculated rate of genetic change over time.

Our research indicates the separation of Australian tree frogs and South American tree frogs is at minimum 55 million years ago. This pushes back the estimated molecular separation time for these groups by 22 million years.

New insights to help endangered species

Unravelling the deep-time changes in the diversity and evolution of the ancestors of today’s living animals can provide important new insights into the way these groups have responded in the past to previous challenges. These challenges include former natural cycles of climate change.

The more we know about the fossil record, the more likely we will better anticipate future responses to similar challenges, including human-induced climate change.

This is especially important for critically endangered species such as the Southern Corroboree Frog and Baw Baw Frog. Now restricted to alpine habitats in New South Wales and Victoria, they are at serious risk of extinction due to global warming.

Roy M. Farman, Adjunct Associate Lecturer, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney and Mike Archer, Professor, Earth and Sustainability Science Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia’s new environment minister, Murray Watt, is reported to be a fixer. That’s good, because there’s a lot to fix.

Being environment minister is a hard gig. It often requires difficult choices between environmental and economic priorities. In cabinet, the minister is often up against a phalanx of ministers with economic portfolios and overriding political imperatives such as jobs and growth. I saw this repeatedly over the 16 years when I held senior leadership roles in environment departments at territory and federal levels.

In Labor’s first term, this tension played out again. Former environment minister Tanya Plibersek came to the role with big ideas. To that end, she tried to make Australia’s national environment laws fit for purpose and introduce a federal environmental protection agency (EPA).

A cumbersome approach to consultation didn’t help, but ultimately it was development concerns led by big mining companies and West Australian Premier Roger Cook that saw the reform can kicked down the road. Perversely, the only legal reform we saw was an amendment to protect not a threatened species, but the salmon farms threatening it.

Now it’s Watt’s turn. He has a reputation for getting things done and may drive a bargain to get some version of the EPA through. But that’s only one piece of the reform jigsaw and he’ll have to return to the mammoth task of reforming Australia’s national environment laws. He will have to push back against efforts by the Greens in the Senate to broaden the agenda to include climate and forests, and weather opposing pressures from industry and environment groups.

Stalled reforms

Watt’s largest challenge will be to revive the stalled Nature Positive Plan. This was the government’s response to the 2020 Samuel Review, which found Australia’s natural environment and iconic places were declining and under increasing threat, while national environmental laws were no longer fit for purpose.

Samuel’s solution was groundbreaking: create new, legally enforceable national environmental standards to deliver better environmental protection. Last term, Labor committed to introducing the standards, reforming laws and introducing an EPA. Unfortunately, Plibersek ran out of time and most of the reforms were put on the backburner.

Plibersek pitched an independent EPA as a tough cop on the beat, but it wasn’t independent enough for many environmentalists.

Industry didn’t like it either. WA miners used their influence to attack the EPA for being unaccountable. Their lobbying worked and the EPA was pushed back. As one mining figure told the Australian Financial Review: “The heat [industry pressure] was no one’s first preference; it was just required because there was no other way to influence the actual policymaking.”

Miners and other big businesses are likely worried the proposed independent EPA would reduce their influence. At present, the environment minister has near-complete discretion over approvals. Much of this discretion — and the political influence associated with it — would disappear with an independent EPA making decisions based on national environmental standards.

More challenges are looming. Here are two:

Gas extraction on the North West Shelf

Watt will soon have to decide on Woodside’s application to expand gas extraction off Australia’s northwest coast. If approved, the North West Shelf Extension Project would be Australia’s largest resource project. Environmentalists hate it, describing it as a climate bomb. The WA government approved it last year.

If Watt follows the pattern of his predecessors, we can expect to see the development approved subject to numerous conditions, pitched as strict environmental safeguards. Despite such safeguards applying to operations in Australia, the real damage done by the project will be global, not local, as the gas will be burned overseas.

Murray-Darling Basin Plan

The delayed ten-year review of the Murray-Darling basin plan is due in 2026. It will reopen old wounds. The basic problem is there’s not enough water for both the environment and irrigators.

When the draft plan was first released in 2010, angry irrigators burned a copy of it. The government backpedalled furiously, eventually approving a plan with a lot less water returned to the environment. Experts say the plan hasn’t actually helped the environment.

Watt is a former agriculture minister and will have insight into both sides. But he’ll need the wisdom of Solomon to come up with a successful approach.

It’s hard to fix systems

Making environmental headway is downright hard. The underlying problem is that politics is about trade-offs, but nature doesn’t negotiate. Nature is a system of systems, and if we take too much from it those systems begin to break down – usually irreversibly.

In previous decades, governments often dealt with environmental problems by creating national parks and World Heritage areas. If only things were still that simple.

Peter Burnett, Honorary Associate Professor, ANU College of Law, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From the enormous blue whale to the delicate monarch butterfly, animals of all shapes and sizes migrate across the globe. These migrations connect distant habitats, from the tropics to the poles. They are also crucial to both the health of species making these epic journeys, and the habitats where they live.

It is hard to visualise these epic, globe-spanning journeys and the habitats they connect. But an interactive map we developed, alongside an international team of scientists from the University of Queensland and Duke University and in partnership with the Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative, can help.

Known as Mico (Migratory Connectivity in the Ocean), this map is a valuable conservation tool that demonstrates just how connected our oceans are due to animal migration. It is freely available here, and has just been updated with our newly published research in Nature Communications. This research synthesises thousands of records of more than 100 species of birds, mammals, turtles and fish that connect almost 2,000 crucial habitats.

An evolving science

Humans have contemplated animal migrations for millennia. Representations of and theories about these journeys are observable in Stone Age rock art and the writings of Ancient Greek philosophers. Indigenous peoples and local communities have also long relied upon and understood the seasonal movements of culturally important species.

But for much of human history, identifying specific destinations of migratory species was an inexact science. This has started to change in recent decades, as scientists have developed and deployed animal-borne satellite tags which can record and transmit an animal’s location as it migrates.

These tags can be very expensive to deploy and collect data from. They also require enormous investments of time and expertise. But they are crucial if we are to understand where migratory species go when they’re outside the range of normal human observations.

The journeys of migratory species also span multiple jurisdictions. This means cooperation between countries is required to ensure they are protected.

For example, many albatross species receive significant conservation investment at their nesting islands within national jurisdictions. But they are at high risk of being incidentally caught and killed or injured in longline fisheries operating in international waters.

Synthesising more than 1,300 studies

For our new study, we reviewed the literature on the movements of marine migratory species from 1990 to 2017. We synthesised the start and end points of migrations reported in more than 1,300 individual studies. These studies covered 109 marine species.

This information was then aggregated to remove duplicate data and combine sites very near to each other (on a global scale) into one “metasite” to make it easier to display. Each data point is also linked to the study from which it comes. This means you can always find the work of the original team who tagged those animals.

In synthesising the studies in this manner, we created an interactive map and downloadable dataset estimating the measured migratory connections of the global ocean.

If you look up the green turtle map, for example, you can see just how much information there is for this highly-studied species. The red links show many tracked movements from breeding to foraging areas within each ocean basin.

Sperm whales, on the other hand, are globally distributed – you can toggle on the species distribution in the top menu. But we only have information about connectivity for animals in the Atlantic and east Pacific oceans. You can see these sites on the map, mostly in North America and in the Mediterranean.

Because researchers are yet to track animals in all parts of the globe, the map is missing some information about the migratory movements of key species in particular areas. We are planning updates as more information becomes available.

A tool for conservation

This summary of migratory information is important for improving global conservation.

Scientists have published many papers on migrations, both of single populations or species, and combining data about taxonomy from several different sources. But these can be difficult to keep up with for managers or policymakers who may not have time to engage with every single piece of emerging scientific literature.

Our information can help identify stakeholders when planning or managing a conservation project. Many of these stakeholders may be across an ocean basin or even in a different hemisphere.

The scientific synthesis we provide can help countries take more informed actions to achieve the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s target of conserving a “well-connected” 30% of terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas by 2030. This is particularly true in the high seas, as a mechanism to implement protected areas outside of national waters is developed under the soon-to-be-ratified High Seas Treaty.

In addition to sharing the enormous scope of work that has been conducted on the migration of large ocean animals over the last decades, our work has already fed into policy processes.

For example, it has been used by seven United Nations conventions or organisations. We hope to formalise the role of our map as a node of the Convention on Migratory Species’ Atlas of Animal Migration at their next meeting in March 2026.

More broadly, we hope this work will support better international collaboration to conserve our incredible oceanic migrants for years to come.

Lily Bentley, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland; Autumn-Lynn Harrison, Research Ecologist, Migratory Bird Center, Smithsonian Institution, and Daniel Dunn, A/Prof of Marine Conservation Science & Director of the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science (CBCS), The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Have you ever imagined what Antarctica looks like beneath its thick blanket of ice? Hidden below are rugged mountains, valleys, hills and plains.

Some peaks, like the towering Transantarctic Mountains, rise above the ice. But others, like the mysterious and ancient Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains in the middle of East Antarctica, are completely buried.

The Gamburtsev Mountains are similar in scale and shape to the European Alps. But we can’t see them because the high alpine peaks and deep glacial valleys are entombed beneath kilometres of ice.

How did they come to be? Typically, a mountain range will rise in places where two tectonic plates clash with each other. But East Antarctica has been tectonically stable for millions of years.

Our new study, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, reveals how this hidden mountain chain emerged more than 500 million years ago when the supercontinent Gondwana formed from colliding tectonic plates.

Our findings offer fresh insight into how mountains and continents evolve over geological time. They also help explain why Antarctica’s interior has remained remarkably stable for hundreds of millions of years.

A buried secret

The Gamburtsev Mountains are buried beneath the highest point of the East Antarctica ice sheet. They were first discovered by a Soviet expedition using seismic techniques in 1958.

Because the mountain range is completely covered in ice, it’s one of the least understood tectonic features on Earth. For scientists, it’s deeply puzzling. How could such a massive mountain range form and still be preserved in the heart of an ancient, stable continent?

Most major mountain chains mark the sites of tectonic collisions. For example, the Himalayas are still rising today as the Indian and Eurasian plates continue to converge, a process that began about 50 million years ago.

Plate tectonic models suggest the crust now forming East Antarctica came from at least two large continents more than 700 million years ago. These continents used to be separated by a vast ocean basin.

The collision of these landmasses was key to the birth of Gondwana, a supercontinent that included what is now Africa, South America, Australia, India and Antarctica.

Our new study supports the idea that the Gamburtsev Mountains first formed during this ancient collision. The colossal clash of continents triggered the flow of hot, partly molten rock deep beneath the mountains.

As the crust thickened and heated during mountain building, it eventually became unstable and began to collapse under its own weight.

Deep beneath the surface, hot rocks began to flow sideways, like toothpaste squeezed from a tube, in a process known as gravitational spreading. This caused the mountains to partially collapse, while still preserving a thick crustal “root”, which extends into Earth’s mantle beneath.

Crystal time capsules

To piece together the timing of this dramatic rise and fall, we analysed tiny zircon grains found in sandstones deposited by rivers flowing from the ancient mountains more than 250 million years ago. These sandstones were recovered from the Prince Charles Mountains, which poke out of the ice hundreds of kilometres away.

Zircons are often called “time capsules” because they contain minuscule amounts of uranium in their crystal structure, which decays at a known rate and allows scientists to determine their age with great precision.

These zircon grains preserve a record of the mountain-building timeline: the Gamburtsev Mountains began to rise around 650 million years ago, reached Himalayan heights by 580 million years ago, and experienced deep crustal melting and flow that ended around 500 million years ago.

Most mountain ranges formed by continental collisions are eventually worn down by erosion or reshaped by later tectonic events. Because they’ve been preserved by a deep layer of ice, the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains are one of the best-preserved ancient mountain belts on Earth.

While it’s currently very challenging and expensive to drill through the thick ice to sample the mountains directly, our model offers new predictions to guide future exploration.

For instance, recent fieldwork near the Denman Glacier on East Antarctica’s coast uncovered rocks that may be related to these ancient mountains. Further analysis of these rock samples will help reconstruct the hidden architecture of East Antarctica.

Antarctica remains a continent full of geological surprises, and the secrets buried beneath its ice are only beginning to be revealed.

Jacqueline Halpin, Associate Professor of Geology, University of Tasmania and Nathan R. Daczko, Professor of Earth Science, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Range anxiety has long been seen as the main obstacle stopping drivers from going electric.

But range isn’t the real issue. The average range of a new electric vehicle (EV) is more than 450 kilometres, and top models offer more than 700km per charge. By contrast, the average car is driven about 33km per day in Australia as of 2020.

What’s really going on is charger anxiety – the question of whether you can find somewhere reliable to recharge when you’re away from home. Australia’s public chargers are not common enough or reliable enough to give motorists certainty they can find a place to recharge.

This is why many drivers are hedging their bets. Rather than embracing battery-electric vehicles, many Australian drivers are opting for hybrids as well as plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), which couple a smaller battery with an internal combustion engine. Hybrids and PHEVs accounted for almost 20% of new car sales from July–September last year, compared to 6.5% for fully electric vehicles.

Labor’s reelection could lead to better charging infrastructure. Last term, the federal government set a goal of a fast charging station every 150km along major highways, while state governments are also building more. But so far, these efforts aren’t enough to ensure Australia has reliable chargers in the right locations. Until then, cautious drivers will buy hybrids.

Public chargers matter

EV owners charge their cars at home an estimated 70–85% of the time. They use public chargers just 10–20% of the time and workplace charging 6–10% of the time.

This makes sense – home charging is reliable and cheap. But these figures also point to a problem: EV drivers don’t trust public chargers.

At present, Australia has about 3,700 public chargers nationwide. Each charging station typically supports one or two EVs, often offering different charging speeds. By contrast, there are around 6,600 service stations, with the ability to fuel multiple vehicles at once.

Other countries have much larger charger networks. The United Kingdom has more than 40,000 and Canada 16,000. China, the world leader, has almost 10 million.

Outside major Australian cities, chargers are harder to find and are often broken or in use. Chargers are usually not staffed, meaning there’s no one watching to prevent vandalism or organise maintenance.

EV plugs are not yet standardised. Some plugs may not be available, and using chargers isn’t always easy. By contrast, petrol cars use standard nozzles, payment is simpler and staff and CCTV presence discourages vandalism and ensures the pumps work.

If a petrol car runs out of fuel, the problem can be solved with a lift and a jerry can. But if your EV runs flat in a rural area because you can’t find a charger, you may have to get it towed.

This lack of reliability is more than just a logistical hurdle — it’s a psychological barrier.

Psychological roadblocks

A recent study found the fear of running out of charge was a major psychological barrier to buying an EV – particularly for rural and regional Australians, who drive longer distances. As long as chargers remain unreliable or located too far apart, this anxiety will persist.

In Australia, it’s easy to find reports of broken chargers, long queues at charging stations, gaps in the rural network and personal anecdotes of EV owners struggling to find a way to charge.

A 2023 survey found almost 70% of EV owners had come across an inoperable charger at least once over the previous six months.

What can Australia take from overseas experience?

Australia’s government wants to increase EV uptake. While EVs are getting cheaper, the supporting infrastructure isn’t good enough yet to make them the norm.

Across the European Union, chargers are being installed every 60km along major highways and efforts are being made to tackle psychological barriers to uptake.

Federal and state governments in the United States have invested heavily in filling gaps in the charger network and working with consumers to encourage more sustainable commuting.

Choosing a hybrid is rational but not ideal

It should be no surprise more Australians are buying hybrids as a safety net, given there are plenty of service stations and not as many EV chargers. City driving can allow near-total use of the electric motor, while longer trips still require petrol.

The choice is rational. But it’s not ideal from an environmental point of view. Traditional hybrids are still largely powered by an internal combustion engine, while PHEVs can run as electric for longer but still use their combustion engines.

While plug-ins have lower emissions than traditional vehicles, they often fail to deliver the full emissions savings drivers and regulators might hope for. Many drivers don’t charge regularly and rely instead on petrol.

Chargers aren’t the only factor, of course. A tax break for PHEVs boosted their popularity for several years before ending in April, while sales of Tesla EVs have fallen off a cliff due to the unpopularity of owner Elon Musk.

What needs to change?

