With the passing of Dr Jane Goodall, the world has lost a conservation giant. But her extraordinary achievements leave a profound legacy.

Goodall was a world-leading expert in animal behaviour and a globally recognised environmental and conservation advocate. She achieved all this at a time when women were commonly sidelined or ignored in science.

Her work with chimpanzees showed it was wrong to assume only humans used tools. She showed us the animals expressed emotions such as love and grief and have individual personalities.

Goodall showed us scientists can express their emotions and values and that we can be respected researchers as well as passionate advocates and science communicators. After learning about how chimpanzees were being used in medical research, she spoke out: “I went to the conference as a scientist, and I left as an activist.”

As childhood rights activist Marian Wright Edelman has eloquently put it, “You can’t be what you can’t see”.

Goodall showed what it was possible to be.

Forging her own path

Goodall took a nontraditional path into science. The brave step of going into the field at the age of 26 to make observations was supported by her mother.

Despite making world-first discoveries such as tool use by non-humans, people didn’t take her seriously because she hadn’t yet gone to university. Nowadays, people who contribute wildlife observations are celebrated under the banner of citizen science.

Goodall was a beacon at a time when science was largely dominated by men – especially remote fieldwork. But she changed that narrative. She convinced famous paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey to give her a chance. He first employed her as a secretary. But it wasn’t long until he asked her to go to Tanzania’s remote Gombe Stream National Park. In 1960, she arrived.

This was not easy. It took real courage to work in a remote area with limited support alongside chimpanzees, a species thought to be peaceful but now known to be far stronger than humans and capable of killing animals and humans.

Goodall is believed to be the only person accepted into chimpanzee society. Through calm but determined persistence she won their trust. These qualities served Goodall well – not just with chimps, but throughout her entire career advocating for conservation and societal change.

At Gombe, she showed for the first time that animals could fashion and use tools, had individual personalities, expressed emotions and had a higher intelligence and understanding than they were credited with.

Goodall was always an animal person and her love of chimps was in part inspired by her toy Jubilee, gifted by her father. She had close bonds with her pets and extended these bonds to wildlife. Goodall gave her study subjects names such as “David Greybeard”, the first chimp to accept her at Gombe.

Some argue we shouldn’t place a human persona on animals by naming them. But Goodall showed it was not only acceptable to see animals as individuals with different behaviours, but it greatly aids connection with and care for wildlife.

Goodall became an international voice for wildlife. She used her profile to encourage a focus on animal welfare in conservation, caring for both individuals and species.

A pioneer for women in science

With Goodall’s passing, the world has lost one of the three great “nonagenarian environmental luminaries”, to use co-author Vanessa Pirotta’s phrase. The other two are the naturalist documentary maker, Sir David Attenborough, 99, and famed marine biologist Dr Sylvia Earle, who is 90.

Goodall showed us women can be pioneering scientists and renowned communicators as well as mothers.

She shared her work in ways accessible to all generations, from National Geographic documentaries to hip podcasts.

Her visibility encouraged girls and women around the world to be bold and follow our own paths.

Goodall’s story directly inspired several authors of this article.

Co-author Marissa Parrott was privileged to have spoken to Goodall several times during her visits to Melbourne Zoo and on her world tours. Goodall’s story was a direct inspiration for Parrott’s own remote and international fieldwork, supported by her mother just as Goodall’s mother had supported her. They both survived malaria, which also kills chimpanzees and gorillas. Goodall long championed a One Health approach, recognising the health of communities, wildlife and the environment are all interconnected.

Co-author Zara Bending worked and toured alongside Goodall. The experience demonstrated how conservationists could be powerful advocates through storytelling, and how our actions reveal who we are. As Goodall once said:

every single one of us matters, every single one of us has a role to play, and every single one of us makes a difference every single day.

From the forest floor to global icon

Goodall knew conservation is as much about people as it is about wildlife and wild places.

Seventeen years after beginning her groundbreaking research in Gombe, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute with the mission of protecting wildlife and habitat by engaging local communities.

Her institute’s global network now spans five continents and continues her legacy of community-centred conservation. Researchers have now been studying the chimps at Gombe for 65 years.

Goodall moved from fieldwork to being a global conservation icon who regularly travelled more than 300 days a year. She observed many young people across cultures and creeds who had lost hope for their future amid environmental and climate destruction. In response, she founded a second organisation, Roots & Shoots, in 1991. Her goal was:

to foster respect and compassion for all living things, to promote understanding of all cultures and beliefs, and to inspire each individual to take action to make the world a better place for people, other animals, and the environment.

Last year, Roots & Shoots groups were active in 75 countries. Their work is a testament to Goodall’s mantra: find hope in action.

Protecting nature close to home

One of Goodall’s most remarkable attributes was her drive to give people the power to take action where they were. No matter where people lived or what they did, she helped them realise they could be part of the solution.

In a busy, urbanised world, it’s easier than ever to feel disconnected from nature. Rather than presenting nature as a distant concept, Goodall made it something for everyone to experience, care for and cherish.

She showed we didn’t have to leave our normal lives behind to protect nature – we could make just as much difference in our own communities.

One of her most famous quotes rings just as true today as when she first said it:

only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help shall all be saved.

Let’s honour her world-changing legacy by committing to understand, care and help save all species with whom we share this world. For Jane Goodall.

Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University; Kylie Soanes, Postdoctoral Fellow in Urban Biodiversity, The University of Melbourne; Marissa Parrott, Honorary Research Associate in BioSciences, The University of Melbourne; Vanessa Pirotta, Postdoctoral Researcher and Wildlife Scientist, Macquarie University, and Zara Bending, Associate, Centre for Environmental Law, Macquarie University

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

This month marks 60 years since Dame Jane Goodall first ventured into the wilds of Gombe, Tanzania, at the tender age of 26 to study the behaviour of chimpanzees. She has devoted her life to species conservation and campaigned tirelessly for a healthier environment.

Jane is an icon of our era. Among her groundbreaking discoveries are that chimpanzees have personalities, use tools, have wars and can eat meat — all of which made us question our own behaviour as closely related great apes.

She established the Jane Goodall Institute, and her Roots and Shoots program now operates in more than 100 countries to encourage young people to be compassionate, helping people, animals and the environment.

When I first read about Jane’s work, I was amazed anyone could get so close to animals — in her case chimpanzees — to understand their minds, society and lives. For several decades, my research attempted to do the same for intensively farmed animals.

Jane and I ended up in the same philosophical place: committed to exposing the horrors of factory farming, and proudly vegetarian because of the damage eating meat does to animals, the environment and to people eating the end products.

With this in mind I relished the prospect of meeting Jane. She gave us all unique insights into the inner lives of one of our closest relatives, chimpanzees, as well as pioneering a compassionate approach to animals, a cause very close to my heart.

Clive Phillips: Jane, you famously dispelled the myth that humans are the only tool-users. Do humans have any unique characteristics to distinguish them from other animals?

Jane Goodall: Well, I believe the most important thing distinguishing us is the explosive development of the human intellect. We have developed communication using words, which means we can learn from our elders, we can plan for the future and we can teach our children about things that are not pleasant.

Above all, we can bring people together from different backgrounds to discuss a problem and try and find the solutions.

Phillips: Do you think this “human uniqueness” implies a responsibility towards animals?

Goodall: I would say it’s a humanistic responsibility. I mean, once you are prepared to admit that we humans are not the only beings on the planet with personalities, minds and, above all, emotions, and once you are prepared to admit that animals are sentient and can not only know emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, but especially they can feel pain — then, as humans with advanced reasoning powers, we have a responsibility to treat them in more humane ways than we so often do.

Phillips: You mentioned the importance of pain in animals and sentience. Does that give us a moral duty towards them? Or, do you think we have a right to manage them?

Goodall: Well, I don’t know about having a right to to manage them. But the problem is that because of the way our societies have developed, the harm we inflict on the environment, and the devastation we’ve caused so many species, we now have an obligation to try and change things so animals can have a better future.

We now know it’s not only the great apes, elephants and whales that are amazingly intelligent. We now know some birds like crows and the octopus can be, in some situations, more intelligent than small human children. Even some insects have been trained to do simple tests. This was unthinkable a while back.

We also know, for example, that trees can communicate to the micro fungi on their roots, under the soil. And this is amazing. It’s very exciting for any young person wanting to go into this field — these really are exciting times.

Phillips: Do you believe climate change will alter the relationship we have with other animals, and our ability to manage and use them in the way we do at the moment?

Goodall: We shouldn’t be managing and using them. We should be giving them the opportunity to live their own lives in their own way. And we should stop interfering.

We should protect habitat so that they can continue to flourish in their natural habitat. Those animals that we have subjugated to domestication should be treated as animals: sentient sapiens with feelings, knowing fear and depression and pain.

And we should really start thinking about what we’re doing in our factory farms, in our labs and with hunting. To me, that’s the most important thing.

Phillips: And that will, in itself, address some of the climate change issues, I imagine.

Goodall: Yes. Eating meat involves billions of animals in factory farms that have to be fed. Areas of environment are cleared to grow the grain, fossil fuels are used get the grain to the animals, the animals to the abattoir and the meat to the tables.

Water is wasted changing vegetable to animal protein, and methane the animals produce in their digestion is one of the most intense greenhouse gases. All of this means we have to do something about continuing to eat more and more meat.

Phillips: And yet the world is eating more and more meat.

Goodall: Well, we have to change attitudes. Yes, we’re eating more meat, but at the same time the number of people who are becoming vegetarian and vegan is increasing.

Phillips: It reminds me of one of your early discoveries of chimpanzees eating meat. Do you think that had an implication or any bearing on the human diet?

Goodall: Humans are not carnivorous, we are omnivorous. And there is a big difference. Our gut is not like a carnivore’s guts, which is short to get rid of the meat before it goes bad and inside your gut. We have a vegetarian gut, an omnivore’s diet. This means our gut is much longer to get all the goodness out of leaves and all the other things we eat.

So when you think of chimps — yes, they hunt, and they seem to love hunting. But it’s been estimated that meat occupies only about 2% of their diets. That’s just for some individuals. Others hardly ever eat meat at all.

Phillips: How can we best get the message across that a vegetarian diet is the most sustainable for the planet, and good for animal welfare?

Goodall: We’re working with young people from kindergarten through university, now in more than 50 countries, growing all the time. It involves young people of all ages choosing projects to make the world better for people, animals and the environment.

They are changing the way their parents think, and the vegetarian ethic is very strong in many of them. So I say you’ve got to change the mindset and children help to change the behaviour of their parents.

Phillips: That’s a tremendous piece of advocacy, given the huge concerns there are about animals’ contribution to climate change and other dangers they pose to our water supplies and the quality of our land.

Do you think there should be any legal control of the use of animals for intensive animal production?

Goodall: Yes, I do. I think it should be banned. A) for the tremendous suffering caused to the animals; B) for the harm to the environment; and C) for the harm to human health. There should be legislation that limits or bans these intensive farms.

This is an edited version of the original interview.

Clive Phillips, Professor of Animal Welfare, Centre for Animal Welfare and Ethics, The University of Queensland

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

Have you heard offshore windfarms kill whales? (They don’t.) Or that electric vehicles catch fire more often than petrol cars? (It’s the opposite.) Perhaps you’ve heard “natural” gas is clean? (It can be worse than coal.)

This is what climate misinformation looks like. These claims are common, influential and damaging. They’re often spread for a reason: to slow the uptake of clean alternatives to fossil fuels. Unfortunately, they are shaping public opinion.

This week, a Senate inquiry is hearing testimony from officials, climate scientists and researchers about the scale of the problem and its effects on Australian politics. Policymakers are also hearing about the main culprits: oil, gas and coal companies, as well as key enablers such as public relations firms. I was one of the experts called to give evidence.

My research has followed the money trail between the fossil fuel industry and public relations firms. As a co-editor on a forthcoming book on climate obstruction, I can say that large PR firms have too often put their commercial interests, and the interests of fossil fuel giants, ahead of those of the public. My colleagues and I made this clear in our submission to the inquiry.

What’s the point of misinformation?

In the climate domain, researchers typically use the word “misinformation” to refer to any falsehoods about climate change. They can be spread innocuously or through a deliberate campaign.

Misinformation matters because it can influence attitudes and behaviours of both the public and political elites. Tackling climate change effectively requires public support for clean energy and many other changes. Misinformation erodes this support for climate science and climate policies. The more often false information is repeated, the more likely we are to think of it as true.

These campaigns can inflate the sense of opposition to climate action and give policymakers a false sense of how widespread support for climate action is.

Australian policymakers have previously moved to ban or restrict advertising for products known to be dangerous. Cigarette advertising is banned because cigarettes cause cancer, and now there’s a growing push to ban fossil fuel advertising due to the damage done by emissions.

How do PR firms spread climate misinformation?

PR and advertising firms have long been paid to craft political campaigns for oil and gas companies often to block or slow climate policies.

These campaigns involve more than simply running a few television ads for a corporate client. PR firms often run polling, focus groups and media and social media campaigns. Some undertake astroturfing – creating fake community groups to give the impression of widespread support or opposition for an issue or policy.

The largest of these campaigns have been documented in the United States. To gauge how much the oil and gas industry pours into PR firms to run political campaigns, my colleague and I analysed a decade’s worth of the tax records of industry groups active on climate change issues in the US. We found oil and gas lobby groups spent A$1.5 billion on public relations and advertising between 2008 and 2018.