The solutions are straightforward: expand the charger network, especially in regional and rural areas. Improve maintenance schedules and ensure existing chargers are reliable. Make sure data on their availability is accessible in real time so drivers can avoid anxiety and frustration. Counter EV misinformation and anecdotal biases with information campaigns.

When EV ownership and charging in Australia is practical and low risk, the sluggish EV transition will accelerate. But until then, many drivers will keep buying hybrids as a compromise.

Ganna Pogrebna, Executive Director, AI and Cyber Futures Institute, Charles Sturt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Killing carnivores to protect livestock, wildlife and people is an emotive and controversial issue that can cause community conflict. Difficult decisions about managing predators must be supported by strong scientific evidence.

In Australia, predators such as dingoes and foxes are often shot or poisoned with baits to prevent them from killing sheep and cattle. Feral cats and foxes are also killed to protect native wildlife.

But research elsewhere suggests public perceptions of how predators affect ecosystems and livestock are not always accurate.

Our recent study sought to shed light on these controversies. We examined the scat, or poo, left behind by dingoes, foxes and cats. We focused on the mallee region of Victoria and South Australia where there are calls to resume dingo culling to stop them killing livestock.

A contentious issue

Our study took place in the Big Desert-Wyperfeld-Ngarkat reserve complex in the semi-arid mallee region of Victoria and South Australia. This continuous ecosystem comprises about 10,000 km² of protected native mallee bushland, and is entirely surrounded by crop and livestock farming areas.

Fox-baiting is conducted along the boundaries of Victorian-managed reserve areas. Dingo baiting occurs in the South Australian-managed section of the park.

Since March 2024, the small dingo population has been protected in Victorian-managed areas due to their critically low numbers in the region.

Prior to the change, Victorian farmers and authorised trappers could control dingoes on private land and within public land up to 3km from farms. Farmers say they have lost livestock since dingoes were protected.

What are predators eating in the mallee region?

We collected and analysed 136 dingo, 200 fox and 25 cat scats to determine what each predator in the area was eating and how their diets differed.

Livestock was not a major part of the diet of dingoes, foxes or cats. Some 7% of fox scats contained sheep or cattle remains. This was more than that of dingoes, at 2% of scats. No feral cat scats contained livestock remains.

The dingo diet was dominated by kangaroos, wallabies and emus, which comprised more than 70% of their diet volume.

Cats and foxes consumed more than 15 times the volume of small native mammals compared with dingoes, including threatened species such as fat-tailed dunnarts.

Our data must be interpreted with caution. Scat analysis cannot differentiate between livestock killed by predators and those that are scavenged. It also can’t tell us about animals that a predator killed but did not eat.

In 2022–23, when we collected the scats, rainfall in the area was high and prey was abundant. So, while we found livestock were not likely to be a substantial part of these predators’ diets at the time of our research, this can change depending on environmental conditions.

For example, fire and extended drought may force predators to move further to find food and water. They may move from conservation areas to private land, where they could prey on livestock.

A taste for certain prey

A predator’s poo doesn’t tell the full story of how it affects prey populations.

To understand this further, we used motion-sensing wildlife cameras to assess which prey were available in the ecosystem. We compared it to the frequency they occurred in predator’s diets. This allowed us to determine if dingoes, foxes or cats target specific prey.

We found foxes and cats both consumed small mammals proportionally more than we expected, given the prey’s availability in the study area. Cats consumed birds at a higher rate than expected, and dingoes consumed echidnas more than expected.

Further intensive monitoring work is needed to determine how these dietary preferences affect the populations of prey species.

Embracing the evidence

The findings build on a substantial previous research suggesting foxes and cats pose a significant threat to native mammals, birds, reptiles and other wildlife, including many threatened species. Our results suggest foxes may cause more harm to sheep than dingoes overall – a finding consistent with research elsewhere in Victoria.

Dingoes were the only predator species that regularly preyed on kangaroos and wallabies. These species are abundant in the region. They can also compete with livestock for grazing pastures, consume crops and degrade native vegetation.

Currently, dingoes are killed on, or fenced out of, large parts of Australia due to their perceived threat to livestock.

Lethal control of invasive species remains important to protect native wildlife and agriculture. But such decisions should be based on evidence, to avoid unforeseen and undesirable results.

For example, fox control can lead to increased feral cat numbers and harm to native prey. Fewer dingoes may mean more feral goats and kangaroos.

Non-lethal and effective alternatives exist to indiscriminately killing predators to protect livestock, such as protection dogs and donkeys. These measures are being embraced by farmers and graziers globally, often with high and sustained success.

In Australia, governments should better embrace and support evidence-based and effective approaches that allow farming, native carnivores and other wildlife to coexist.

Rachel Mason, PhD candidate in Conservation Biology, Deakin University and Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In one of the most powerful scenes of Sir David Attenborough’s new film Ocean, the audience sees industrial fishing from a fish’s perspective.

Confronting a bottom trawl net as it thunders across the seabed, terrified fish scatter in desperate but futile attempts to escape the vast net swallowing them. The heavy chain that holds the trawl down sweeps away sponges, corals, seagrass and other seabed life, leaving behind utter devastation.

Attenborough’s latest nature documentary is a visually magnificent and highly personal meditation on the relationship humans have with the sea. It is the most important part of our world, he says. But we have taken it for granted.

A century of intensifying and destructive fishing has culminated in bottom trawl nets, some as big as cathedrals and weighing many tonnes, being towed along the seabed to catch fish. To allow them to fish more effectively in areas of rough seabed, which is where most marine life is found, fishers in the 1920s invented “rock-hopper” gear: rollers placed along the foot rope that touches the bottom, allowing the net to bounce over obstacles.

This innovation followed the trajectory of many fishing methods, which was to become more destructive over time to sustain the size of catches in the face of declining fish stocks.

Shellfish dredging, another fishing method that destroys as it catches, is shown in a second horrifying scene. To catch scallops, steel dredges armed with spikes (imagine the harrows farmers use to break up soil on ploughed fields) drag along the seabed, smashing and pummelling everything. In minutes, seabed life of astonishing diversity and beauty is erased.

Together, Attenborough explains, bottom trawling and dredging wreak their havoc across an area of seabed larger than the Amazon rainforest every year.

Attenborough invites viewers to wonder how on Earth these fishing methods are still allowed when the damage is so obvious. Viewers may be even more surprised, and very probably angry, to learn that most marine protected areas in Europe, and indeed worldwide, permit bottom trawling and dredging within their boundaries.

To understand why this is the case, we have to go back in time.

A medieval practice

We know from the parliamentary records of Edward III in 1376 that fishers in southern England were practising bottom trawling as far back as the 1300s. Long-held traditions are hard to change, even when there is irrefutable evidence that they cause harm.

It is telling, however, that this early description of trawling is a petition urging the king to ban the method for its reckless destruction of habitat and waste of fish.

Nevertheless, these fisheries expanded because trawling was an efficient means of landing huge quantities of fish. Trawling’s success came at the expense of what we call marine animal forests, habitats built by animals like oysters, horse mussels and sponges – all swept away to leave behind vacant shifting sands, mud and gravel that predominate over vast swaths of seafloor today.

A recent estimate has suggested that oyster reefs once covered at least 17,000 square kilometres of European seas – an area the size of Northern Ireland. All of this was gone by the beginning of the 20th century. This ecosystem cannot recover until it is offered protection from trawling and dredging. So, why haven’t we protected it?

Degraded habitats, profoundly altered by trawling, were what scientists and then conservationists found when they first ventured below water after the invention of scuba diving in the mid-20th century. These early submarine explorers mistook them for natural and wild, failing to see the role industrial fishing had played in their creation.

Being now occupied almost exclusively by creatures used to the passage of trawls – animals that live fast and die young like worms, prawns and whelks – these habitats were labelled as resilient, and not in need of protection.

This warped perspective fooled us into thinking that marine protected areas left open to bottom trawling would be fine. In the few cases where protected areas exclude trawling, like around the Isle of Arran in western Scotland, the swift resurgence of seabed life has revealed how wrong this assumption was.

In only five years, sea-moss, sea-nettles, scallops and brittle stars have reoccupied the seafloor, a transformation that is nevertheless just the beginning of a recovery that will carry on for decades.

Giving up the trawl and dredge does not mean an end to fishing, as the film explains. In fact, recovering fish populations in protected areas replenish those in fishing grounds nearby, leading to better and more sustainable catches.

Calling time on destructive fishing

Perhaps now, at last, the writing is on the wall for bottom trawling and dredging, because they do a more insidious form of damage we have only recently become fully aware of. The ocean floor is one of the planet’s largest carbon stores. A snowfall of sinking organic matter and sediment accumulates on the seabed, where the carbon it contains is buried for thousands of years.

Left undisturbed, this carbon is out of harm’s way. But when churned up by the passage of trawls and dredges, some is turned back into CO₂, some of which will end up back in the atmosphere.

The magnitude of these seabed carbon emissions, and their role in climate change, is hotly debated. Getting more reliable estimates is the mission of a five-year project I lead, the Convex Seascape Survey. One thing is already clear from our research, however: there are places underwater – like peat bogs or permafrost on land – that we should not disturb because they harbour immense quantities of carbon.

Ironically, these muddy basins have in the past few decades become some of the most intensively fished places in the sea because they are home to valuable prawns, which are among the few species still able to support viable fisheries.

Any country serious about meeting net zero in time to prevent dangerous climate change must act swiftly to protect its seabed carbon stores. And any country serious about ocean conservation knows that marine protected areas are useless if they don’t exclude trawling and dredging.

David Attenborough, Silverback Films and the Open Planet Studios team have brought these truths to a mass audience, leaving no space for further evasion and denial. What we need now is action.

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Callum Roberts, Professor of Marine Conservation, University of Exeter

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sussan Ley has been elected Liberal leader after defeating rival Angus Taylor in a party room vote on Tuesday. Now the leadership question is settled, the hard work of rebuilding the party can begin.

In the wake of its election loss, the Coalition has foreshadowed a sweeping policy review. Where the Coalition lands on the contentious nuclear energy policy will be keenly watched.

The majority Labor government is likely to easily push legislation through the lower house. However, the Senate numbers mean Labor needs backing from either the Greens or the Coalition to pass bills into law.

So where does Ley stand on nuclear energy and other pressure points across the environment and energy portfolios? Ley’s stance on four key issues, including during her time as environment minister in the Morrison government, provides important insights.

1. Nuclear power and gas

The resounding Coalition election defeat suggest the prospects for nuclear power in Australia are now poor. But the Coalition’s nuclear policy may yet resurface, given the Nationals still support it.

During the election campaign, Ley backed the Liberals’ call for nuclear power in Australia, arguing nuclear can provide a zero-emissions option that’s needed in the shift to renewables.

In a 2023 speech, Ley suggested nuclear power had a big future in Australia, saying:

The fact is the latest technology reactors in nuclear-powered submarines in operation today don’t need to be refuelled for 30 years. And the money being invested into research and development is only going to make these new nuclear technologies even better.

Ley has also argued Australia needs to keep gas in the system for longer, rather than “trying to do everything with renewables”.

2. The energy transition

A second-term Labor government will further progress its existing energy policies, including measures to reach its target of 82% renewable energy in the the National Electricity Market by 2030.

Ley has accepted the need for a renewable energy transition, but says it should be led by nuclear power and gas.

She has suggested enormous wind turbines and large-scale solar farms are dominating the landscape in rural areas. She also claims renewable energy projects generate insurance risks because battery storage increases fire risks.

Ley has consistently voted against increasing investment in renewable energy, and is likely to seek to ensure policy addresses rising energy prices and reliability.

3. Nature law reform

The Albanese government intends to complete reform of Australia’s federal environment laws, known collectively as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (or EPBC Act). Labor’s proposed reforms stalled in the Senate last term.

The independent review that preceded the reform, led by Graeme Samuel, was initiated by the Morrison government under Ley, who served as environment minister from 2019 to 2022.

An interim report from the Samuel review was released in July 2020. Ley seized on recommendations that suited her government’s agenda – notably, streamlining the environmental approvals process to speed up decisions on proposed developments. She vowed to start working on them even before the review was finalised, and before public comment on the draft was received.

Ley put bills to parliament in August 2020 and February 2021 seeking to amend the laws. The first sought to hand powers for environmental approvals to the states. The proposal was criticised for lacking environmental safeguards.

This prompted Ley to introduce a second bill which sought to ensure state agreements were monitored and audited. It also provided for new “national environmental standards” to guide approval decisions.

But both bills lapsed before the 2022 election after failing to secure Senate support.

National environmental standards were a key recommendation from the Samuel review, and also a centrepiece of Labor’s proposed reforms. However, Labor’s proposed standards were more robust and focused on outcomes.

The bills Labor introduced to parliament in 2024 also sought establish Australia’s first national environment protection agency to carry out compliance and enforcement. This body would have had more power than Ley’s proposed commissioner.

So while Labor’s proposed reform package was bolder, both Ley and her then Labor counterpart Tanya Plibersek’s proposals were comprised of similar ingredients. Given Ley has shown support for some elements of Labor’s reform package before, namely devolving powers to states and implementing standards, there may be some grounds for negotiation.

4. Coal and climate change

As environment minister, Ley welcomed the Coalition’s approval of the huge Adani coalmine in central Queensland. She also gave the green light to other coal projects. Plibersek took a similar approach to coal projects in her time as minister.

In 2021, the Federal Court found Ley, as environment minister, owed a duty of care to future generations to avoid causing climate harm through her decisions. Ley successfully appealed the ruling.

Separately, Ley has also claimed climate change is not part of the environment portfolio.

When the Coalition reflects on the resounding defeat at the election, Ley’s hard stance on climate may soften.

Finding common ground

Ley brings a deeper understanding of nature law reform to the position of Liberal leader than her predecessor Peter Dutton. This raises the prospects for overhauling the EPBC Act this term.

However, Ley’s priority is likely to be streamlining the environmental approval process rather than increasing protections afforded to threatened species and ecosystems.

On the topic of gas playing a significant ongoing role in Australia’s energy mix, Ley will find many like minds in the Labor government.

When it comes to the energy transition, much rests on the party room decision on whether to persist with a nuclear power policy. Nevertheless, with or without nuclear, Ley’s previous statements suggest she will continue to argue against wind and solar generation energy on cost and reliability grounds.

Justine Bell-James, Professor, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland and Samantha Hepburn, Professor, Deakin Law School, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The emergence of four-legged animals known as tetrapods was a key step in the evolution of many species today – including humans.

Our new discovery, published today in Nature, details ancient fossil footprints found in Australia that upend the early evolution timeline of all tetrapods. It also suggests major parts of the story could have played out in the southern supercontinent of Gondwana.

This fossil trackway whispers that we have been looking for the origin of modern tetrapods in the wrong time, and perhaps the wrong place.

The first feet on land

Tetrapods originated a long time ago in the Devonian period, when strange lobe-finned fishes began to haul themselves out of the water, probably around 390 million years ago.

This ancestral stock later split into two main evolutionary lines. One led to modern amphibians, such as frogs and salamanders. The other led to amniotes, whose eggs contain amniotic membranes protecting the developing foetus.

Today, amniotes include all reptiles, birds and mammals. They are by far the most successful tetrapod group, numbering more than 27,000 species of reptiles, birds and mammals.

They have occupied every environment on land, have conquered the air, and many returned to the water in spectacularly successful fashion. But the fossil record shows the earliest members of this amniote group were small and looked rather like lizards. How did they emerge?

The oldest known tetrapods have always been thought to be primitive fish-like forms like Acanthostega, barely capable of moving on land.

Most scientists agree amphibians and amniotes separated at the start of the Carboniferous period, about 355 million years ago. Later in the period, the amniote lineage split further into the ancestors of mammals and reptiles-plus-birds.

Now, this tidy picture falls apart.

A curious trackway

Key to our discovery is a 35 centimetre wide sandstone slab from Taungurung country, near Mansfield in eastern Victoria.

The slab is covered with the footprints of clawed feet that can only belong to early amniotes, most probably reptiles. It pushes back the origin of the amniotes by at least 35 million years.

Despite huge variations in size and shape, all amniotes have certain features in common. For one, if we have limbs with fingers and toes, these are almost always tipped with claws – or nails, in the case of humans.