What did this money buy? Here’s one example. Ahead of the US presidential election in 2012, a group named “Energy Citizens” ran an ad campaign titled “I’m an energy voter” across newspapers, television and online, featuring ordinary Americans saying “I vote … for American domestic energy”.

Energy Citizens appeared to be a grassroots campaign. But in reality, it was astroturfing. The oil and gas industry had contracted the large PR firm Edelman to run the campaign. The people in the ads were hired actors. Between 2011 and 2012, our data shows the largest oil and gas industry group, the American Petroleum Institute, paid Edelman A$180 million in contracts for public relations and advertising.

Climate obstruction is common in Australia

This is not a US-specific problem. PR firms have a long history of helping obstruct climate policy in Australia, too. The effective coal industry campaign against an emissions trading scheme in Australia between 2008 and 2010 was created by PR firms and political consultants.

Australia’s poor disclosure practices mean we don’t know how much money industry groups are paying PR companies in Australia.

But we do know PR companies are creating misinformation campaigns and astroturfing groups such as Australians for Natural Gas, which describes itself as a non-government organisation. It was set up by the chief executive of gas company Tamboran Resources, with help from PR firm Freshwater Strategy, according to media reports.

Many PR firms in Australia have worked for the fossil fuel industry, as documented by climate communications charity Comms Declare. In response, some PR professionals are pushing to cut ties with the industry.

Misinformation is dangerous

The problem has been recognised at the highest levels. Last year, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on PR firms to “stop acting as enablers to planetary destruction”.

Last month, the Australian government released its long-awaited report on the very real and escalating dangers posed by climate change.

This week’s Senate hearings could not be more timely. Climate misinformation is spreading wildly – aided by public relations firms – even as climate change worsens and the risks mount. The question now is, how will policymakers respond?

Christian Downie, Professor of Political Science, School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University

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

Native animals can make excellent neighbours. Blue banded bees pollinate our vegetable gardens. Microbats eat up to 1,200 mosquitoes a night and powerful owls keep rodents at bay. But could we go one step further, and change our homes to invite native animals in as housemates?

Cities are biodiversity hotspots and have an important role in tackling the extinction crises for animals, plants and insects. As cities continue to sprawl, our buildings have become increasingly important habitat for wildlife.

Animals are not the only ones to benefit. Evidence shows noticing wildlife at home can lead to better mental health. Co-habitating with wildlife can also help you feel more at home.

But how can we intentionally design our homes to co-inhabit with wildlife? That’s the question explored by When Wildlife Moves In, a new work at the National Gallery of Victoria. The work, created by the authors of this article, uses data from Wildlife Victoria to explore how homes can become shared ecological resources.

Here are eight easy ways to invite wildlife into your home and backyard.

1. Give butterflies a drink from your air con

Urban butterflies are declining at alarming rates around the world. At the same time, water dripping from air conditioners wastes millions of litres of clean water daily. Studies show this water is safe to reuse for nature.

Butterflies, for example, like to sip water from shallow water sources because they tend to get stuck in deeper water.

Solution? Leave an area of gravel beneath your air conditioner vent to create a “puddling” station for butterflies. This will transform what would otherwise go down our drains into habitat for a beloved pollinator.

2. Provide city birds with scarce nesting material

The scarcity of natural nesting materials in cities poses challenges for some animals. Many are forced to get creative – sometimes incorporating dangerous or lethal alternatives such as plastics into their nests.

Solution? Leave a bowl out in your backyard providing nesting materials such as lawn clippings, native grasses, bark strips and untreated hair. This will help native birds such as the Australian magpie and the Pied Butcherbird

3. Move indoor plants away from windows

Glass doors and windows are a serious threat to birds. In the United States alone, as many as a billion birds each year are killed or badly injured flying into glass.

Solution? Move indoor plants out of view through windows and doors so birds don’t mistake them for habitat. Or put anti-collision stickers on your windows, ensuring they are high contrast in colour and spaced no more than 5–10 cm apart.

4. Remove the concrete from your backyard

Concrete slabs destroy soil microorganisms and prevent animals from digging and tunnelling to create nesting sites.

Wombats are ecosystem engineers. Their burrowing aerates soil, improves water infiltration and cycles organic material and nutrients. But urban development fragments their habitat and concrete foundations seal off natural soil ecosystems. When this happens, wombats adapt by creating alternative burrow systems under houses, decks and other human structures.

Solution? Remove the concrete slabs from your backyard and leave open soil with vegetation or a raised deck in its place.

5. Leave the cavities in your houses unsealed

Natural tree hollows are disappearing at an alarming rate due to urban sprawl and tree removals. It has forced microbats and other hollow-dependent species to seek refuge in dark spaces in our buildings, such as wall cavities, roof voids and building crevices.

Solution? Let the bats continue living in your building cavities. If you are bothered by them, wait until they leave, then provide a bat nesting box so they can safely continue living.

6. Plant the ‘missing’ layer birds need

Australian cities are missing a crucial habitat layer — the “middle storey” between ground cover and tall trees. This gap in coverage allows aggressive species such as noisy miners to dominate, pushing out smaller native birds and threatening endangered species.

Solution? Plant more shrubs and bushes to create a bushy layer of 2-4 metres. This helps smaller birds such as Superb Fairy-wrens find places to hide. It’s also useful to include habitat elements such as log piles and rocks.

7. Keep your cats inside

Every free-roaming cat is a threat to wildlife. Feral and free-roaming cats collectively kill more than three billion animals a year in Australia.

Cats have played a leading role in most of Australia’s 34 mammal extinctions since 1788, and are a big reason why populations of at least 123 other threatened native species are declining.

Solution? “Catios”, or cat patios, allow cats to experience nature but keep wildlife safe from predators.

8. Build a frog sauna

Some of the best wildlife-friendly ideas are surprisingly simple. Frog saunas, for instance, are small structures with frog-sized holes, made from black bricks or similar materials that heat up in the sun. These structures help fight chytrid fungus, a devastating disease that’s pushing many Australian frog species toward extinction.

Chytrid thrives in cold conditions but dies in heat, making these warm refuges potentially life-saving for local amphibians. Instructions for building your own frog sauna are free, requiring little more than recycled materials and a sunny spot in your garden.

A shared future

Australian cities are important for conserving biodiversity – and our homes can help. Thoughtful, intentional design can better support the species that need our support.

If you want to find ways to co-habitate with native wildlife, click here for more solutions.

When Wildlife Moves In is part of the exhibition Making Good: Redesigning the Everyday, showing at the NGV Ian Potter Gallery. The exhibition explores how designers are reshaping the products and systems that shape our daily lives.

Bethany Kiss, PhD Candidate, RMIT University; Mark Jacques, Professor of Architecture, RMIT University. Director, Openwork Pty Ltd., RMIT University, and Sarah Bekessy, Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning, Leader, Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group (ICON Science), RMIT University

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

It’s official: the only Australian shrew is no more.

The latest edition of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List, the world’s most comprehensive global inventory on extinction risk, has declared the Christmas Island shrew is extinct.

The news may not seem momentous. After all, most Australians know nothing of shrews and would be unaware this one species counted among our native fauna.

But the shrew’s extinction increases the tally of Australian mammals extinct since 1788 to 39 species. This is far more than for any other country. These losses represent about 10% of all Australia’s land mammal species before colonisation. It is a deplorable record of trashing an extraordinary legacy.

So, what are shrews?

Shrews are small, long-nosed, insect-eating mammals, with many species widely distributed across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. On mainland Australia, similar roles are filled by unrelated small marsupials such as dunnarts, antechinuses, planigales and ningauis, which are themselves not writ large on our national consciousness.

Many people will know of shrews only courtesy of Shakespeare. Combining misogyny and zoophobia (an intense fear of animals) he used the name of this inoffensive animal to describe a shrill, ever-complaining, grating caricature of women. The offensive term has stuck through the ages, draining sympathy for and interest in the animal.

The history of Australia’s shrew

It must have been a harrowing voyage. Tens of thousands of years ago, a small family of shrews (or a pregnant female) rafted on floating vegetation, from islands of what is now Indonesia. Haphazardly, they landed on uninhabited Christmas Island, now an Australian territory about 1,500 kilometres west of the mainland. These lucky or reckless pioneers gave rise to Australia’s only shrew species.

For many years the Christmas Island shrew prospered. When European naturalists first visited Christmas Island in the 1890s, at the time of its settlement, they remarked:

[…] this little animal is extremely common all over the island, and at night its shrill shriek, like the cry of a bat, can be heard on all sides.

Change came quickly thereafter. In 1900, black rats were accidentally introduced, stowaways on hay bales. Worse, these rats were infested with trypanosomes, a cellular parasite. These trypanosomes spread rapidly to the island’s two species of native rats (and presumably the shrew).

The long isolation of Christmas Island had cocooned its native mammals, leaving them with no resistance to new diseases. Within a year, island residents began seeing many dying rats stumbling across the forest floor.

By the time naturalists next visited the island in 1908, the two species of native rats and the Christmas Island shrew were thought to have become extinct. Subsequently, many other endemic animals were also lost or suffered serious declines due to the introduction of cats and invasive species of ants, snails, plants, giant centipedes, birds and snakes.

It is a pattern that has occurred repeatedly across the world’s islands. Introductions of plants and animals have subverted island ecosystems and, as a consequence, endemic island species represent a disproportionately high number of the world’s extinctions.

Defying extinction?

But the shrew lived on. After not being seen for more than 50 years, two survivors were caught in the 1950s as bulldozers cleared a patch of rainforest for mining. The shrews were released and the find was not reported until many years later.

Then, nothing for another 30 years. In December 1984, biologists Hugh Yorkston and Jeff Tranter were clearing a rainforest track and came across a live female shrew in a clump of fallen birds’ nest fern. They kept the shrew in a terrarium for 12-18 months, industriously catching grasshoppers to feed it.

At the time, they didn’t consider this a final opportunity to conserve the species through a captive breeding program. When, with extraordinary serendipity, a male shrew was found alive only a few months later in March 1985, it was kept in a separate terrarium. The female was docile but the male was aggressive. It also appeared unwell.

Whatever the reason, there was no introduction, no consummation and no baby shrews. The male died about three weeks after capture while the female lingered on, alone.

No shrews left

Since 1984, there have been no recorded sightings. This means only four Christmas Island shrews have been reported in over 120 years.

Almost no information on the biology of this species has been published, other than the single sentence written by naturalist Charles Andrews in 1900:

[…] it lives in holes in rocks and roots of trees, and seems to feed mainly on beetles.

There are few pictures. However, inklings of the nature of the last known shrew can be seen in a beautiful sketch by the park ranger, naturalist and artist Max Orchard.

In the nearly 40 years since the death of the last known individual, two recovery plans have been compiled, outlining the actions needed to conserve the species. There have been targeted searches. But no shrews have turned up to benefit from those plans.

The most telling evidence of their extinction is the absence of any shrews in the stomach contents of hundreds of feral cats culled over the past few decades.

While the shrew clearly survived until the 1980s, this decade saw the arrival of yet another threat, the Asian wolf snake. This snake quickly spread across the island, most likely causing the extinction of the island’s endemic microbat, the Christmas Island pipistrelle, in 2009 and most of the endemic lizards. The snake’s arrival also probably marked the death knell for any remaining shrews.

We must try harder to prevent extinctions

Extinction can be difficult to prove, especially for a species as cryptic as the shrew. There is peril in categorising a species as extinct when it still survives. This misclassification has been termed the “Romeo error”, where formal recognition of a species as extinct can result in the withdrawal of funding or protection, and hence increase likelihood of actual extinction.

In 2022, the Australian government through then-Minister for the Environment Tanya Plibersek pledged, admirably, to preventing any more extinctions. Although today’s formal recognition of the shrew’s extinction comes after that pledge, the last shrew probably died one to two decades beforehand.

The shrew’s loss is a reminder of the enormity of the challenge of preventing further extinctions, of the diverse ways these losses can happen, of the need to seize opportunities to protect rare species, and of the importance of a national and political commitment to prevent extinction.

I hope the Christmas Island shrew is not extinct; after all it has defied previous calls of its demise. Perhaps somewhere, a small furtive family of shrews are hanging on, elusive survivors, secure in the knowledge of their own existence and waiting to prove the pessimists wrong.

Hugh Yorkston, Jeff Tranter and Paul Meek helped with this article.

John Woinarski, Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University

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

To a newly-arrived red fox, the abundant rolling grasslands and swamps of Wadawurrung Country, around what is now called Port Phillip Bay, must have seemed like a predator’s paradise.

This landscape was filled with small native marsupials and birds, and free of European wolves or bears that usually kept fox numbers in check.

The first red foxes, (Vulpes vulpes), to arrive in Australia were deliberately released by European colonialists in 1870 in three Victorian locations – Werribee, Corio (near Geelong) and Ballarat. They were introduced for the “noble” sport of fox hunting.

Small native animals became easy prey for foxes because they did not evolve with these predators and did not know to avoid them.

Red fox numbers ballooned and they spread rapidly. How fast? Our new research shows it took just 60 years for one of Australia’s most devastating invasive predators to colonise the continent. These days, foxes can be found everywhere except the tropical north and Tasmania.

Their rapid spread offers clues to how we might prevent future extinctions of native animals from foxes, and map the infiltration of Australia by other invasive species.