In other tetrapod groups, real claws don’t occur. Even claw-like, hardened toe tips seen in some amphibians are extremely rare.

Claws usually leave obvious marks in footprints, providing a clue to whether a fossil footprint was made by an amniote.

The oldest clawed tracks

The previous oldest fossil record of reptiles is based on footprints and bones from North America and Europe around 318 million years ago.

The oldest record of reptile-like tracks in Europe is from Silesia in Poland, a new discovery also revealed in our paper. They are around 328 million years old.

However, the Australian slab is much older than that, dated to between 359 and 350 million years old. It comes from the earliest part of the Carboniferous rock outcropping along the Broken River (Berrepit in the Taungurung language of the local First Nations people).

This area has long been known for yielding many kinds of spectacular fossil fishes that lived in lakes and large rivers. Now, for the first time, we catch a glimpse of life on the riverbank.

Two trackways of fossil footprints cross the slab’s upper surface, one of them overstepping an isolated footprint facing the opposite direction. The surface is covered with dimples made by raindrops, recording a brief shower just before the footprints were made. This proves the creatures were moving about on dry land.

All the footprints show claw marks, some in the form of long scratches where the foot has been dragged along.

The shape of the feet matches that of known early reptile tracks, so we are confident the footprints belong to an amniote. Our short animation below gives a reconstruction of the ancient environment around Mansfield 355 million years ago, and shows how the tracks were made.

Rewriting the timeline

This find has a massive impact on the origin timeline of all tetrapods.

If amniotes had already evolved by the earliest Carboniferous, as our fossil shows, the last common ancestor of amniotes and amphibians has to lie much further back in time, in the Devonian period.

We can estimate the timing of the split by comparing the relative lengths of different branches in DNA-based family trees of living tetrapods. It suggests the split took place in the late Devonian, maybe as far back as 380 million years ago.

This implies the late Devonian world was populated not just by primitive fish-like tetrapods, and intermediate “fishapods” like the famous Tiktaalik, but also by advanced forms including close relatives of the living lineages. So why haven’t we found their bones?

The location of our slab provides a clue.

Big evolutionary questions

All other records of Carboniferous amniotes have come from the northern hemisphere ancient landmass called Euramerica that incorporated present-day North America and Europe. Euramerica also produced the great majority of Devonian tetrapod fossils.

The new Australian fossils come from Gondwana, a gigantic southern continent that also contained Africa, South America, Antarctica and India.

In all of this vast landmass, which stretched from the southern tropics down across the South Pole, our little slab is currently the only tetrapod fossil from the earliest part of the Carboniferous.

The Devonian record is scarcely much better. The Gondwana fossil record of early tetrapods is shockingly incomplete, with enormous gaps that could conceal – well, just about anything.

This find now raises a big evolutionary question. Did the first modern tetrapods, our own distant ancestors, emerge in the temperate Devonian landscapes of southern Gondwana, long before they spread to the sun-baked semi-deserts and steaming swamps of equatorial Euramerica?

It’s quite possible. Only more fieldwork, bringing to light new discoveries of Devonian and Carboniferous fossils from the old Gondwana continents, might one day answer that question.

We acknowledge the Taungurung people of Mansfield area where this scientific work has taken place.

John Long, Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders University; Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki, Lead Scientist, Mesozoic Ecosystems, Uppsala University, and Per Ahlberg, Professor of Evolutionary Organismal Biology, Uppsala University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

An emphatic election victory for the incumbent Labor government means Australia’s rapid shift to renewable energy will continue. As Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said on Saturday:

In 2022, the Australian people voted to finally act on climate change. After three years of progress […] in 2025 they said keep going.

The election result also means the debate about energy policy is now, in broad terms, over. Australia’s energy future is wind and solar, backed by storage.

Coal and gas will have a fast-declining role to play and nuclear energy will have none at all. Australia is set to be a renewables nation. There is no turning back now.

Cementing renewables investment

By continuing to build renewables capacity, the returned Labor government can position Australia on the world stage as a genuine leader on clean energy.

The Albanese government has set a national target of more than 80% of the main national electricity grid running on renewables by 2030. With such a large majority in parliament, Labor may well be in government at that time.

Australia already has the world’s highest per-capita solar uptake, with about 300,000 solar systems installed each year. One in three Australian homes now has rooftop solar.

Labor is complementing this boom with a new home battery discount scheme, which aims to have more than one million batteries installed by 2030. This will help stabilise the grid by reducing demand at peak times.

But more investment in renewables is needed. The policy certainty of a returned Labor government should help to attract international capital. This is important, because more than 70% of investment in renewables in Australia comes from offshore.

Securing climate consensus

Labor’s win also means it can finally bed down a national consensus on climate policy.

A recent survey on Australian attitudes to climate action suggested community views can shift if people see action is taken by governments and big business.

This does not mean community opposition to renewable energy will evaporate – especially in regional Australia. The federal government must work with industry players and other levels of government to ensure proper public consultation. The new Net Zero Economy Authority will play an important role in ensuring the regions and their workers benefit from the energy transition.

For its part, the Coalition needs to do some soul-searching. Australian voters returned a number of climate-friendly independents in key seats. The Coalition also failed to win support from younger Australians, who typically view renewables favourably.

All this suggests continued opposition to renewables is unlikely to help the Coalition form government anytime soon. What’s more, continuing to promote nuclear power – which some in the Coalition are pushing for – makes little sense in an increasingly renewables-dominated grid.

Doubling down on international climate cooperation

Labor’s plans to rapidly expand renewable energy strengthen Australia’s credentials to host the COP31 UN climate talks with Pacific island countries next year.

Australia’s bid has strong support from other nations. Turkey – the only other nation with its hand up to host – has so far resisted pressure from Australia to withdraw its bid. In support of their own bid, Turkish representatives pointed to uncertainty in Australia ahead of the May election – however that uncertainty has now passed.

Adelaide will host the talks if Australia’s bid succeeds. This will be a chance to share our world-beating renewables story – including in South Australia, which is set to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2027.

Australia could also use the talks in South Australia to promote new export industries that use renewable energy, especially plans to produce green iron and green steel at Whyalla.

Hosting rights could attract investment in Australia’s renewables rollout and help promote exports of critical minerals and green metals. And it would enable Australia to cement its place in the Pacific during a time of increased geo-strategic competition, by promoting a renewables partnership for the whole region.

Australia must move fast and secure the COP31 bid at climate talks in Germany next month. Any delay risks a less ambitious summit next year, because building consensus for new initiatives takes time.

Seizing our economic opportunities

As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said during his victory speech on Saturday, renewable energy is “an opportunity we must work together to seize for the future of our economy”.

Australia is the world’s largest exporter of raw iron ore and metallurgical coal, both used extensively in offshore steelmaking.

But Australia can create jobs and reduce emissions by refining iron ore in Australia using renewables and green hydrogen.

The potential export value of green iron is estimated at A$295 billion a year, or three times the current value of iron ore exports. More broadly, our clean energy exports – including green metals, fertilisers and fuels – could be worth six to eight times more than our fossil fuel exports, analysis suggests.

A key challenge for the returned government is assuring markets such as Japan that Australia is a long-term strategic partner, even while redirecting trade and investment away from coal and gas exports and toward long-term clean energy industries.

Embracing Australia’s future

Australians have delivered a strong mandate for climate action. The returned Labor government must ensure this support is not squandered, and voter trust is not lost.

This means seizing the opportunity, once and for all, to shift Australia from our past as a fossil fuel heavyweight to our future as a renewables superpower.

Wesley Morgan, Research Associate, Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney and Ben Newell, Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Director of the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australians have returned an expanded Labor Party to government alongside a suite of climate-progressive independents. Meanwhile, the Coalition – which promoted nuclear energy and a slower renewables transition – suffered a historic defeat.

Labor also looks set to have increased numbers in the Senate, where the Greens are likely to hold the balance of power.

These numbers mean support for progressive climate and energy policy in Australia’s 48th parliament is shaping as stronger than the last. So what does this mean as Australia seeks to position itself as a leader in the global net zero economy?

In its first term in government, Labor laid the groundwork for stronger climate action, including legislating an emissions-reduction target and putting crucial policies and organisations in place. The next parliament will be well-placed to build on these foundations. Here, we explain where key opportunities lie.

1. National emissions target for 2035

By September this year, all signatories to the global Paris Agreement must set emissions reduction targets out to 2035.

Labor is waiting on advice from the Climate Change Authority before setting its target. The authority’s initial advice last year suggested a target between 65% and 75%, based on 2005 levels.

Some countries have already set their targets. The United Kingdom, for example, will aim for a reduction of at least 81% by 2035, based on 1990 levels.

2. A firm plan for net-zero

Australia has committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Getting there will require innovation and investment across the economy. In the last term of government, Labor began developing net-zero plans for each economic sector. They comprise energy, transport, industry, resources, the built environment, and agriculture and land.

The plans are due to be finalised this year. They will act as a tangible map for Australia to meet both net zero and the 2035 emissions-reduction target, and are keenly awaited by state governments, industry and investors.

This policy area presents the broadest opportunity for the crossbench to exert influence for greater ambition, scale and pace. Neither the 2035 target nor the sector plans need to go through parliament – however they could feature in broader parliamentary negotiations.

Separately, the Safeguard Mechanism will be reviewed in 2027, during this parliament. The policy aims to reduce emissions reductions from Australia’s biggest greenhouse-gas polluters. It is key to reaching net zero in Australia’s industrial sector, and an important moment to ensure the policy reduces emissions at the rate needed.

3. Bidding to host COP31

Australia is bidding to host next year’s United Nations global climate talks, or COP, in partnership with Pacific Island nations. The bid was opposed by the Coalition.

A decision on the COP host is expected in June. If Australia succeeds, the federal government will seek to use the high-profile global gathering to showcase its climate credentials – and there will be high expectations from Pacific co-hosts. So all policy between now and then really matters.

4. An energy system to make Australia thrive

Energy produces about 70% of Australia’s emissions. Tackling this means reducing emissions from electricity through renewable generation. Elsewhere in the economy, it means switching from gas, petrol and diesel to clean electricity.

The government’s plan to reach 82% renewable energy by 2030 remains crucial. Australia’s electricity system is expected to reach around 50% renewable energy this year. But there is more work to do.

A review of the National Electricity Market is due this year. It is expected to recommend ways to promote greater investment in renewable generation and storage. This includes what policy might follow the Capacity Investment Scheme, a measure to boost renewables investment which will be rolled out by 2027.

Faster action on the renewable shift can also be achieved through the Australian Energy Market Operator’s next Integrated System Plan – the nation’s roadmap for guiding energy infrastructure and investment.

Labor also has scope to improve energy efficiency, and better match energy demand and supply – especially at times of peak energy use. The government’s commitments to subsidise home batteries, and expand the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, will help achieve this. The crossbench, including the Greens, is likely to seek greater investments to reduce household energy use and costs.

Beyond this, Australia’s electricity grid needs to be double the size of what’s currently planned, to power the entire economy with clean energy.

5. Leverage clean energy export advantages

Australia generates about a quarter of its GDP from exports – many of them emissions-intensive such as fossil fuels, minerals and agricultural products.

In his election victory speech, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese urged Australia to seize the moment at a time of global economic disruption. Key to this will be building on the Future Made in Australia agenda and ensuring Australia makes the most of its competitive advantages as the world transitions to net-zero.

This will include:

• leveraging a strong reputation as a reliable trade partner
• capitalising on our world-leading solar and wind energy resources to produce low-emissions goods for export
• developing the industry around critical minerals and rare earths needed in low-emissions technologies
• helping metals and minerals sectors achieve net-zero emissions pathways.

This will be central to trade negotiations in the years to come. Realising Australia’s green exports aspiration requires action abroad as well as at home.

A game-changing decade

This decade is crucial to Australia’s future economy, and to the success of Australia’s long-term transition to net zero emissions. Our work has shown Australia can slash emissions while the economy grows.

The question now is how quickly the re-elected government – indeed, the next parliament – can realise Australia’s ambition as a renewable energy superpower.

The next three years will provide vital opportunities and they must be seized – for the sake of our energy bills, our economic prosperity and Australia’s reputation on the world stage.

Anna Skarbek, Climateworks CEO, Monash University and Anna Malos, Climateworks Country Lead, Australia, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Across Australian cities, leftover and overlooked green spaces are everywhere. Just think of all the land along stormwater drains, railway lines and vacant lots. While often dismissed as useless or unsightly, there’s a growing understanding of the value these spaces bring to cities.

These informal green spaces can support biodiversity and offer rare freedom to explore, play or connect with nature in a less controlled way than formal spaces such as parks. They also help to cool our cities.

My new research looks at how cities globally are rethinking overlooked green spaces. I identified three ways to unlock the value of these areas: leaving spaces intentionally unmanaged, supporting temporary or informal uses, or formalising them as parks or other public places. Each approach offers different benefits and challenges for cities trying to create greener, more liveable neighbourhoods.

Local councils are under increasing pressure to create more formal green space, with residents, at times, calling on councils to buy land for new parks. But let’s start with what’s already there.

1: Hands off: the case for doing less

In some cases, doing nothing can be surprisingly powerful.

When governments step back, communities and nature can step in, with potentially joyful, creative and ecologically rich results. In the Belgian capital of Brussels, for example, disused railway land, left unmanaged, has become a haven for biodiversity, offering valuable insights into how ecosystems can regenerate without human interference.

Closer to home, there are many examples of railway land being used informally as green space. One site, in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote, has become a makeshift trail used by walkers, dog owners and children on bikes. Though not officially a park, it functions like one, with its informal character fostering a sense of ownership and spontaneity among users. In the past few months, local residents have started planting native vegetation and putting up makeshift art installations, and even a swing.

But this hands-off approach has limitations. It works best where a strong sense of community, or ecological value, already exists. And while nature can bounce back in surprising ways, it often needs a helping hand.

2. Helping out: supporting informal or temporary uses

Where informal installations already exist – such as art installations or unauthorised plantings known as guerrilla gardens – councils can support and even help grow these initiatives.

Some councils may see local-led efforts as a liability, but these efforts represent an opportunity to bring life to underused land at minimal cost. By recognising and supporting such activities, including financially, councils can empower residents to shape their own neighbourhoods in meaningful ways. This can include expanding existing installations or establishing new installations on other underused sites.

There is also benefit in local councils creating their own temporary installations such as pop-up parks. This has been shown to be an effective way to activate underused space and trial initiatives before more permanent plans are developed.

Examples include the creation of a temporary park in Ballarat Street, Yarraville in 2012. Community support for the temporary park led to the construction of a permanent park in 2014.

3. Stepping in: when formalising makes sense

There are times where formal intervention is warranted – for example, where land is contaminated or supports invasive weeds. In such cases, transforming a site into a fully developed park can deliver significant benefits. Land alongside a river, road or railway line, can be readily transformed into a long “linear park” with walking trails and bike paths.

In Paris, the conversion of a former industrial railway line into a linear park is a great example, attracting both locals and tourists.

Melbourne, too, has its own success in revitalising disused infrastructure. The Greening the Pipeline project in Melbourne’s west involves converting a disused sewer main into a vibrant linear park. These projects demonstrate the benefits that can be achieved from developing high-quality, permanent public green spaces from underused land.

But formalising public use of urban green space comes at a cost, financially and otherwise: a highly designed park can crowd out the quirky, unplanned character that makes many informal spaces feel special. That’s why it’s crucial to see formalising green space as one option among many, and to reserve it for sites where potential benefits justify the investment.

A call to action

If you work in urban planning or local government, resist the urge to control and replace. Look at what’s already available. Sometimes the best thing you can do is observe, step back and support. Not all public spaces need a master plan.

If you’re a resident, get out there. Start small: plant something native, or set up a swing (where safe to do so). By engaging with the green spaces already around you, you might help create your own slice of urban paradise – no land purchase required.

Hugh Stanford, Researcher Associate, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In Europe, double-glazed windows are standard. But in Australia, these energy-saving windows are remarkably uncommon.

Correctly installed, the effect of double-glazing is remarkable. Instead of a house losing or gaining huge amounts of heat through its windows, double-glazed windows help keep the indoor temperature at a consistent temperature – reducing the need to crank up the air-con or heater.

In hot parts of Australia, these windows would keep out heat. In cold, they would keep heat in. They also slash outside noise. Houses with double-glazing can add resale value and even improve occupant health.

Why are they not standard? There are several reasons. But our research in Victoria found the main one is cost – double-glazing costs much more than a standard single-glazed window.

Heat loss and gain through windows is responsible for about 1.5% of Australia’s total energy use. As climate change intensifies, making double-glazing standard in Australia would cut household energy bills and make life indoors more pleasant. Other countries are moving to even higher performance triple-glazed windows. But Australia is stuck.

Why does double glazing work so well?

Windows let light and often air into a home. But they can also be the main way heat enters or leaves. Double-glazing works by adding a gap between two panes, often filled with dense argon gas, which doesn’t transfer heat well. The window frame material is important, too, to reduce heat transfer.

We measure the insulating quality of a window with a U-value – essentially, how much heat can be transferred through the glass. The lower this value, the more insulating the window.

A basic single-glazed window has a U-value of about 6. On a typical Australian home, these windows mean significant air conditioning is often required to maintain a comfortable temperature indoors during summer and winter.

Double-glazed windows with advanced design features common in North America and Europe typically have a U-value of 2.4 or less. When combined with wall and roof insulation, they can significantly reduce the need for heating or cooling. Triple-glazed are better still, with a U-value of 0.8 or less.

Standard overseas, rare in Australia

In the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and much of Europe, double-glazed windows have been the norm for several decades. Commonly, these windows use argon gas between the two sheets and improve insulation further with low emittance coatings, thin transparent layers of metal which block solar rays.

In many of these countries, single-glazed windows have largely disappeared and retrofitting older houses with double-glazing is routine.

Anyone embarking on a renovation in Australia will soon discover double-glazing tends to be seen as a specialist eco-retrofit measure rather than something done as standard.

In 2016, only 6% of windows installed in new houses in Australia had U-values below 4. In 2024, that figure was 19%, indicating high performance windows are slowly becoming more common. But there’s still much to do to make them the norm.

Why is progress slow? We spoke to stakeholders in window manufacturing and building in Australia.

These industry experts explained why Australia is lagging:

• historically low-cost energy means the typical response to heat or cold is to install air conditioning

• single-glazed windows have long been the norm

• Australians often haven’t heard of high-performance windows or understand why they matter

• only a few companies make these windows in Australia, meaning competition is limited and costs remain high

• at present, there’s no requirement to include double-glazed windows in new builds or renovations

• housing affordability issues mean owners want to keep upfront construction costs as low as possible.

What should be done?

In our research, many windows industry insiders told us they were ready to scale up production of higher performance windows. The skills and technologies needed are here. What’s missing was the demand.

When we interviewed builders, they told us the choice of windows wasn’t simple. They had to weigh up material costs, existing supplier relationships and industry practices. Some told us it was cheaper at times to import from Europe or Asia than to buy Australian-made.

In part, this is a chicken and egg problem. Prices are high because there’s little demand and demand is limited because prices are high.

So what should be done?

Overseas experience has shown boosting demand is the key. If double-glazed windows become more common, more manufacturers will enter the Australian market and prices will drop.

The quickest way to do this would be to require their use in new construction and renovation.

At first, the industry might struggle to meet this demand. But that would create clear incentives for new players here or overseas to meet the demand.

Government support could help window manufacturers upgrade machinery and processes to be able to meet new demand.

Subsidies could help offset the costs to households, if designed to sunset after a set period. Any subsidies should target groups such as vulnerable older Australians affected by energy poverty as well as renters on low incomes.

Making this a reality is doable. After all, New Zealand did exactly this. In 2007, policymakers introduced new minimum performance requirements for windows. It took about four years to shift the market from single-glazed to predominantly double-glazed. Australia could do the same.

Trivess Moore, Associate Professor in Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University; Lisa de Kleyn, Research Fellow in Climate Change Adaptation, La Trobe University; Ralph Horne, Associate Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research & Innovation, College of Design & Social Context, RMIT University, and Tom Simko, Senior Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate change is lengthening fire seasons across much of the world. This means the potential for wildfires at any time of the year, in both hemispheres, is increasing.

That poses a problem. Australia regularly shares firefighting resources with the United States and Canada. But these agreements rest on the principle that when North America needs these personnel and aircraft, Australia doesn’t, and vice versa. Climate change means this assumption no longer holds.

The devastating Los Angeles wildfires in January, the United States winter, show how this principle is being tested. The US reportedly declined Australia’s public offer of assistance because Australia was in the midst of its traditional summer fire season. Instead, the US sought help from Canada and Mexico.

But to what extent do fire seasons in Australia and North America actually overlap? Our new research examined this question. We found an alarming increase in the overlap of the fire seasons, suggesting both regions must invest far more in their own permanent firefighting capacity.

What we did

We investigated fire weather seasons – that is, the times of the year when atmospheric conditions such as temperature, humidity, rainfall and wind speed are conducive to fire.

The central question we asked was: how many days each year do fire weather seasons in Australia and North America overlap?

To determine this, we calculated the length of the fire weather seasons in the two regions in each year, and the number of days when the seasons occur at the same time. We then analysed reconstructed historical weather data to assess fire-season overlap for the past 45 years. We also analysed climate model data to assess changes out to the end of this century.

And the result? On average, fire weather occurs in both regions simultaneously for about seven weeks each year. The greatest risk of overlap occurs in the Australian spring – when Australia’s season is beginning and North America’s is ending.

The overlap has increased by an average of about one day per year since 1979. This might not sound like much. But it translates to nearly a month of extra overlap compared to the 1980s and 1990s.

The increase is driven by eastern Australia, where the fire weather season has lengthened at nearly twice the rate of western North America. More research is needed to determine why this is happening.

Longer, hotter, drier

Alarmingly, as climate change worsens and the atmosphere dries and heats, the overlap is projected to increase.

The extent of the overlap varied depending on which of the four climate models we used. Assuming an emissions scenario where global greenhouse gas emissions begin to stabilise, the models projected an increase in the overlap of between four and 29 days a year.

What’s behind these differences? We think it’s rainfall. The models project quite different rainfall trends over Australia. Those projecting a dry future also project large increases in overlapping fire weather. What happens to ours and North America’s rainfall in the future will have a large bearing on how fire seasons might change.

While climate change will dominate the trend towards longer overlapping fire seasons, El Niño and La Niña may also play a role.

These climate drivers involve fluctuations every few years in sea surface temperature and air pressure in part of the Pacific Ocean. An El Niño event is associated with a higher risk of fire in Australia. A La Niña makes longer fire weather seasons more likely in North America.

There’s another complication. When an El Niño occurs in the Central Pacific region, this increases the chance of overlap in fire seasons of North America and Australia. We think that’s because this type of El Niño is especially associated with dry conditions in Australia’s southeast, which can fuel fires.

But how El Niño and La Niña will affect fire weather in future is unclear. What’s abundantly clear is that global warming will lead to more overlap in fire seasons between Australia and North America – and changes in Australia’s climate are largely driving this trend.

Looking ahead

Firefighters and their aircraft are likely to keep crossing the Pacific during fire emergencies.

But it’s not difficult to imagine, for example, simultaneous fires occurring in multiple Australian states during spring, before any scheduled arrival of aircraft from the US or Canada. If North America is experiencing late fires that year and cannot spare resources, Australia’s capabilities may be exceeded.

Likewise, even though California has the largest civil aerial firefighting fleet in the world, the recent Los Angeles fires highlighted its reliance on leased equipment.

Fire agencies are becoming increasingly aware of this clash. And a royal commission after the 2019–20 Black Summer fires recommended Australia develop its own fleet of firefighting aircraft.

Long, severe fire seasons such as Black Summer prompted an expansion of Australia’s permanent aerial firefighting fleet, but more is needed.

As climate change accelerates, proactive fire management, such as prescribed burning, is also important to reduce the risk of uncontrolled fire outbreaks.

Doug Richardson, Research Associate in Climate Science, UNSW Sydney and Andreia Filipa Silva Ribeiro, Climate Researcher, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

With large parts of New Zealand having recently been pummelled by ex-tropical Cyclone Tam and ongoing bouts of heavy rain, it is important to remember that natural hazards have long shaped our cities.

Two townships in particular – Westport and Kumeū – have featured in national stories about floods since the 19th century.

They are now among a growing number of places where flooding infrastructure is losing effectiveness and drastic actions have to be considered, including managed retreat.

This raises understandable concerns about anticipated drops in land value and loss of social connection to a place. But managed or planned retreat is not a new concept nationally or globally. International examples can serve as useful references.

These stories from four communities in three countries show how connection to culture and place can be either challenged or sustained when relocation becomes necessary.

Tallangatta, Australia: six decades later

Back in 1956, the Australian township of Tallangatta in north-eastern Victoria was forced to move eight kilometres west because of the expansion of the Hume Weir.

Originally, “old” Tallangatta was located at the meeting point of the Mitta Mitta River and the Tallangatta Creek. But this was subsumed by a significant water-storage facility, the Hume Dam (Lake Hume).

During periods of low water levels, it is still possible to view the remains of the old town from a lookout.

About a hundred houses and a few shops were relocated, including some Victorian buildings. Residents said there was no cost to the relocation, with relocated houses repainted and given modern plumbing facilities that did not previously exist.

New public and commercial buildings were designed in the modernist architectural style of the era, and in 2016 Tallangatta was acknowledged as a “notable town” by the National Trust of Victoria.

The blend of Victorian and mid-century modernist buildings characterises the new township and represents different eras in its history, including the physical and social upheaval of relocation.

But while it can be possible to physically move timber buildings to a new site, characteristics such as original township layout and social connection to the surrounding landscape can be lost.

Kiruna, Sweden: cultural history, industrial growth

Sweden’s northernmost town of Kiruna faces a similar situation due to land subsidence caused by a huge iron ore mine. Its 18,000 inhabitants now have to move about three kilometres east.

The town’s rich cultural heritage includes a long Indigenous Sami history and a long period of industrial growth driven by the mine which saw it given national heritage recognition in the 1980s.

The relocation process has not been without its challenges. One big question was how many historic buildings to move to help retain authentic connections to place.

It was proposed that new building design would use the aesthetic qualities of the historic buildings. And there was discussion about either creating an “old town” within the site, or dispersing relocated buildings around the town.

Eventually, local representatives and the mining company (which funded the relocation) decided about 50 of the oldest buildings would be relocated while the remainder would be demolished.

Demolition has now taken place, along with construction of a new town hall to replace its predecessor, a heritage-listed building dating to 1964.

Such decisions call for careful balancing of the impacts on local Indigenous cultural heritage, the economic role the mine has played in the town’s expansion, and its contribution to iron production in Europe in general.

Parallel narratives: Westport and Kumeū

Climate change is making floods more intense and frequent. New Zealand’s South Island town of Westport is a 19th-century coal mining and trading settlement that experienced severe flooding in July 2021 and again in February 2022.

Although these floods were no larger than ones recorded in the past, their impact on homes and infrastructure was significantly greater due to Westport’s expansion over the years. The July 2021 flood damaged more than 500 houses, resulting in a NZ$54 million flood protection plan.

In 2023, the Buller District Council initiated a master plan to guide Westport’s future growth and development. It focuses on the controlled expansion of the township to higher ground on government-owned Pāmu farmland one kilometre southwest of Westport.

The council endorsed Westport’s master plan in March this year, but some residents are still apprehensive about the changes.

In the North Island, the township of Kumeū is close to Auckland, the country’s biggest city, but still reflects its farming history. Following recent floods, as well as several major floods since 1926, Auckland Council and local leaders joined forces to devise a plan to improve the town’s resilience.

While the prospect of managed retreat has been raised, proactive river maintenance seems the preferred option, including regular debris clearance by local contractors to optimise storm water drainage.

Managed retreat presents opportunities for improvement to Kumeū’s infrastructure. But the long-established cultural relationships between people and landscapes in Aotearoa New Zealand also need to inform inclusive decisions about major relocations.

Connection to heritage rests on relationships with place and setting. These can include buildings, landscapes and views, as well as the historical and cultural values associated with a given site.

Stacy Vallis, Lecturer in Architecture and Emerging Technologies, Auckland University of Technology; Andrew Burgess, Senior Lecturer in Architecture, Auckland University of Technology; Ann Morrison, Associate Professor in Interactive Design, Auckland University of Technology; Imelda Piri, Lecturer in Built Environments Engineering, Auckland University of Technology, and Priscila Besen, Lecturer in Sustainable Architecture, Auckland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Around the world, more and more electric vehicles are hitting the road. Last year, more than 17 million battery-electric and hybrid vehicles were sold. Early forecasts suggest this year’s figure might reach 20 million. Nearly 20% of all cars sold today are electric.

But as more motorists go electric, it creates a new challenge – what to do with the giant batteries when they reach the end of their lives. That’s 12 to 15 years on average, though real-world data suggests it may be up to 40% longer. The average EV battery weighs about 450 kilograms.

By 2030, around 30,000 tonnes of EV batteries are expected to need disposal or recycling in Australia. By 2040, the figure is projected to be 360,000 tonnes and 1.6 million tonnes by 2050.

Is this a problem? Not necessarily. When a battery reaches the end of its life in a vehicle, it’s still got plenty of juice. Together, they could power smaller vehicles, houses or, when daisy-chained, even whole towns.

For this to work, though, we need better information. How healthy are these batteries? What are they made of? Have they ever been in an accident? At present, answers to these questions are hard to come by. That has to change.

Huge potential, challenging reality

Old EV batteries have huge potential. But it’s not going to be easy to realise this.

That’s because it’s hard to get accurate data on battery performance, how fast it’s degrading and the battery’s current state of health – how much capacity it has now versus how much it had when new.

Unfortunately, vehicle manufacturers often make it difficult to get access to this crucial information. And once a battery pack is removed, we can’t get access to its specific data.

This comes with real risks. If a battery has a fault or has been severely degraded, it could catch fire when opened or if used for an unsuitable role. Without data, recyclers are flying blind.

Reusing EV batteries will only be economically viable if there’s sufficient confidence in estimates of remaining capacity and performance.

Without solid data, investors and companies may hesitate to engage in the repurposing market due to the financial risks involved.

Extracting minerals from a battery

EV batteries are full of critical minerals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and manganese. Nearly everything in an EV battery can be recycled – up to 95%.

Here, too, it’s not as easy as it should be. Manufacturers design batteries focusing on performance and safety with recyclability often an afterthought.

Battery packs are often sealed shut for safety, making it difficult to disassemble their thousands of individual cells. Dismantling these type of EV batteries is extremely labour-intensive and time-consuming. Some will have to be crushed and the minerals extracted afterwards.

EV batteries have widely differing chemistries, such as lithium iron phosphate and nickel manganese cobalt. But this vital information is often not included on the label.

Better ways of assessing battery health

Used EV batteries fall into three groups based on their state of health:

High (80% or more of original capacity): These batteries can be refurbished for reuse in similar applications, such as electric cars, mopeds, bicycles and golf carts. Some can be resized to suit smaller vehicles.

Medium (60-80%): These batteries can be repurposed for entirely different applications, such as stationary power storage or uninterruptible power supplies.

Low (below 60%): These batteries undergo shredding and refining processes to recover valuable minerals which can be used to make new batteries.

Researchers have recently succeeded in estimating the health of used EV batteries even without access to the battery’s data. But access to usage and performance data would still give better estimates.

What’s at stake?

An EV battery is a remarkable thing. But they rely on long supply chains and contain critical minerals, and their manufacture can cause pollution and carbon emissions.

Ideally, an EV battery would be exhausted before we recycle it. Repurposing these batteries will help reduce how many new batteries are needed.

If old batteries are stockpiled or improperly discarded, it leads to fire risk and potential contamination of soil and water.

Right now, it’s hard for companies and individuals to access each battery’s performance data. This means it’s much harder and more expensive to assess its health and remaining useful life. As a result, more batteries are being discarded or sent for recycling too early.

Recycling EV batteries is a well-defined process. But it’s energy-intensive and requires significant chemical treatments.

What needs to change?

At present, many battery manufacturers are wary of sharing battery performance data, due to concerns over intellectual property and other legal issues. This will have to change if society is to get the fullest use out of these complex energy storage devices. But these changes are unlikely to come from industry.