Mapping the spread

To model the arrival and spread of foxes across Australia, we relied on hundreds of historical “first-sighting” records collected from library, local government and state archives.

First sightings of foxes were particularly newsworthy at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century in Australia. This is because of the threats that foxes posed to sheep and poultry.

We ran thousands of model simulations reconstructing the arrival and spread of foxes across Australia. We played out likely scenarios of fox survival, reproduction and dispersal based on what we know about their behaviour today.

We then compared these simulated patterns of population growth and expansion against inferences of demographic change from these historical records. Our best models were able to closely reconstruct the timing of arrival of foxes in places and regions as well as their current day population sizes.

Our modelling demonstrated foxes populated Australia at incredible speed. Between 1870 and 1895, they had spread across the southeastern corner of Australia. Then they spread more slowly to the north and west directions in arid regions. By 1940, however, they had reached the remote northwest.

Flourishing foxes

Foxes mate in winter, with females giving birth to four to five cubs. By autumn, the young foxes are on their own. They can travel up to 300 kilometres in search of new territory.

As omnivores, they eat everything from small mammals such as rodents and rabbits to birds, insects and plants. In their native range from Europe to the Middle East foxes have been suppressed by predators like bears and wolves, but in Australia, fox numbers have soared.

Unfortunately, the suppression of dingoes across Australia following European colonisation is at least partly to blame for the explosion in fox numbers because there are not sufficient densities of dingoes control foxes.

Foxes flourish in areas modified by humans. We show that their populations are densest around urban centres, and they do well after land is cleared for agriculture. Population growth rates of foxes in agricultural regions increased notably in the 1950s, as a result of large-scale agricultural expansion following World War II.

This research also showed that in arid areas, population cycles of foxes follow a “boom and bust” cycle, while their numbers seem more stable in agricultural landscapes.

Driving extinction

European red foxes and domestic cats brought to Australia kill about 300 million native animals in Australia every year and remain the major driver of past and current extinctions.

Australia’s fox population is about 1.7 million, and the Invasive Species Council estimates as many as 16 mammal species have become extinct mainly or partly because of foxes. This is about 40% of total extinctions since European arrival.

Our new research provides important insights into which native species have been threatened for the longest period of time, identifying areas that were potentially important refuges from foxes.

The adaptable simulation models we used to track fox expansion can be used for other invasive species that haven’t yet infiltrated all of Australia, such as cane toads. We hope these models will help us map the spread of other invasive species such as cats, and potentially curb Australia’s decline in native wildlife.

Sean Tomlinson, Research Associate, Ecology and Evolution, University of Adelaide and Damien Fordham, Associate Professor of Global Change Ecology, University of Adelaide

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

Since 2020, the conservation outlook has worsened for four of Australia’s 16 natural World Heritage properties – Ningaloo, Shark Bay, Purnululu National Park and the Australian Fossil Mammal Sites. This means 25% of our natural areas globally recognised as being significant are either in worse health or need better planning to secure their future.

The Great Barrier Reef remains in the lowest rating – “critical” – as one of just 17 natural World Heritage properties globally with this outlook. Only Macquarie Island has improved in its outlook, largely due to the removal of rodents and rabbits. Australia’s 11 other properties have an unchanged outlook.

These findings come from the new independent World Heritage Outlook, published today by the world authority on nature, the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Why the downgrades? Climate change is the biggest threat. Worsening marine heatwaves are hitting coral reefs hard, while land areas are also affected by extreme weather and wildfires. Climate change now poses a severe threat to 12 of Australia’s properties – 75% of the total – more than any other threat.

What’s changed?

The new IUCN report shows six Australian World Heritage properties have a “significant concern” rating, while four are rated “good with some concerns” and five are rated as “good”. The Great Barrier Reef is the only one rated “critical”.

Reefs on the frontline

The Great Barrier Reef recently suffered its sixth mass bleaching since 2016. Recent surveys show this is the first time very high (61-90% of corals) and extreme (over 90%) bleaching has been observed across all three regions of the reef.

The world’s largest coral reef complex is considered in critical condition, as it is severely threatened and deteriorating.

Climate change is driving intensifying heat in the oceans, which can trigger coral bleaching and other adverse impacts. Climate change is only one of many threats facing the reef, alongside poor water quality, unsustainable fishing and coastal development.

Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef is now listed as “significant concern”. Climate change is the biggest threat to this area, known for its whale sharks and manta rays.

Five marine heatwaves have hit Ningaloo over the last 15 years. But the worst by far was this year’s intense marine heatwave, which was off the charts. Major bleaching has been seen along the full length of the reef, inside the shallow lagoon and on the deeper reef slopes.

Western Australia’s Shark Bay has also deteriorated due to escalating climate threats.

The damage done by this year’s marine heatwave is yet to be fully understood. But we do know Shark Bay’s ancient stromatolites are vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme climate events. A major dieback of enormous seagrass beds occurred during an earlier heatwave in 2010-11.

Under a business as usual scenario for carbon emissions, coral bleaching is expected to intensify to the point where coral reefs disappear by the end of the century.

Land-based parks are also under threat

Most of Australian natural World Heritage areas on land have also been hit by extreme weather events. Severe and widespread bushfires have hit the Tasmanian Wilderness, Gondwana Rainforests, Greater Blue Mountains, K’gari, Wet Tropics of Queensland and Kakadu National Park at some point over the past decade.

The intensity and frequency of such events, compounded by extreme weather, are expected to increase and threaten the resilience of all these areas.

Downgrades due to lack of planning

Two more natural properties have been downgraded from “Good” to “Good with some concerns” due to concerns over planning for the future.

Western Australia’s Purnululu National Park protects the Bungle Bungle Range. IUCN considers updated management planning is needed to address the main challenges facing the area’s ecology, especially given the intensifying threats from climate change.

The Australian Fossil Mammal Site was downgraded for a similar reason. This site consists of two separate areas with rich fossil histories – South Australia’s Naracoorte Caves and Queensland’s Riversleigh.

The downgrade here reflects the assessment that both areas need to be better protected with updated plans, more effective management, regular monitoring of Naracoorte caves and sustained funding for protection, staff training and scientific research.

Good news: Macquarie Island is rebounding

Australia’s Macquarie Island lies halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica. Its isolation made it perfect for seabirds and unusual megaherb plant species. But introduced rats, mice and rabbits did real damage.

The reason Macquarie has been upgraded to a good outlook is due to a highly successful pest eradication and recovery program. Since these pests have been wiped out, plants have regrown and seabirds such as albatross and burrowing petrels have returned in large numbers to breed.

In other good news, the site protection and management of 14 of Australia’s natural properties have been rated as either mostly or highly effective. This is welcome praise for the dedicated work of the staff.

The question now is whether these efforts will be enough to protect these globally important sites against threats from outside the property boundaries, such as climate change, mining and infrastructure and invasive species. These threats are occurring as many properties face budgetary constraints.