In 2021, California introduced laws requiring manufacturers to give recyclers access to data and battery state of health. Likewise, the European Union will require all EV batteries to come with a digital passport from January 2027, giving access to data on the battery’s health, chemistry and records of potentially harmful events such as accidents or charging at extreme temperatures.

Australia should follow suit – before we have a mountain of EV batteries and no way to reuse them.

Daryoush Habibi, Professor and Head, Centre for Green and Smart Energy Systems, Edith Cowan University and Yasir Arafat, Senior Research Associate (Electric Vehicle Batteries and Batteries Recycling), Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

More than 18 million Australians voted on Saturday, after walking past countless corflutes, reading campaign flyers and reviewing how-to-vote cards.

The 2025 federal election was Australia’s biggest yet, with 710,000 more people on the electoral roll than in 2022. The Australian Election Commission amassed 250,000 pencils, 240,000 vests, 80,000 ballot boxes and 5,000 rolls of tamper-proof tape to stock some 7,000 polling places.

So, what happens to these materials after polling day? Some are warehoused, ready for reuse next time around. Others are repurposed. But every election also generates a mountain of waste for landfill.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Australia needs to mandate a cradle-to-grave approach to creating, using, recycling and disposing of election materials. Meanwhile, electronic machines and online voting can reduce the need for paper ballots, just as social media campaigns can reduce paper mail drops.

Where do election materials go after the polls close?

In response to inquiries from The Conversation, the Australian Election Commission said most AEC materials, such as tamper-proof tape, vests and pencils, are stored between elections at counting centres. Other materials, such as cardboard voting booths, are recycled or donated to schools or charities.

Most councils require corflutes to be collected within seven days of an election. But no rules govern reuse or disposal. Corflutes are made from polypropylene, a lightweight plastic that is technically recyclable. But it’s not a straightforward process, so most recycling facilities reportedly cannot accept this waste.

Some candidates donate corflutes to schools, childcare centres and charities, because the white reverse side can be used to mount artworks.

Second-hand corflutes have also been used as shelters for homeless people, heat shields for bee hives, or to repair damaged skylights. But no doubt many end up in landfill.

Are there alternatives?

Many countries are “greening” their elections. In 2019, India’s election commission directed parties to eliminate single-use plastic including corflutes. In 2024, the United Kingdom’s Westminster Foundation for Democracy outlined strategies for reducing election “pollution”, addressing supply chains and packaging.

Australia relies heavily on disposable election materials. While many of these can be recycled, it’s better to avoid single-use materials.

Parties could also display how-to-vote instructions on posters at election sites, rather than handing out individual flyers that are recycled or thrown away.

In 2022, the AEC introduced plain brown cardboard screens and ballot boxes, saying they are easier to recycle and reuse than previous versions “wrapped” in purple-and-white branded paper. However, Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers says elections will probably always be “highly manual and resource-intensive exercises”. We disagree.

Could Australia use electronic or online voting to reduce waste?

Other countries are introducing online voting to reduce waste. One study in Estonia found the carbon footprint of paper-based voting was 180 times greater than internet-based voting. More than 50% of the population voted online in 2023.

India introduced electronic voting machines in 1982 and mandated them, nationwide, in 2004. In 1999 alone this saved 7,700 tonnes of waste.

The United States introduced mechanical voting machines in the 1890s, punch cards and scanned ballots in the 1960s, and “direct-recording” electronic voting machines in the 1970s. Today, touch screens are used in many voting booths, with paper records for auditing. Now just 7% of districts rely on paper ballots and hand-counted ballots are rarely used.

Yet electronic voting machines are not without controversy. Security concerns after the 2016 US election resulted in 94% of districts shifting to optical scanning, and use of “direct-recording” electronic voting machines almost halved.

Ireland invested €50 million (A$88 million) into electronic voting machines in 2002, but they were never used due to concerns about potential tampering.

Australia should explore secure options for electronic voting machines and online voting. In its response to The Conversation, the AEC said this would be a matter for parliament to consider, because the law currently demands that elections are in-person events.

Can social media campaigning help?

Social media enables candidates and voters to engage in new ways. For instance, Labor senators Katy Gallagher and Penny Wong took part in a Facebook “pop quiz” on April 29, which had 55,000 views. But social media can amplify misinformation, so consumers need to fact-check what they see and hear online.

Combined, the parties and affiliated groups spent more than A$39 million on advertisements on YouTube, Facebook and Google during the 2025 campaign. The AEC had to update its authorisation guidelines to cover podcasters and other content creators.

This mirrors global shifts towards social media campaigning. During Canada’s 2025 campaign, Liberal leader Mark Carney (who went on to be elected prime minister) created a video with celebrity Mike Myers, reaching 10 million views.

While such creative approaches may engage voters, they still carry a carbon footprint. Carney and Myers’ video likely produced about six tonnes of CO₂ emissions due to the energy and electricity used in production, streaming and viewing.

Text messages also connect candidates with voters. Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots party sent 17 million texts the election campaign. This equates to 240kg of CO₂ emissions from energy-hungry data centres and personal devices.

This is less than the emissions the average Australian produces in a week. However, the unsolicited texts riled many voters, many concerned about privacy and who wanted to opt out.

What’s the solution?

Australia should mandate a reduction in the disposal of election materials.

Some print materials may always be needed, because not all voters can access digital content or vote online. But the current situation is unsustainable.

Global experiences show innovation is possible. Australia can reduce its reliance on new, physical materials, while maintaining public trust.

Australia’s newly elected officials have an opportunity to green future elections, adopting a more sophisticated approach to voting in a digital age. There’s no excuse for producing mountains of plastic and paper waste every three or four years. Our nation deserves better.

Lisa M. Given, Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University; Gary Rosengarten, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Sustainable Technologies and Systems Enabling Impact Platform., RMIT University, and Matt Duckham, Professor, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Oysters are so much more than a seafood delicacy. They’re ecosystem engineers, capable of building remarkably complex reefs. These structures act as the kidneys of the sea, cleaning the water and keeping the coast healthy, while providing homes for millions of other animals.

Oyster reefs were once thought to be restricted to southern, cooler coastal waters where they’re the temperate equivalent of tropical coral reefs. But now, oyster reefs are being found right across Australia’s tropical north as well.

These tropical oyster reefs are bigger and more widespread than anyone expected. In fact, they are some of the largest known intertidal oyster reefs (exposed at low tide) left in Australia. And they’re everywhere – from the southern limit of the Queensland tropics across to the northern coast of Western Australia – yet we know almost nothing about them.

In our recent research, my colleagues and I completed the first detailed study of Australian tropical oyster reefs. These reefs are so new to science that until now, the species responsible for building them remained a mystery.

Using DNA, we identified the main reef-building oyster species in tropical Australia as “Saccostrea Lineage B”, making it a new addition to our national list of known reef-builders.

Lineage B is a close relative of the commercially important Sydney rock oyster (Saccostrea glomerata), but so little is known about this tropical reef-building species that it is yet to be assigned a scientific name.

Hiding in plain sight

So why are we only learning about tropical oyster reefs now?

Across the globe, oyster reefs have been decimated by human activity. These reefs declined in most tropical regions long ago, even as far back as 1,000 years ago. Most oyster reefs disappeared without a trace before scientists even knew they were there.

However, Australia’s tropical oyster reefs haven’t just survived, in some cases they have thrived.

Despite being delicious to many, the species we now know as Lineage B was not very attractive to the aquaculture industry, due to its small size. And while oyster reefs near Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne were dredged and burned to produce lime for mortar, used in the early construction of roads and buildings, this practice was not widespread in tropical regions. This lack of commercial interest is probably the reason why tropical oyster reefs have persisted unnoticed for so long in northern Australia.

What we did and what we found

We assessed three tropical oyster reefs in Queensland, Australia. At Wilson Beach, near Proserpine and Turkey Beach, near Gladstone, reefs were surveyed in late winter 2022. The reef at Mapoon in the Gulf of Carpentaria was surveyed in early spring 2023.

Using drone footage, we measured reef area and structure. We then collected oysters for genetic analysis.

Oysters are notoriously difficult to identify, because their shape, size and colour varies so much. Oysters from the same species can look completely different, while oysters from different species can look identical. That’s why it’s necessary to extract DNA.

We found almost all reef-building oysters across the three locations were Saccostrea Lineage B.

At Gladstone reefs, several other reef-building species were also present, including leaf oysters, pearl oysters and hairy mussels.

An ecosystem worthy of protection

In southern Australia, oyster reefs are critically endangered. But we don’t really know how threatened their tropical counterparts are, although there is some evidence of decline. Further research is underway.

A new project has begun to map oyster reefs across tropical Australia. Since the project launched in June 2024, more than 60 new reefs have been found across Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia – including some as large as 5 hectares.

These unexpected discoveries provide a beacon of hope in a world currently overwhelmed by habitat decline and ecological collapse. But tropical oyster reefs are not yet protected. It’s crucial we include them in assessments of threatened ecosystems, to understand how much trouble they’re in and what we can do to protect them into the future.

By locating and understanding these overlooked ecosystems, we can ensure they’re not left behind in the global oyster reef restoration movement.

Scientists and others involved in reef restoration are now inviting everyday people across Australia to get involved as citizen scientists in The Great Shellfish Hunt. Anyone can upload tropical oyster reef sightings to this mapping project. It’s more important than ever to work together and ensure tropical oyster reefs receive the protection they deserve, so they continue to thrive for generations to come.

Marina Richardson, Research Fellow in Marine Science, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

An ancient legal principle has become a key strategy of American children seeking to reduce the effects of climate change in the 21st century. A defeat at the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2025 has not stopped the effort, which has several legal actions continuing in the courts.

The legal basis for these cases is called the “public trust doctrine,” the principle that certain natural resources – historically, navigable waters such as lakes, rivers and streams and the lands under them – must be maintained in government ownership and held in trust for present and future generations of the public.

Although the origins of the doctrine remain in some dispute, most scholars cite its first mention in ancient Roman law. Over the centuries the principle made its way to England and later to the United States.

For the past decade, a nonprofit called Our Children’s Trust has argued for a 21st-century interpretation of the public trust doctrine to support lawsuits against state and federal agencies and officials, seeking to force them to take specific actions to fight climate change. Our Children’s Trust has focused on children, saying they are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change because their futures, which the public trust doctrine protects, will be lived in an unsafe and unhealthy climate unless governments take action. Children around the world have filed similar lawsuits against their governments on alternate legal grounds, including claims of constitutional and human rights violations.

Initial uses of the public trust doctrine in the US

The U.S. Supreme Court first endorsed the public trust doctrine in 1892, when it ruled that the doctrine prevented the Illinois legislature from selling virtually the entire Chicago harbor in Lake Michigan to a private railroad company. In the 20th century, state courts have ruled that the doctrine bars states and local governments from selling off lakefront property or harbors to private owners and protects public access to beaches, lakes and oceans.

The public trust doctrine had little to do with environmental protection until the 1970s, however, after law professor Joseph Sax wrote an influential article arguing that the doctrine could form the basis for lawsuits to protect water and other natural resources from pollution, destruction and other threats.

Over the past five decades, some states’ courts have expanded the public trust doctrine’s application beyond access to water-based resources, ruling it can also require governments to protect parks and wildlife from development. And Montana, Minnesota and several other states followed Sax’s recommendation to pass laws or amend their state constitutions to impose broader obligations on states to protect natural resources.

A new approach

In 2011, Our Children’s Trust argued for the first time that governments had a legal obligation to protect the atmosphere as a public trust resource. The group filed lawsuits in all 50 states on behalf of children. Most state courts dismissed the lawsuits quickly, holding that there were no court decisions in their states that supported extending the public trust doctrine to claims involving the climate or the atmosphere.

In 2015 the group filed a similar lawsuit in federal court in Oregon, this time against the federal government. That lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, alleged that the federal government’s inaction to address climate change violated the public trust doctrine as well as the 21 young plaintiffs’ rights to life, liberty and property under the U.S. Constitution.

The plaintiffs asked the court to order the federal government to prepare an inventory of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions and to implement a national plan to phase out fossil fuels to “stabilize the climate system and protect the vital resources on which Plaintiffs now and in the future will depend.”

The federal lawsuit survived an early effort from the government to dismiss the case but never reached a full trial. In 2016 an Oregon federal judge ruled that the U.S. government had an obligation to protect the climate under both the public trust doctrine and the U.S. Constitution. However, this ruling was reversed on appeal. After years of back-and-forth in the court system, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the case’s dismissal in March 2025.

An updated strategy

Since the initial wave of litigation, Our Children’s Trust has continued to file lawsuits to force governments to address climate change. These newer ones are more narrowly tailored to state-specific constitutional and statutory provisions that protect environmental and public trust resources. And, so far, they have been more successful.

In a 2020 Montana lawsuit, for example, the plaintiffs relied on a 1972 amendment to the state constitution declaring that the state and every person “shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations” and that the legislature shall “provide adequate remedies to prevent unreasonable depletion and degradation of natural resources.” Montana Supreme Court decisions prior to the 2020 lawsuit had held that the framers of the 1972 amendment had intended it to contain “the strongest environmental protection provision found in any state constitution.”

Relying on these court decisions, the Montana plaintiffs argued that a state law preventing state agencies from considering the effects of greenhouse gases in issuing permit applications for projects such as power plants or mines violated the state constitution.

The plaintiffs won at trial, and in a landmark opinion in 2024 the Montana Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s finding that greenhouse gases were harmful to the state’s “climate, rivers, lakes, groundwater, atmospheric waters, forests, glaciers, fish, wildlife, air quality, and ecosystem.” The court similarly found that “a stable climate system … is clearly within the object and true principles” of the state’s constitution.

Children in Hawaii filed a similar lawsuit in 2022 against the state Department of Transportation, alleging that its failure to reduce transportation emissions in the state violated the state public trust doctrine and the state’s constitution. The lawsuit relied on Hawaii courts’ previous rulings that the state’s public trust doctrine and state constitution broadly protect natural resources for present and future generations. In 2024, days before trial was to begin, the parties reached a landmark settlement in which the state agreed to take concrete actions to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

The road ahead

Looking back, it was perhaps not surprising that a one-size-fits-all nationwide legal strategy based on a doctrine that varies widely state by state would face long odds. But the public trust doctrine itself has been historically incremental, expanding and contracting as society and the needs of its citizens change over time. And Our Children’s Trust has several cases still pending, including in Alaska and Utah state courts, and in a federal court in California.

The campaign’s successes broke new legal ground: Montana courts held the first trial in the United States that examined evidence of the effects of climate change and states’ obligations to address them. The Hawaii settlement set concrete benchmarks and included provisions for continued feedback on state policies by the youth plaintiffs.

More broadly, Our Children’s Trust’s campaign demonstrates that a combination of legal advocacy and nationwide publicity over the plight of young people in a rapidly changing climate have the potential to result in real change, both in the law and in public perception of the importance of addressing climate change.

Alexandra Klass, James G. Degnan Professor of Law, University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Our backyards should be safe and inviting spaces all year round, including during the summer months.

But the choices we make about garden design and maintenance, such as whether to have artificial turf or real grass for a lawn, can have serious consequences. Children, elderly people and pets are particularly susceptible to burns from contact with artificial turf on a hot day.

Watering your lawn or planting a shady tree can also dramatically change how hot your backyard feels in summer. Ultimately, these factors will influence how much time you and your family spend outside.

No matter where in the world you live, it is never too late to find out how to make your backyard safer and cooler next summer.

The case against artificial turf

Artificial turf or synthetic grass, commonly used on sports fields, has become popular in private outdoor spaces such as backyards.

People may think it’s cheaper and easier to maintain than real turf. Perhaps they like the idea of saving water and having the look of lawn without the hassle of mowing and fertilising it.

But this type of plastic surface is known to become very hot on a sunny day.

We wanted to find out just how hot artificial turf can get in a suburban backyard over summer.

So we set up an experiment to compare the temperatures of artificial turf, dry natural turf, and watered natural turf in Melbourne. We took surface temperature measurements continuously for 51 days during the summer of 2023–24.

The research was part of a project demonstrating the benefits of green space in residential properties. The project received funding from Horticulture Innovation Australia, a grower-owned not-for-profit research and development corporation. That funding, in part, came from three water authorities.

Feeling the heat

In adults, irreversible burns occur when the skin is in contact with a surface that is 48°C or hotter for ten minutes.

The temperature needed to cause skin burns in children is approximately 2°C lower, because their skin is thinner and more sensitive.

Contact skin burns due to the high surface temperature of artificial turf has been identified as a health risk.

In our latest research, the artificial turf reached a scorching 72°C, which is sufficient to cause irreversible skin burns in just ten seconds. In contrast, the real turf was never hot enough to cause such burns (maximum temperature of 39°C).

Over the course of our experiment, the artificial turf was hot enough to cause adults irreversible skin burns for almost four hours a day. While adults might be expected to move away from the heat before it burns, vulnerable people such as babies and the elderly, as well as pets, are most at risk because they may be unable to move away.

We also took measurements in real backyards on a hot sunny summer’s day. We compared the risk of skin burns on four different surfaces: artificial turf, mulch, timber and real turf. The only surface that did not get hot enough to cause skin burns in adults was real turf.

Why should I water the lawn?

Grass and other plants release water vapour from little holes in their leaves into the atmosphere. This process helps the plant maintain a liveable leaf temperature on a hot day, but it also cools the air around the leaves.

It is a good idea to water your lawn throughout summer for two reasons:

1. well-watered lawn is healthier, stays green for longer, and has more leaves to release water vapour into the air (“transpire”).

2. more water is available to evaporate from the soil and leaves, adding to the cooling effect.

If you’re worried about wasting drinking water on your lawn, you can install a rainwater tank or household water recycling plant. Having access to alternative water sources will become increasingly important as the world warms and the climate dries.

What about shade?

The most effective way to make you feel cooler in your backyard is to provide adequate shade. This reduces the amount of sun energy hitting your body or the ground, heating the surface and warming the surrounding air.

A single tree can lower the level of heat stress from extreme to moderate. This may be the difference between wanting to spend time outside on a hot day and avoiding your backyard altogether.

Even small trees can still make you feel cooler, if they provide some shade.

However, too-dense tree canopy cover may prevent air flow – so there is a happy medium. Air flow is necessary to move the heat away from your backyard and cool your body down.

Taking all the above measures will keep your backyard safe and cool throughout summer. This will allow you and your family to spend more quality time in your backyard, cool your home, and improve your quality of life.

Pui Kwan Cheung, Research Fellow in Urban Microclimates, The University of Melbourne and Stephen Livesley, Professor in Urban Horticulture, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

There are an estimated 1 billion domesticated dogs in the world. Most are owned animals – pets, companions or working animals who share their lives with humans. They are the most common large predator in the world. Pet cats trail far behind, at about 220 million.

We are all too aware of the negative effects of cats, both owned and feral, on wildlife. Feral dogs too are frequently seen as threats to biodiversity, although dingoes can have a positive role. By contrast, our pet dogs often seem to get a free pass.

This is, unfortunately, based more on feelings than data. Our beloved pet dogs have a far greater, more insidious and more concerning effect on wildlife and the environment than we would like to be the case.

In our new research, we lay out the damage pet dogs do and what can be done about it.

Dogs are predators. They catch many types of wildlife and can injure or kill them. Their scent and droppings scare smaller animals. Then there’s the huge environmental cost of feeding these carnivores and the sheer quantity of their poo.

We love our pet dogs, but they come with a very real cost. We have to recognise this and take steps to protect wildlife by leashing or restraining our animals.

The predator in your home

Dogs are domesticated wolves, bred to be smaller, more docile and extremely responsive to humans. But they are still predators.

Pet dogs are responsible for more reported attacks on wildlife than are cats, according to data from wildlife care centres, and catch larger animals.

Pet dogs off the leash are the main reason colonies of little penguins are nearing collapse in Tasmania.

In New Zealand, a single escaped pet dog is estimated to have killed up to 500 brown kiwis out of a total population of 900 over a five-week period.

Once off the leash, dogs love to chase animals and birds. This may seem harmless. But being chased can exhaust tired migratory birds, forcing them to use more energy. Dogs can kill fledglings of beach-nesting birds, including endangered birds such as the hooded plover.

The mere presence of these predators terrifies many animals and birds. Even when they’re on the leash, local wildlife are on high alert. This has measurable negative effects on bird abundance and diversity across woodland sites in eastern Australia.

In the United States, deer are more alert and run sooner and farther if they see a human with a leashed dog than a human alone.

Several mammal species in the United States perceived dogs with a human as a bigger threat than coyotes.

Dogs don’t even have to be present to be bad for wildlife. They scent-mark trees and posts with their urine and leave their faeces in many places. These act as warnings to many other species. Researchers in the US found animals such as deer, foxes and even bobcats avoided areas dogs had been regularly walked compared to dog exclusion zones, due to the traces they left.

Keeping dogs healthy and fed has a cost

The medications we use to rid our pet dogs of fleas or ticks can last weeks on fur, and wash off when they plunge into a creek or river. But some of these medications have ingredients highly toxic to aquatic invertebrates, meaning a quick dip can be devastating.

Researchers have found when birds such as blue tits and great tits collect brushed-out dog fur to line their nests, it can lead to fewer eggs hatching and more dead hatchlings.

Then there’s the poo. In the US, there are about 90 million pet dogs, while the UK has 12 million and Australia has 6 million.

The average dog deposits 200 grams of faeces and 400 millilitres of urine a day. This translates to a tonne of faeces and 2,000 litres of urine over a 13 year lifespan. Scaled up, that’s a mountain of waste.

This waste stream can add to nitrogen pollution in waterways, alter soil chemistry and even spread diseases to humans and other wildlife. More than 80% of the pathogens infecting domesticated animals also infect wildlife.

Dogs largely eat meat, meaning millions of cows and chickens are raised just to feed our pets. Feeding the world’s dogs leads to about the same emissions as the Philippines and a land use “pawprint” twice the size of the UK.

No one likes thinking about this

People love their dogs. They’re always happy to see us. Their companionship makes us healthier, body and mind. Many farms couldn’t run without working dogs. We don’t want to acknowledge they can also cause harm.

Dogs, of course, are not bad. They’re animals, with natural instincts as well as the domesticated instinct to please us. But their sheer numbers mean they do real damage.

Many of us have a large dog-shaped blind spot. Little Brutus wouldn’t have done something like that, we think. But Brutus can and does.

Choosing to own a dog comes with responsibilities. Being a good dog owner means caring not just for the animal we love, but the rest of the natural world.

Bill Bateman, Associate Professor, Behavioural Ecology, Curtin University and Lauren Gilson, Research Associate, Behavioural Ecology, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The problem with climate change isn’t just the temperature – it’s also how fast the climate is changing today.

Historically, Earth’s climate changes have generally happened over thousands to millions of years. Today, global temperatures are increasing by about 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) per decade.

Imagine a car speeding up. Over time, human activities such as burning fossil fuels have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These gases trap heat from the Sun. This is like pressing the gas pedal. The faster the driver adds gas, the faster the car goes.

The 21st century has seen a dramatic acceleration in the rate of climate change, with global temperatures rising more than three times faster than in the previous century.

The faster pace and higher temperatures are changing habitat ranges for plants and animals. In some regions, the pace of change is also throwing off the delicate timing of pollination, putting plants and pollinators such as bees at risk.

Some species are already migrating

Most plant and animal species can tolerate or at least recover from short-term changes in climate, such as a heat wave. When the changes last longer, however, organisms may need to migrate into new areas to adapt for survival.

Some species are already moving toward higher latitudes and altitudes with cooler temperatures, altering their geographic territory to stay within their optimal climate. Fish populations, for example, have shifted toward the poles as ocean temperatures have risen.

Pollinators such as bees can also shift their ranges.

Bumblebees, for example, are adapted for cooler regions because of their fuzzy bodies. Some bumblebee populations have been disappearing from the southern parts of their geographic range and have been found in cooler regions to the north and in more mountainous areas. That could increase competition with existing bumblebee populations.

Plants and pollinators can get out of sync

Plants and their pollinators face another problem as the rate of climate change increases: Many plants rely on insects and other animals for seed and pollen dispersal.

Much of that pollen dispersal is accomplished by native pollinators. About 75% of plant species in North America require an insect pollinator – bees, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps, birds and bats. In fact, 1 in 3 bites of food you eat depend on a pollinator, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

So, even if a species successfully migrates into a new territory, it can face a mismatch of pollination timing. This is known as phenological mismatch.

During the winter, insects go into a hibernation known as diapause, migrate or take up shelter underground, under rocks or in leaf litter. These insect pollinators use temperature and daylight length as cues for when to emerge or when to migrate to their spring and summer habitats.

As the rate of climate change increases, the chances of a timing mismatch between pollinators and the plants they pollinate rise.

With an increase in temperature, many plants are blooming earlier in the spring. If bees or other pollinators emerge at their “normal” time, flowers may already be blooming, reducing their chance for pollination.

If pollinators emerge too early, they may struggle to survive if their normal food sources are not yet available. Native bees, for example, rely on pollen for much of the protein they need for growing and thriving.

Wild bees are emerging earlier

This kind of shift in timing is already happening with bees in the U.S.

Studies have shown that the date wild bees emerge in the U.S. has shifted by 10.4 days earlier over the past 130 years, and the pace is accelerating.

One study found wild bees across species have been changing their phenology, or timing of seasonal activities, and over the past 50 years the emergence date is four times faster. That means wild bees were emerging roughly eight days earlier in 2020 than they did in 1970.

This trend of earlier emergence is generally consistent across organisms with the accelerating rate of climate change. If the timing mismatches continue to worsen, it could exacerbate the decline of pollinator populations and result in inadequate pollination for plants that rely on them.

Pollinator decline and inadequate pollination already account for a 3% to 5% decline in global fruit, vegetable, spice and nut production annually, a recent study found.

Without pollinators, ecosystems are less resilient − they are unable to absorb disturbances such as wildfires, adapt to changes, and recover from environmental stressors such as pollution, drought or floods.

Managing climate change

Pollinators face many other risks from human activities, including habitat loss from development and harm from pesticide use. Climate change adds to that list.

Taking steps to reduce the activities driving global warming can help keep these species thriving and carrying out their roles in nature into the future.

Courtney McGinnis, Professor of Biology, Medical Sciences and Environmental Sciences, Quinnipiac University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Glitter is festive and fun – a favourite for decorations, makeup and art projects. But while it may look harmless, beautiful even, glitter’s sparkle hides a darker side. Those shimmering specks often end up far from party tables and greeting cards. You can even spot them glinting on beaches, washed in with the tide.

In our recent research, we discovered that glitter – specifically, the kind made from a common plastic polymer called polyethylene terephthalate (PET) – is not merely polluting the ocean. It could actively interfere with marine life as it forms shells and skeletons, which is a much bigger deal than it might sound.

Put simply: glitter helps the formation of crystals that nature did not plan for. And those crystals can break the glitter into even smaller pieces, making the pollution problem worse and more long-lasting.

We tend to think of microplastics as tiny beads from face scrubs or fibres from clothes, but glitter is in its own special category. It is often made of layered plastic film with metal coatings – the same stuff found in craft supplies, cosmetics, party decorations and clothing. It is shiny, colourful and durable – and extremely tiny. That makes it hard to clean up and easy for marine animals to eat, because it looks tasty.

However, our research paper in the journal Environmental Sciences Europe suggests that what really sets glitter apart from other microplastics is the way it behaves once it enters the ocean. It actively interacts with its surroundings; it’s not drifting passively.

In our lab, we recreated seawater conditions and added glitter to the mix to explore whether glitter would affect how minerals – like the ones marine animals use to make their shells – form. What we saw was surprisingly fast and incredibly consistent: the glitter was kickstarting the formation of minerals such as calcite, aragonite and other types of calcium carbonates in a process known as “biomineralisation”.

These minerals are the building blocks that many marine creatures – including corals, sea urchins and molluscs – use to make their hard parts. If glitter is messing with that process, we could be looking at a serious threat to ocean life.

A crystal-growing machine

Under the microscope, we saw that glitter particles acted like little platforms for crystal growth. Minerals formed all over their surfaces, especially around cracks and edges. It was not a slow build-up – crystals appeared within minutes.

This can complicate natural processes. Marine creatures use very precise conditions to make their shells the right shape and strength. When something like glitter comes along and changes the rules – speeding up crystal growth, changing the types of crystals that form – it could mess with those natural processes. Like baking a cake and suddenly having the oven heat up to 1,000ºC, you might still get a cake – but it will not be the one you intended to cook.

Worse still, as the crystals grow, they push against the layers of glitter, causing it to crack, flake and break apart. That means the glitter ends up turning into even smaller pieces, known as nanoplastics, which are more easily absorbed by marine life and nearly impossible to remove from the environment.

Microplastics are eaten by marine life, from fish and turtles to oysters and plankton. This affects how animals feed, grow and survive. When we eat seafood, these microplastics become part of our own diet.

But our findings show that glitter does not just get eaten. It changes the chemistry of the ocean in tiny but important ways. By promoting the wrong kind of mineral growth, glitter might interfere with how ocean animals form their shells or skeletons in the first place.

This problem does not stop with wildlife. The ocean plays a key role in regulating Earth’s climate, and mineral formation is part of that equation. If calcium carbonate formation in the ocean changes, it could also affect how carbon moves through the planet.

So, the next time you see glitter on a birthday card or in a makeup palette, remember this: it might look like harmless sparkle, but in the ocean, it behaves more like a flashy chemical troublemaker. What seems small and shiny to us could be a big, silent disruptor for the marine world.

And once it is out there, it is not going away.

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Juan Diego Rodriguez-Blanco, Ussher Associate Professor in Nanomineralogy, Trinity College Dublin and Kristina Petra Zubovic, Researcher at the Department of Geology, Trinity College Dublin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Donald Trump won the US election on a campaign that included rolling back environmental laws. In the UK, Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch has called the national net zero target “impossible”. And former prime minister Tony Blair has said the current approach of phasing out fossil fuels is “doomed to fail”.

Meanwhile in Germany, the parties in the most likely incoming coalition government hardly engaged with climate policy during the recent election campaign – and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which openly denies human-made climate change, received 20% of the vote.

With political leaders around the world moving away from progressive climate policy, it’s worth asking: is this what the public wants?

When it comes to the climate, what people think is influenced by where they live and what else they believe in. In recently published research, we sought to find out just how much people’s ideologies affected their views on climate policy.

We surveyed representative samples of the public in six countries about their attitudes towards different types of climate policy. We asked about support for regulation (for example, building and vehicle standards or product bans), taxes (like carbon taxes), subsidies (to promote low-carbon alternatives), and information-based policies (such as emission disclosure requirements). Our survey covered policies in transport, housing, energy and industry.

We also asked respondents about their ideologies: cultural worldviews, personal values, free market beliefs and political trust. Our findings reveal how people’s ideologies shape their support for climate policies.

We included three high-income countries of the global north (the US, UK and Germany) and three upper-middle income countries from the global south (Brazil, South Africa and China). Together, these six countries are responsible for half of global CO₂ emissions.

Our definition of global south, which includes countries such as China, is based on work by UN Trade and Development and the UN G-77 countries. It includes Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, most of Asia (excluding Israel, Japan and South Korea) and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand). These countries generally have lower per capita income and are considered “developing” compared to global north countries.

This comparison is important because, as we will explain, political and economic ideologies that originated in the global north can influence how people view climate policies.

Across all policy types, we found more support for climate policies in the global south countries. In the global north countries, we found only minority support for regulatory policies and climate-related taxes. In Germany, support for regulatory policies and taxes was as little as 18%.

Subsidies for the four sectors – for example, to support renewable energy projects or the production of green steel – received 35% support in Germany and 48% in the US. In contrast, the majority of the public in the three countries of the global south supported subsidies and regulatory climate policies.

As with subsidies, we found strong majority support for information-based policies in the three countries of the global south (74-79%), against only minority support in Germany (36%) and the US (49%). In the UK, 53% supported information-based climate policies.

Personal values play a role in support for the policies. Our findings show people with stronger biospheric values – the importance people place on the environment and the relationship between humans and nature – are more supportive of climate policies. This is true irrespective of the country they live in. People who are more trusting of political institutions and politicians also support these policies more.

But demographics such as age, gender, education or income have a negligible effect on attitudes towards these policies, when accounting for other factors in our analysis.