Australia at the front of globally worrying trends

Australia isn’t alone in witnessing natural World Heritage properties deteriorate. Since 2020, 10% of the world’s 271 natural and mixed World Heritage areas have deteriorated, while 5% have shown improvement.

Regrettably, Australia is still punching below its weight, given 25% of its natural properties face a worse outlook than they did five years ago and only one has improved.

The threats facing these famous natural places are escalating. Halting the decline will require good management of all types of pressures.

.

Given climate change is the single biggest threat, it would make sense for policymakers to be as ambitious as possible on climate action to help preserve what makes these places so special.

Jon C. Day, Adjunct Principal Research Fellow, College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University

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

As the planet warms, it risks crossing catastrophic tipping points: thresholds where Earth systems, such as ice sheets and rain forests, change irreversibly over human lifetimes.

Scientists have long warned that if global temperatures warmed more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared with before the Industrial Revolution, and stayed high, they would increase the risk of passing multiple tipping points. For each of these elements, like the Amazon rain forest or the Greenland ice sheet, hotter temperatures lead to melting ice or drier forests that leave the system more vulnerable to further changes.

Worse, these systems can interact. Freshwater melting from the Greenland ice sheet can weaken ocean currents in the North Atlantic, disrupting air and ocean temperature patterns and marine food chains.

With these warnings in mind, 194 countries a decade ago set 1.5 C as a goal they would try not to cross. Yet in 2024, the planet temporarily breached that threshold.

The term “tipping point” is often used to illustrate these problems, but apocalyptic messages can leave people feeling helpless, wondering if it’s pointless to slam the brakes. As a geoscientist who has studied the ocean and climate for over a decade and recently spent a year on Capitol Hill working on bipartisan climate policy, I still see room for optimism.

It helps to understand what a tipping point is – and what’s known about when each might be reached.

Tipping points are not precise

A tipping point is a metaphor for runaway change. Small changes can push a system out of balance. Once past a threshold, the changes reinforce themselves, amplifying until the system transforms into something new.

Almost as soon as “tipping points” entered the climate science lexicon — following Malcolm Gladwell’s 2000 book, “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” — scientists warned the public not to confuse global warming policy benchmarks with precise thresholds.

The scientific reality of tipping points is more complicated than crossing a temperature line. Instead, different elements in the climate system have risks of tipping that increase with each fraction of a degree of warming.

For example, the beginning of a slow collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, which could raise global sea level by about 24 feet (7.4 meters), is one of the most likely tipping elements in a world more than 1.5 C warmer than preindustrial times. Some models place the critical threshold at 1.6 C (2.9 F). More recent simulations estimate runaway conditions at 2.7 C (4.9 F) of warming. Both simulations consider when summer melt will outpace winter snow, but predicting the future is not an exact science.

Forecasts like these are generated using powerful climate models that simulate how air, oceans, land and ice interact. These virtual laboratories allow scientists to run experiments, increasing the temperature bit by bit to see when each element might tip.

Climate scientist Timothy Lenton first identified climate tipping points in 2008. In 2022, he and his team revisited temperature collapse ranges, integrating over a decade of additional data and more sophisticated computer models.

Their nine core tipping elements include large-scale components of Earth’s climate, such as ice sheets, rain forests and ocean currents. They also simulated thresholds for smaller tipping elements that pack a large punch, including die-offs of coral reefs and widespread thawing of permafrost.

Some tipping elements, such as the East Antarctic ice sheet, aren’t in immediate danger. The ice sheet’s stability is due to its massive size – nearly six times that of the Greenland ice sheet – making it much harder to push out of equilibrium. Model results vary, but they generally place its tipping threshold between 5 C (9 F) and 10 C (18 F) of warming.

Other elements, however, are closer to the edge.

Alarm bells sounding in forests and oceans

In the Amazon, self-perpetuating feedback loops threaten the stability of the Earth’s largest rain forest, an ecosystem that influences global climate. As temperatures rise, drought and wildfire activity increase, killing trees and releasing more carbon into the atmosphere, which in turn makes the forest hotter and drier still.

By 2050, scientists warn, nearly half of the Amazon rain forest could face multiple stressors. That pressure may trigger a tipping point with mass tree die-offs. The once-damp rainforest canopy could shift to a dry savanna for at least several centuries.

Rising temperatures also threaten biodiversity underwater.

The second Global Tipping Points Report, released Oct. 12, 2025, by a team of 160 scientists including Lenton, suggests tropical reefs may have passed a tipping point that will wipe out all but isolated patches.

Corals rely on algae called zooxanthellae to thrive. Under heat stress, the algae leave their coral homes, draining reefs of nutrition and color. These mass bleaching events can kill corals, stripping the ecosystem of vital biodiversity that millions of people rely on for food and tourism.

Low-latitude reefs have the highest risk of tipping, with the upper threshold at just 1.5 C, the report found. Above this amount of warming, there is a 99% chance that these coral reefs tip past their breaking point.

Similar alarms are ringing for ocean currents, where freshwater ice melt is slowing down a major marine highway that circulates heat, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC.

The AMOC carries warm water northward from the tropics. In the North Atlantic, as sea ice forms, the surface gets colder and saltier, and this dense water sinks. The sinking action drives the return flow of cold, salty water southward, completing the circulation’s loop. But melting land ice from Greenland threatens the density-driven motor of this ocean conveyor belt by dilution: Fresher water doesn’t sink as easily.

A weaker current could create a feedback loop, slowing the circulation further and leading to a shutdown within a century once it begins, according to one estimate. Like a domino, the climate changes that would accompany an AMOC collapse could worsen drought in the Amazon and accelerate ice loss in the Antarctic.

There is still room for hope

Not all scientists agree that an AMOC collapse is close. For the Amazon rain forest and the North Atlantic, some cite a lack of evidence to declare the forest is collapsing or currents are weakening.

In the Amazon, researchers have questioned whether modeled vegetation data that underpins tipping point concerns is accurate. In the North Atlantic, there are similar concerns about data showing a long-term trend.

Climate models that predict collapses are also less accurate when forecasting interactions between multiple tipping points. Some interactions can push systems out of balance, while others pull an ecosystem closer to equilibrium.

Other changes driven by rising global temperatures, like melting permafrost, likely don’t meet the criteria for tipping points because they aren’t self-sustaining. Permafrost could refreeze if temperatures drop again.

Risks are too high to ignore

Despite the uncertainty, tipping points are too risky to ignore. Rising temperatures put people and economies around the world at greater risk of dangerous conditions.

But there is still room for preventive actions – every fraction of a degree in warming that humans prevent reduces the risk of runaway climate conditions. For example, a full reversal of coral bleaching may no longer be possible, but reducing emissions and pollution can allow reefs that still support life to survive.

Tipping points highlight the stakes, but they also underscore the climate choices humanity can still make to stop the damage.

Alexandra A Phillips, Assistant Teaching Professor in Environmental Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara

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

Global warming from Woodside’s massive Scarborough gas project off Western Australia would lead to 484 additional heat-related deaths in Europe alone this century, and kill about 16 million additional corals on the Great Barrier Reef during each future mass bleaching event, our new research has revealed.

The findings were made possible by a robust, well-established formula that can determine the extent to which an individual fossil fuel project will warm the planet. The results can be used to calculate the subsequent harms to society and nature.

The results close a fundamental gap between science and decision-making about fossil fuel projects. They also challenge claims by proponents that climate risks posed by a fossil fuel project are negligible or cannot be quantified.

Each new investment in coal and gas, such as the Scarborough project, can now be linked to harmful effects both today and in the future. It means decision-makers can properly assess the range of risks a project poses to humanity and the planet, before deciding if it should proceed.

Every tonne of CO₂ matters

Scientists know every tonne of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions makes global warming worse.

But proponents of new fossil fuel projects in Australia routinely say their future greenhouse gas emissions are negligible compared to the scale of global emissions, or say the effects of these emissions on global warming can’t be measured.

The Scarborough project is approved for development and is expected to produce gas from next year. Located off WA, it includes wells connected by a 430km pipeline to an onshore processing facility. The gas will be liquefied and burned for energy, both in Australia and overseas. Production is expected to last more than 30 years. When natural gas is burned, more than 99% of it converts to CO₂.

Woodside – in its own evaluation of the Scarborough gas project – claimed:

it is not possible to link GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions from Scarborough with climate change or any particular climate-related impacts given the estimated […] emissions associated with Scarborough are negligible in the context of existing and future predicted global GHG concentrations.

But what if there was a way to measure the harms? That’s the question our research set out to answer.

A method already exists to directly link global emissions to the climate warming they cause. It uses scientific understanding of Earth’s systems, direct observations and climate model simulations.

According to the IPCC, every 1,000 billion tonnes of CO₂ emissions causes about 0.45°C of additional global warming. This arithmetic forms the basis for calculating how much more CO₂ humanity can emit to keep warming within the Paris Agreement goals.

But decisions about future emissions are not made at the global scale. Instead, Earth’s climate trajectory will be determined by the aggregation of decisions on many individual projects.

That’s why our research extended the IPCC method to the level of individual projects – an approach that we illustrate using the Scarborough gas project.

Scarborough’s harms laid bare

Over its lifetime, the Scarborough project is expected to emit 876 million tonnes of CO₂.

We estimate these emissions will cause 0.00039°C of additional global warming. Estimates such as these are typically expressed as a range, alongside a measure of confidence in the projection. In this case, there is a 66–100% likelihood that the Scarborough project will cause additional global warming of between 0.00024°C and 0.00055°C.

This additional warming might seem small – but it will cause tangible damage.

The human cost of global warming can be quantified by considering how many people will be left outside the “human climate niche” – in other words, the climate conditions in which societies have historically thrived.

We calculated that the additional warming from the Scarborough project will expose 516,000 people globally to a local climate that’s beyond the hot extreme of the human climate niche. We drilled down into specific impacts in Europe, where suitable health data was available across 854 cities. Our best estimate is that this project would cause an additional 484 heat-related deaths in Europe by the end of this century.

And what about harm to nature? Using research into how accumulated exposure to heat affects coral reefs, we found about 16 million corals on the Great Barrier Reef would be lost in each new mass bleaching. The existential threat to the Great Barrier Reef from human-caused global warming is already being realised. Additional warming instigated by new fossil fuel projects will ratchet up pressure on this natural wonder.

As climate change worsens, countries are seeking to slash emissions to meet their commitments under the Paris Agreement. So, we looked at the impact of Scarborough’s emissions on Australia’s climate targets.

We calculated that by 2049, the anticipated emissions from the Scarborough project alone – from production, processing and domestic use – will comprise 49% of Australia’s entire annual CO₂ emissions budget under our commitment to net-zero by 2050.

Beyond the 2050 deadline, all emissions from the Scarborough project would require technologies to permanently remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. Achieving that would require a massive scale-up of current technologies. It would be more prudent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions where possible.

‘Negligible’ impacts? Hardly

Our findings mean the best-available scientific evidence can now be used by companies, governments and regulators when deciding if a fossil fuel project will proceed.

Crucially, it is no longer defensible for companies proposing new or extended fossil fuel projects to claim the climate harms will be negligible. Our research shows the harms are, in fact, tangible and quantifiable – and no project is too small to matter.

In response to issues raised in this article, a spokesperson for Woodside said:

Woodside is committed to playing a role in the energy transition. The Scarborough reservoir contains less than 0.1% carbon dioxide. Combined with processing design efficiencies at the offshore floating production unit and onshore Pluto Train 2, the project is expected to be one of the lowest carbon intensity sources of LNG delivered into north Asian markets.

We will reduce the Scarborough Energy Project’s direct greenhouse gas emissions to as low as reasonably practicable by incorporating energy efficiency measures in design and operations. Further information on how this is being achieved is included in the Scarborough Offshore Project Proposal, sections 4.5.4.1 and 7.1.3 and in approved Australian Government environment plans, available on the regulator’s website.

A report prepared by consultancy ACIL Allen has found that Woodside’s Scarborough Energy Project is expected to generate an estimated A$52.8 billion in taxation and royalty payments, boost GDP by billions of dollars between 2024 and 2056 and employ 3,200 people during peak construction in Western Australia.

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Deputy Director, Engagement and Impact, The ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century, Australian National University; Andrew King, ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor in Climate Science, ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, The University of Melbourne; Nicola Maher, DECRA/Research Fellow, Climate Science, Australian National University, and Wesley Morgan, Research Associate, Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney

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

The Albanese government has hinted it is close to a deal with the Coalition over the long-awaited overhaul of Australia’s environment laws. Environment Minister Murray Watt plans to introduce new legislation to parliament in November.

Can Watt deliver what is sorely needed to turn around Australia’s climate and nature crises? Or will we see a continuation of what former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry called “intergenerational bastardry”?

However the bill is passed, the new laws must include substantial improvements. But with pressure from all sides – including the Opposition and minor parties, mining companies, green groups and big business – will the new laws be strong enough to protect Australia’s embattled environment? Here are some of the ways our environment laws should be reformed.

Not fit for purpose

Australia’s key national environmental law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) is 25 years old.

Two major reviews, ten years apart in 2009 and 2020, criticised it variously as “too repetitive and unnecessarily complex” and “ineffective”.

At the 2022 election the Albanese government promised to overhaul the laws. But most of its proposed reforms were abandoned in the lead up to the next election in 2025, citing a lack of parliamentary support.