Neoliberalism and the climate

We observed a strong link between a neoliberal worldview and lack of support for the climate policies in our study. As a political economic project, neoliberalism originated in the global north. But it continues to take root in the global south, particularly in Latin America.

The belief that individuals need to take care of themselves and are responsible for their own fortune and problems was associated with less support for climate policies. And in every country we studied, we found a strong relationship between support for the free market and lack of support for climate policies.

People who believe the free market is best at allocating outcomes efficiently and meeting human needs without government interference, and that it is more important than some local environmental concerns, show less support for the climate policies.

These two sets of beliefs – individualistic worldviews and support for the free market – are the core principles of neoliberal thought.

The superiority of the market over governments as an efficient and fair allocation machine has been the mantra of neoliberal politicians, thinktanks and institutions for more than half a century.

Neoliberalism opposes government regulation and spending, and supports the free market. It also fosters an individualistic worldview. Instead of seeing themselves as workers, citizens or members of a collective, people are persuaded to internalise market logic – to see themselves as individuals who are out to maximise their personal profit.

The cultural shift from more communitarian and egalitarian ideals towards an ideology based on the self-driven individual and the free market has been quite successful. Empirical evidence from 41 countries shows that individualist practices and values around the world have surged significantly over the past 50 years.

We know from research that what the public thinks (or votes for) does influence what governments do. This is true even when accounting for the influence of powerful interest groups.

So, those creating and campaigning for urgently needed climate policies need to take this into account. Support for climate policies isn’t just about whether someone believes in human-made climate change or cares about the planet – there are deeply-rooted ideological factors at play too.

Felix Schulz, Research Fellow, Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, Lund University and Christian Bretter, Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Psychology, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As the world’s only surviving egg-laying mammals, Australasia’s platypus and four echidna species are among the most extraordinary animals on Earth.

They are also very different from each other.

The platypus is well adapted for a semi-aquatic lifestyle, spending up to 20 hours a day swimming in Australian waterways to forage for freshwater invertebrates. Echidnas, on the other hand, live entirely on land. They are widely distributed across Australia and New Guinea, and adapted for feeding on termites, ants and earthworms.

How did these differences emerge? Some researchers think echidnas evolved from a swimming, platypus-like ancestor. This hypothesis is based on evidence from aspects of their genes and anatomy, and from hypotheses about their evolutionary history.

However, this idea is controversial because fossil evidence for such a profound evolutionary transformation has been lacking – until now.

A bone from 108 million years ago

In our study published today in PNAS, we gleaned new data from a 108-million-year-old mammal humerus (arm bone), found 30 years ago at Dinosaur Cove, Victoria, by a team from Museums Victoria.

This arm bone, from a species called Kryoryctes cadburyi, belongs to an ancestral monotreme – a semi-aquatic burrower like the platypus. Our findings support the hypothesis that land-living echidnas evolved from a swimming ancestor.

Kryoryctes lived during the Age of Dinosaurs (the Mesozoic), when monotremes and monotreme relatives were more common than they are today. Glimpses of this past diversity are found in the fossil record in southern Victoria and Lightning Ridge, New South Wales.

Nevertheless, Australian Mesozoic mammal fossils are exceedingly rare, and mostly consist of teeth and jaws. Kryoryctes is the only one known from a limb bone, which provides significant information about its identity, relationships and lifestyle.

Tiny clues inside bones

In order to test the evolutionary relationships of Kryoryctes, we added it to a broader data set of 70 fossil and modern mammals. From there, we calculated an evolutionary tree. This showed Kryoryctes is an ancestral monotreme.

We also compared the external shape of the Kryroryctes humerus bone to living monotremes. These analyses indicated the bone is more like those of echidnas, rather than platypuses.

But it was a different story on the inside. When we looked at the internal structure of the Kryoryctes humerus with several 3D scanning techniques, we uncovered microscopic features of this arm bone that were actually more like those of the platypus.

Such tiny features inside bones yield crucial clues about the lifestyle of an animal. Numerous previous studies link bone microstructure in mammals and other tetrapods (four-limbed animals) with their ecology.

Using the wealth of data available for living mammals, we compared characteristics of the Kryoryctes humerus microstructure to those in platypuses, echidnas and 74 other mammal species.

These analyses confirmed that the Kryoryctes humerus has internal bone features found in semi-aquatic burrowing mammals (such as the platypus, muskrat and Eurasian otter), rather than land-living burrowing mammals such as the echidna.

From water to land

This discovery suggests that a semi-aquatic lifestyle is ancestral for all living monotremes. It also suggests the amphibious lifestyle of the modern platypus had its origins at least 100 million years ago, during the Age of Dinosaurs.

In this scenario, the modern platypus lineage has retained the ancestral semi-aquatic burrowing lifestyle for more than 100 million years. Echidnas would have reverted to a land-based way of life more recently.

For echidnas, a return to land appears to have resulted in adaptations such as their long bones becoming lighter, as shown in our study.

They possibly also lost several other features more useful for spending time in the water rather than on land, including the loss of a long tail, reduction of webbing between fingers and toes, reduction of the duck-like bill to a narrow beak, and a reduced number of electroreceptors on that beak.

However, precisely when this evolutionary transformation occurred is not yet known. The answer must wait until early echidna fossils are found – so far, nothing definitive has turned up anywhere.

The modern habitats of monotremes are increasingly under threat from environmental degradation, interactions with humans and feral predators, and climate change. This is especially true for platypuses. To ensure the survival of this ancient lineage, we need to better understand how their unique features evolved and adapted.

Sue Hand, Professor Emeritus, Palaeontology, UNSW Sydney; Camilo López-Aguirre, Adjunct Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto; Laura A. B. Wilson, ARC Future Fellow, Head of Biological Anthropology, Australian National University, and Robin Beck, Lecturer in Biology, University of Salford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What’s the currency for all life on Earth? Carbon. Every living thing needs a source of carbon to grow and reproduce. In the form of organic molecules, carbon contains chemical energy that is transferred between organisms when one eats the other.

Plants carry out photosynthesis, using energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen. Animals get carbon by consuming organic matter in their diet – herbivores from plants, carnivores from eating other animals. They use this carbon for energy and to produce the molecules their bodies need, with some carbon dioxide released by breathing.

But there are other, stranger ways of getting carbon. In our new research, we found something very surprising. River animals were feeding on methane-eating bacteria, which in turn were consuming fossil fuel as food.

Usually, the carbon used as food by river creatures is new in the sense it has been recently converted from gas (carbon dioxide) to solid carbon through photosynthesising algae or trees along the bank. But in a few rivers, such as the Condamine River in Queensland, there’s another source: ancient natural gas bubbling up from underground, which is eaten by microorganisms. Insects such as mayflies have taken to this methane-based carbon with gusto.

How does a river usually get its carbon?

The way photosynthesised carbon moves from a plant to an animal and then another animal can be described as a food web. Food webs show the many different feeding relationships between organisms, and show how species depend on each other for sustenance in an intricate balance.

In a river food web, carbon usually comes from one of two sources: plants growing and photosynthesising in the river (such as algae), or when organic matter such as leaves are washed in by rain or blown in by wind.

Rivers that are well connected to their floodplains often get plenty of carbon from leaf litter from trees which dissolves in water or is eaten directly by animals. Algae in rivers provide a high-quality source of carbon for animals because they can contain high concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids essential for growth and reproduction. The primary source of carbon for river animals varies depending on prevailing conditions and the individual river.

The carbon of the Condamine

Some microorganisms called archaea naturally produce small amounts of methane in oxygen-depleted sediments of rivers.

But we wanted to look at the Condamine to see whether much larger volumes of methane could be used as food.

After it forms deep underground, natural gas can slowly escape through cracks in the earth. If a river bed is directly above, this methane-rich gas will seep into the river.

That’s what happens in Queensland’s Condamine River. The river rises on Mount Superbus, inland from Brisbane, and flows inland until it meets the Darling River.

In some parts of the river, methane bubbles up constantly through the water column from a natural gas reservoir that formed since the Late Pleistocene.

In these stretches of river, dissolved methane concentrations are extremely high: up to 350 times greater than trace concentrations upriver, away from the methane seep.

We wanted to see whether methanotrophic bacteria consuming methane from natural gas were being eaten by river animals, and whether we could trace the carbon signature through the food web.

To find out, we analysed the carbon in the bodies of river animals such as zooplankton, insects, shrimp, prawns and fish, and compared it to the different sources of carbon that could make up their food.

The results were clear: animals within reach of the natural gas seeping from underground had a distinct carbon signature showing they were eating food derived from the natural gas. In fact, for insects such as mayflies, methane-based food made up more than half (55%) of their diet.

Over time, this methane-derived food moved up the food web, showing up in prawns and even fish. Here too, it contributed a significant portion of their carbon.

We found this methane–derived carbon moved through multiple levels of the local food web. It made up almost a fifth (19%) of the carbon in shrimp and 28% of the carbon in carnivorous fish.

For river shrimp and prawns, leaves washed into the river were still important sources of carbon. For mayflies, algae was still an important source of food.

But our work shows that natural gas seeps can be a major, even dominant, source of energy for the entire food web. This is very surprising. It shows an unexpected connection between Earth’s geology and living creatures in a river.

Why does this matter?

Until now, researchers have focused on river and land plants as the main way a river gets its carbon. Our research has uncovered a surprisingly significant way some rivers get their carbon – methane.

In deep sea research, this pathway is better understood. Methane-eating bacteria can form the basis of entire ecosystems which have sprung up around deep sea hydrothermal vents of hot water.

But until now, we have overlooked the role methane-eating bacteria can play in rivers. With this knowledge, we can better track the flows of carbon in rivers so we can gauge ecosystem productivity and see how a food web is functioning.

Paul McInerney, Senior Research Scientist in Ecosystem Ecology, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Following the end of native logging in Victoria on January 1 2024, the state’s majestic forests might be expected to regenerate and recover naturally. But our new research shows that’s not always the case.

We quantified the extent of regeneration following logging in the eucalypt forests of southeastern Australia between 1980 and 2019. This included nearly 42,000 hectares of logged mountain ash forest in Victoria’s Central Highlands.

We analysed satellite data, logging records, on-ground surveys and drone photography, and discovered that nearly 20% of logged areas failed to regenerate. This represents more than 8,000 hectares of forest lost. All that remains in these areas are grassy clearings, dense shrublands or bare soils.

We also found the rate of regeneration failure has increased over the past decade. While failure was rare in the 1980s, it became much more common over time – affecting more than 80% of logged sites by 2019.

These regeneration failures weren’t random. They were found mostly in close proximity to each other, on areas with steep slopes, relatively low elevation, and where the area of clear-felled forest was long and narrow.

Our research shows more needs to be done to restore Victoria’s forest after logging.

Restoring majestic forests and their vital services

Victoria is home to some of the most spectacular forests on the planet. They include extensive stands of mountain ash, the tallest flowering plant on Earth, which can grow to almost 100 metres in height. Alpine ash, another giant, can grow up to 60m tall.

These forests have great cultural significance to Indigenous people and support many recreational and tourism activities.

Healthy forest ecosystems also deliver clean water and carbon storage services. In fact, mountain ash forests contain more carbon per hectare than most other forests around the world.

But Victoria’s forests have long been logged for timber and pulp. The main method of logging – clearfelling – scars the landscape, leaving large areas devoid of trees if natural tree regeneration fails.

Mountain ash is especially vulnerable

Our research revealed 19.2% of areas logged between 1980 and 2019 in our study area (8,030ha out of 41,819ha cut) failed to regenerate naturally.

We also found strong evidence of a significant increase in the extent of failed regeneration over 40 years, increasing from less than two hectares per cutblock in 1980 (about 7.5%) to more than nine hectares per cutblock in 2019 (about 85%), on average.

We found regeneration failure was more likely in mountain ash forests compared with other forest types.

This adds to the case for listing the mountain ash forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria as a threatened ecological community.

A responsibility to restore

Under Victoria’s Code of Forest Practice for Timber Production, logged native forests must be properly regenerated within two to three years of harvest.

That’s because it is nearly impossible for the native forest to regenerate after three years without human intervention. The young trees face too much competition from grass and shrubs.

These degraded areas no longer hold the value they once did and they cannot provide the same level of ecosystem services such as carbon storage, water purification, or habitat for wildlife.

With no current government restoration plan, these landscapes will remain degraded indefinitely. The Victorian government retains legal responsibility to restore these degraded forests, but currently lacks any large-scale restoration strategy, making action urgently required.

A way forward: using green bonds to fund regeneration

Our research shows the regeneration of forests after logging is not guaranteed. Nature often needs a helping hand. But we need to find ways to fund these projects.

Globally, governments have used “green bonds” to lower the cost of borrowing tied explicitly to measurable environmental results.

Victoria already has green bonds “to finance new and existing projects that offer climate change and environmental benefits”. But funds are typically used to finance investments in transport, renewable energy, water and low carbon buildings.

As part of a coalition of researchers, environmental organisations, and finance sector partners we proposed a A$224 million green bond for forest regeneration. This proposal was put to the Victorian government via the Treasury Corporation of Victoria.

Green bond funding would help leverage co-investment from the Commonwealth government and philanthropic partners to improve monitoring and biodiversity outcomes in native forests.

As part of the proposed green bond, areas of logged forest where natural regeneration has failed would be restored.

Other investments under the green bond could include creating tourism ventures (and associated jobs), controlling feral animals such as deer, and biodiversity recovery – creating habitat for endangered species such as the southern greater glider and Leadbeater’s possum, for example.

The $224 million required for the ten years of the green bond — or around $22.4 million per year — is less than the substantial losses Victoria incurred on its investment in VicForests over the past decade.

Our research suggests leaving nature to its own devices would mean losing a fifth of the forests logged over the past 40 years. Bringing the trees back has multiple benefits and would be well worth the investment.

Maldwyn John Evans, Senior Research Fellow, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University; Chris Taylor, Research Fellow, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, and David Lindenmayer, Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Across Australia, communities are grappling with climate disasters that are striking more frequently and with greater intensity. Bushfires, floods and cyclones are no longer one-off events. And this pattern is predicted to worsen due to climate change.

As it becomes more common to face climate disasters again and again, what does this mean for the mental health and wellbeing of people affected?

In a new study published today in the Lancet Public Health, we found experiencing repeated disasters leads to more severe and sustained effects on mental health compared to experiencing a single disaster.

What we did in our study

We drew on ten years of Australian data (2009–19) from the nationally representative Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey.

Specifically, our study involved data from 1,511 people who experienced at least one disaster. We tracked them from the year before the first disaster, at the first disaster, and, where applicable, each subsequent disaster, and a few years after each disaster.

We also included 3,880 people who did not experience disasters during this time but shared similar demographic, socioeconomic, health and place-based characteristics for comparison.

We measured exposure to climate disasters based on whether respondents reported a weather-related disaster (for example, flood, bushfire or cyclone) damaged or destroyed their home in the previous year.

The mental health outcomes were measured using two questionnaires commonly administered to assess depression and anxiety disorders (the 5-item mental health inventory) and psychological distress (the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale).

Cumulative effects

Our results show mental health declines became more severe with repeated disasters.

The graph below plots the mental health trajectories for everyone in our study who experienced at least one disaster, and the control group who did not experience any disasters. We looked at a maximum of three disasters in the study due to data availability.

It shows experiencing one disaster led to a decline in mental health during the disaster year, followed by a recovery to pre-disaster levels in the post-disaster period.

However, with repeated disasters, mental health trajectories declined further and it took longer to recover to pre-disaster levels.

We also found experiencing an additional disaster close to a previous disaster (for example, one or two years apart) was linked to greater mental health declines than disasters that were spaced further apart.

Some risk factors

We observed that certain factors consistently shaped mental health outcomes. For instance, having social support was consistently a protective factor, while having a long-term health condition consistently increased the risk of poorer mental health. This was true regardless of the number of disasters someone experienced.

On the other hand, some risk factors became stronger with each disaster. In particular, households with lower incomes, those in rural areas, and younger people appeared to experience greater effects of cumulative disasters.

There are some limitations to our research. For example, the data we had did not detail the type or severity of each disaster. It also was limited in what it could tell us about the mental health effects of three or more disasters.

Nonetheless, our study provides novel insights into the mental health consequences of multiple climate disasters. This highlights the need for better support for communities facing an increasing number of emergencies.

Our findings also align with other studies that have observed increasing risk to mental health with multiple disasters.

At the same time, our findings add a new perspective by showing how trajectories can change over time. People’s mental health often recovers to pre-disaster levels after a single disaster, but repeat disasters can delay or halt this recovery.

Why might repeated disasters lead to worse mental health?

Repeated disasters, especially when they occur in close succession, can lead to cumulative stress driven by trauma and uncertainty. This can create a reinforcing cycle. People already facing social disadvantages – such as poor health and low income – are more likely to be exposed to disasters. In turn, these events disproportionately affect those facing existing disadvantages.

The result is a compounding effect that can contribute to worsening mental health outcomes and slower recovery over multiple disasters. This means disasters are an issue of social equity and must be considered in efforts to reduce poverty and improve social outcomes, as well as health outcomes.

Repeated disasters in particular can drain financial, social and community resources. They can exacerbate existing strain on household savings, disrupted social ties due to displacement, and reduced access to services after disasters – especially in rural areas.

What can we do to support people through multiple disasters?

We need to transform the way we think about disasters. It’s estimated children born today will experience up to seven times the number of extreme weather events across their lifetimes than someone born in 1960.

We are starting to get a better picture of what people need to recover from climate disasters. Our research points to the need for clinical services (for example, GPs) to screen for past disaster exposures in mental health assessments.

Emergency services need to plan services to reach at-risk groups during disasters. They also need to ensure recovery planning considers the effects of past disasters, for example by making sure support programs are not just tied to one disaster, but can be used across multiple.

The current approach to emergency services that looks at “one disaster at a time” doesn’t work anymore. As the climate continues to change, we urgently need to consider the effects of multiple disasters in public health, welfare and disaster services.

Ang Li, ARC DECRA and Senior Research Fellow, NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne and Claire Leppold, Research Fellow, Disaster, Climate & Adversity Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Many Australians struggle to keep themselves cool affordably and effectively, particularly with rising electricity prices. This is becoming a major health concern, especially for our most vulnerable people such as the elderly, pregnant women and people with cardiovascular diseases.

Air conditioning is often seen as the only solution to this problem. But relying too heavily on aircon has major downsides. These include hefty electricity bills, increased greenhouse gas emissions, strain on an already weak electricity grid, and dumping heat from buildings to the outside – further heating the outdoor air.

Our latest research, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, highlights a simple yet effective solution: a “fan-first” cooling approach.

The approach is simple: use electric fans as your first cooling strategy, and only turn on air conditioning when the indoor temperature exceeds 27°C.

The solution: ‘fan-first’ cooling

Electric fans can make you feel more comfortable on a hot day simply by moving the air around you. This helps our body release heat in two ways: improving the transfer heat from your body into the air, and increasing the evaporation of sweat from your skin.

A gentle breeze can make you feel up to 4°C cooler, even when the weather is very hot and humid.

This allows you to increase the aircon set-point (the temperature at which cooling turns on) from 23-24°C to 27-28°C. This simple change can significantly reduce the amount of time your aircon is running, leading to substantial energy savings.

For example, in our previous research we showed raising the office air conditioning set-point from 24 to 26.5°C, with supplementary air movement from desk and ceiling fans, reduced energy consumption by 32%, without compromising thermal comfort.

Don’t fans still use electricity to run?

Yes fans still use electricity, but it’s as little as 3% of the electricity used to run air conditioning. That means you can run more than 30 fans with the same amount of energy it takes to run a single aircon unit.

A basic pedestal fan is cheap to buy (A$20 to $150), requires no installation and minimal maintenance, and can be easily moved around to keep you cool in any part of your house. Simply turn on the fan as soon as you start feeling slightly warm.

Fans cool you, whereas aircon cools the whole space, which is less efficient.

We also previously showed that using fans rather than airconditioning is a more effective emissions reduction strategy than switching from old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs to LED lighting.

The problem with over-reliance on aircon

Globally, the use of air conditioning is rapidly increasing. Aircon units sales have tripled since 1990 and are projected to triple again in 2050. It is becoming the go-to solution to heat management.

Aircon is effective but is expensive to buy, run and maintain.

A recent survey showed while most people have aircon, two thirds did not use it due to cost concerns.

Beyond the financial burden, the environmental impact of aircon is substantial. In Australia, electricity mainly comes from burning fossil fuels, creating greenhouse gas emissions. Even with the growth of renewable energy, the sheer demand for aircon cooling could strain the transition and the grid.

Furthermore, the refrigerants used in most aircon units are potent greenhouse gases. It will also take time to replace older and less efficient aircon units.

Aircon units also release heat into the outdoor environment, worsening the urban heat island effect – the phenomenon where cities are significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas.

Finally, over-reliance on aircon might reduce our ability to cope with heat. If we constantly keep our indoor temperatures very low, our bodies may not acclimatise to warmer summer conditions, making us more vulnerable during power outages.

Using fans safely and effectively

While fans offer numerous benefits, it’s important to use them correctly, especially in very hot indoor conditions.

There’s a common misconception that fans should be turned off above 35°C because they might blow hot air onto the skin. This ignores the crucial role fans play in evaporating sweat.

We have established safer and more accurate temperature thresholds for fan use by conducting laboratory studies. Just remember to check the temperature indoors, not outdoors.

Electric fans can be safely used in indoor temperatures up to:

• 39°C for young, healthy adults.
• 38°C for older adults.
• 37°C for older adults taking anticholinergic medications (which can impair sweating).

Above these indoor temperatures, fans could worsen heat strain by increasing cardiovascular strain and core body temperature. In such situations, alternative cooling strategies such as wetting the skin, moving to a cooler place, or turning the aircon on are essential.

Below these thresholds, we have proven, in laboratory studies, that there’s no reason to switch fans off, because they provide further thermal comfort and reduce heat stress.

Take action now

Based on our field and lab research, we suggest five simple steps to using fans for managing heat at home:

1. consider buying pedestal or ceiling fans

2. point the fan at your body and adjust the speed to your liking

3. wear light clothing and stay hydrated

4. if you have aircon, increase the set-point to 27-28°C

5. enjoy a reduced energy bill and increased comfort.

You may also want to ask your employer to install fans at your workplace and share this “fan-first” cooling strategy with family and friends.

Let’s work together towards a more sustainable future by reducing our reliance on energy-intensive air conditioning. This will lead to lower electricity costs, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and increased resilience to heat.

Federico Tartarini, Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture Design and Planning, University of Sydney; Angie Bone, Associate Professor of Practice in Planetary Health, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University, and Ollie Jay, Professor of Heat & Health; Director of Heat & Health Research Incubator; Director of Thermal Ergonomics Laboratory, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The world needs huge quantities of critical minerals to make batteries, electric vehicles, wind turbines, mobile phones, computers and advanced weaponry.

Many of these minerals lie under Australian soil. Australia is able to produce 9 out of 10 mineral elements required to produce lithium-ion batteries, such as lithium, nickel and cobalt. It also has the highest total reserves of battery minerals.

But at a time of major geopolitical upheaval, critical minerals are also contested. China controls many critical mineral supply chains, allowing it to dominate clean energy technologies. The ongoing United States–China trade war has intensified competition for access to critical minerals.

It’s against this backdrop that Labor has proposed a A$1.2 billion strategic reserve of critical minerals. It’s a timely and welcome step in the right direction.

Why is this reserve needed?

Critical minerals are vital to the industries of the future. But supply can be hard to secure and disruptions can be devastating.

After US President Donald Trump jacked up tariffs on China, Beijing responded by clamping down on critical mineral exports. Almost 80% of US weaponry depends on Chinese critical minerals.

China now dominates mining and refining of many critical minerals. Beijing controls 90% of the world’s rare earth refining, 80% of lithium refining and 68% of nickel refining. The US and other nations are belatedly trying to catch up.

Mining has long been a major Australian industry, particularly iron ore and coal. But Australia has huge reserves of many critical minerals, producing the largest volume of lithium ore in the world as well as stocks of cobalt, manganese, rutile and others. Australian miners Lynas and Australian Strategic Materials are two of the few rare-earth mining companies not owned by China.

That’s where this strategic reserve comes in. If it comes to fruition, the federal government would buy agreed volumes of critical minerals from commercial projects, or establish an option to purchase them at a given price. It would then keep stockpiles of these key minerals to prevent market manipulation by China and stabilise prices by releasing or holding stocks strategically.

The reserve would give Canberra more leverage in negotiating with trading partners and enable a rapid response to supply disruptions. Government backing for the industry would boost onshore processing, scale up domestic production and encourage more high-wage, high-skill jobs in regional areas.

Which minerals will be stockpiled? That’s yet to be determined. The list of ‘critical minerals’ can vary between countries, and a mineral critical to one nation may not be to another.

Australia lists 31 critical minerals while Japan lists 35, the US lists 50 and the European Union 34. Australia’s list is unique in that it reflects global demand, not domestic dependency.

The minerals most commonly included in these lists include cobalt, gallium, indium, niobium, tantalum, platinum group minerals and rare earth elements.

Why is the government intervening?

In 2023, major miners produced close to a billion tonnes of iron ore in Western Australia.

By contrast, critical mineral volumes are small. For instance, only 610 tonnes of gallium were mined in 2023. Major miners such as Rio Tinto, BHP and Vale don’t tend to bother.

Critical mineral markets are often opaque and highly concentrated. The barrier to entry is high. Globally, the market for the 31 critical minerals on Australia’s list is valued at around A$344 billion – about the size of the global aluminium market.

That leaves it to mid-tier and small miners to bridge the gap between rapidly growing demand and supply. The problem is, raising capital is often very difficult. The price of critical minerals can fluctuate wildly. The price of lithium and nickel have fallen sharply over the last two years due to market oversupply.

The strategic reserve would make it easier for these miners by providing access to capital through loans from Export Finance Australia and private investors, reducing financial uncertainty and cost overruns and acting as a buffer against market volatility.

For instance, mid-tier miner Illuka Resources is building Australia’s first rare earths refinery in Western Australia. The project already has significant government support, but it is likely to need more.

Despite Australia’s significant mineral resources, it faces an uphill battle to gain market share. China’s dominance has been driven by low production costs; low environmental, social and goverance standards; and a competitive labour market. But intensifying geopolitical competition between China and the US means Australian minerals would likely be sought by the US.

How can Australia best play its hand?

In volatile market conditions, cheaper operations have a significant advantage, while new mines face an uphill battle.

Australia’s critical minerals hub framework could help offset capital costs. Smaller miners could form cooperatives to share infrastructure and manage logistics, processing and access to international markets. Sharing infrastructure such as roads, rail, energy and ports would reduce the investment risk.

There are other challenges to overcome, such as the long lead times of 10 years or more to go from discovery to production, limited access to low-cost renewable energy and a shortage of technical and scientific capabilities.

Labor’s strategic reserve would help. But it won’t be enough to make Australia into a critical mineral giant. The government should consider:

• building more regional processing hubs with shared infrastructure and microgrids
• offering royalty exemptions, tax incentives and energy subsidies early on
• giving incentives to retrofit facilities to produce critical minerals found alongside main ores, such as cobalt found alongside copper and antimony with gold
• encouraging models where rare earths are concentrated in Australia and processed overseas in partner countries
• establishing Centres of Excellence on critical minerals and creating shared libraries of intellectual property to support research, avoid duplication and optimise resource allocation.

Overall, the proposed reserve is an excellent idea. Government intervention will be necessary to absorb and mitigate risks from price fluctuations and geopolitical shocks.

Mohan Yellishetty, Professor, Co-Founder, Critical Minerals Consortium, and Australia-India Critical Minerals Research Hub, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Earth’s cycles of light and dark profoundly affect billions of organisms. Events such as solar eclipses are known to bring about marked shifts in animals, but do they have the same effect on plants?

During a solar eclipse in a forest in Italy’s Dolomites region, scientists seized the chance to explore that fascinating question.

The researchers were monitoring the bioelectrical impulses of spruce trees, when a solar eclipse passed over. They left their sensors running to record the trees’ response to the eclipse – and what they observed was astonishing.

The spruce trees not only responded to the solar eclipse – they actively anticipated it, by synchronising their bioelectrical signals hours in advance.

This forest-wide phenomenon, detailed today in the journal Royal Society Open Science, reveals a new layer of complexity in plant behaviour. It adds to emerging evidence that plants actively participate in their ecosystems.

Do trees respond collectively?

The research was led by Professor Alessandro Chiolerio of the Italian Institute of Technology, and Professor Monica Gagliano from Australia’s Southern Cross University, who is the lead author on this article. It also involved a team of international scientists.

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, fully or partially blocking the Sun’s light.

An eclipse can inspire awe and even social cohesion in humans. Other animals have been shown to gather and synchronise their movements during such an event.

But scientists know very little about how plants respond to solar eclipses. Some research suggests the rapid transitions from darkness to light during an eclipse can change plant behaviour. But this research focuses on the responses of individual plants.

The latest study set out to discover if trees respond to a solar eclipse together, as a living collective.

What the research involved

Charged molecules travel through the cells of all living organisms, transmitting electrical signals as they go. Collectively, this electrical activity is known as the organism’s “electrome”.

The electrical activity is primarily driven by the movement of ions across cell membranes. It creates tiny currents that allow organisms, including humans, to coordinate their body and communicate.

The researchers wanted to investigated the electrical signals of spruce trees (Picea abies) during a partial solar eclipse on October 25, 2022. It took place in the Costa Bocche forest near Paneveggio in the Dolomites area, Italy.

The scientists set out to understand the trees’ electrical activity during the hour-long eclipse. They used custom-built sensors and wired them to three trees. Two were healthy trees about 70 years old, one in full sun and one in full shade. The third was a healthy tree about 20 years old, in full shade.

They also attached the sensors to five tree stumps – the remnants old trees, originally part of a pristine forest, but which were devastated by a storm several years earlier.

For each tree and stump, the researchers used five pairs of electrodes, placed in both the inner and outer layers of the tree, including on exposed roots, branches and trunks. The electrodes were connected to the sensors.

This set-up allowed the scientists to monitor the bioelectrical activity from multiple trees and stumps across four sites during the solar eclipse. They examined both individual tree responses, and bioelectrical signals between trees.

In particular, the scientists measured changes in the trees’ “bioelectrical potentials”. This term refers to the differences in voltage across cell membranes.

What did they find?

The electrical activity of all three trees became significantly more synchronised around the eclipse - both before and during the one-hour event. These changes occur at a microscopic level, such as inside water and lymph molecules in the tree.

The two older trees in the study had a much more pronounced early response to the impending eclipse than the young tree. This suggests older trees may have developed mechanisms to anticipate and respond to such events, similar to their responses to seasonal changes.

Solar eclipses may seem rare from a human perspective, but they follow cycles which can occur well within the lifespan of long-lived trees. The scientists also detected bioelectrical waves travelling between the trees. This suggests older trees may transmit their ecological knowledge to younger trees.

Such a dynamic is consistent with studies showing long-distance signalling between plants can help them coordinate various physiological functions in response to environmental changes.

The researchers also detected changes in the bioelectrical responses of the stumps during the eclipse, albeit less pronounced than in the standing trees. This suggests the stumps were still alive.

The research team then used computer modelling, and advanced analytical methods including quantum field theory, to test the findings of the physical experiment.

The results reinforced the experimental results. That is, not only did the eclipse influence the bioelectrical responses of individual trees, the activity was correlated. This suggests a cohesive, organism-like reaction at the forest scale.

Understanding forest connections

These findings align with extensive prior research by others, highlighting the extent to which trees in forest ecosystems are connected.

These behaviours may ultimately influence the forest ecosystem’s resilience, biodiversity and overall function, by helping it cope with rapid and unpredictable changes.

The findings also underscore the importance of protecting older forests, which serve as pillars of ecosystem resilience – potentially preserving and transmitting invaluable ecological knowledge.

This research is featured in a documentary, Il Codice del Bosco (The Forest Code), premiering in Italy on May 1, 2025.

Monica Gagliano, Research Associate Professor in Evolutionary Biology, Southern Cross University and Prudence Gibson, Lecturer and Researcher in Plant Humanities, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.