A strong watchdog

The success or failure of the reformed laws rests on developing well-defined National Environmental Standards – legally binding rules to improve environmental outcomes. These would apply to environmental decisions that affect nationally important plants, animals, habitats and places. Examples include land clearing in areas where threatened species occur, regional planning and Indigenous consultation.

Alongside strong standards, we need a well-resourced and fearlessly independent Environment Protection Agency to assess proposals, such as applications for new gas wells or to clear native vegetation for mining. A strong EPA is essential for legal compliance.

The Coalition doesn’t support an EPA and wants final approval powers to rest with the minister of the day. But if an EPA can be overruled by the minister, it could further reduce public confidence in the protection system, especially given recent examples of real or perceived industry pressure on government decisions.

If the minister is given powers to “call in” proposals to assess them they should be very specific and restricted. For example, for responding to national disasters but not for purely economic purposes. The reasons for calling in a decision should be published and made public.

Habitats are homes for wildlife and need greater protection

New laws should also clarify what are considered “unacceptable impacts” of new projects. For example, irreplaceable natural areas should be saved from destruction or damage by new developments.

Destroying or damaging habitats that are home to rare and endangered species should be illegal. Protected, “no-go” areas could be recorded on a register to guide project decisions, as Watt has discussed.

It is vital that environmental offsets, designed to compensate for unavoidable impacts from developments, are legislated as a last resort.

Climate change

The EPBC Act lacks a “climate trigger” that explicitly requires consideration of climate change impacts of greenhouse gas-intensive projects.

At least ten previous attempts to introduce a climate trigger have not succeeded, and Watt has all but ruled it out in these reforms.

Instead, Watt suggests “the existing Safeguard Mechanism as an effective way of controlling emissions”. The Safeguard Mechanism legislates limits on greenhouse gas emissions for Australia’s largest industrial facilities.

But it only applies to the direct or scope 1, greenhouse gas emissions. It does not include emissions produced from Australia’s fossil fuel exports of coal, oil and gas. Nearly 80% of Australia’s contribution to global emissions comes from its fossil fuel exports.

Even without a climate trigger, reforms to the EPBC Act must reflect the impact of climate change on Australia’s environments. They could require climate is taken into account in all decision making to achieve environmental outcomes under the Act, and prohibit development in places that offer refuge to native species during extreme events.

First Nations to the front

Environmental decision making must include genuine Indigenous engagement and a required standard should be part of the Act. A Commissioner for Country would help to ensure this expectation was adhered to.

Furthermore, calls have been made by First Nations for new laws to include the protection of species based on their cultural significance.

No more logging loopholes

There must be an end to industry carve outs, including regional forestry agreements. A pact between the national government and certain states, these agreements define how native forests should be managed, harvested and protected.

For decades, they have allowed the logging of forests that are home to endangered native species, including the koala and greater glider. In 2024, Victoria and Western Australia both ended the native forestry industries in their states.

In August 2025, Watt confirmed that bringing regional forest agreements under the operation of national environment standards “remains our position”. But so far he has avoided questions about how that would work in practice.

Clear targets

If the Labor government is serious about delivering on its promise of “No New Extinctions” these reforms must include clear targets to better protect threatened animals, plants and their environments. Preventing further extinctions will take far greater, long-term funding than Australia currently provides.

We need a better understanding of how endangered species and ecological communities are faring. The newly-created Environment Information Australia body will collect data and track progress against an agreed baseline, for example the 2021 State of Environment Report.

Conservation leader not pariah

Australia is known globally for its unique and much-loved wildlife, and its diverse and beautiful nature places. However, in the face of enormous pressure to enable increased development, we are gaining a reputation for our gross failures to care for and conserve this extraordinary natural heritage.

Australia must step up as a global leader in nature conservation through strong environmental laws and biodiversity recovery strategies. As we bid to host the UN’s global climate summit COP31 next year, the eyes of the world will be on our environmental and climate ambition.

Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University; Phillipa C. McCormack, Future Making Fellow, Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, and Yung En Chee, Senior Research Fellow, Environmental Science, The University of Melbourne

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

Right now, cold air high above Antarctica is up to 35ºC warmer than normal. Normally, strong winds and the lack of sun would keep the temperature at around –55°C. But it’s risen sharply to around –20°C.

The sudden heating began in early September and is still taking place. Three separate pulses of heat have each pushed temperatures up by 25ºC or more. Temperatures spiked and fell back and spiked again.

It looks as if an unusual event known as sudden stratospheric warming is taking place – the unexpected warming of the stratosphere, 12 to 40 kilometres above ground.

In the middle of an Antarctic winter, this atmospheric layer is normally exceptionally cold, averaging around –80°C. By the end of September it would be roughly –50ºC. This month, atmospheric waves carrying heat from the surface have pushed up into this layer.

In the Northern Hemisphere, these events are very common, occurring once every two years. But in the south, sudden large-scale warming was long thought to be extremely rare. My research has shown they are more common than expected, if we group the very strong 2002 event with slightly weaker events such as in 2019 and 2024.

Sudden warming may sound ominous. But weather is messy. Many factors play into what happens down where we live.

A drier, warmer spring and summer for southeastern Australia usually follow these warming events. But at present, forecasters are predicting warmer than usual temperatures across Australia alongside a wetter spring in the east.

What’s happening in the skies over Antarctica?

High above both the Arctic and Antarctic is a large area of rotating winds called the stratospheric polar vortex. By definition, sudden stratospheric warming events affect these two systems.

Over Antarctica, these events are usually detected about 30 kilometres above the Southern Ocean, just to the north of Antarctica’s coastline.

The Antarctic winter runs from March to October. During this period, the continent and the atmosphere above it are dark and very cold, as the sun doesn’t rise until September.

The polar vortex traps intensely cold air and keeps it isolated from the warmer air at lower latitudes. But every now and then, this can change.

Just like the ocean, the atmosphere has waves. What’s happening at present is that large-scale atmospheric waves have spread from the surface up into the stratosphere above Antarctica, bringing heat energy with them. As these waves interact with the strong winds of the vortex, they transfer this heat.

This is only possible during the Antarctic winter, as the polar winds are only strong during these months.

While these events are called “sudden”, it’s not sudden in the sense we would commonly use. The warming takes place over days or weeks. But they are sudden in the sense they’re often unexpected, as they are difficult to predict.

What does this mean for us?

What happens in Antarctica doesn’t stay in Antarctica. When a sudden warming event arrives, it can have flow-on effects for the weather.

We would usually expect southeastern Australia to be drier and warmer after sudden stratospheric warming above Antarctica.

In 2019, sudden warming over Antarctica led to drier conditions in Australia. Research has shown this influenced the megafires over the Black Summer of 2019–2020. These events can create prime conditions for bushfires.

The opposite is also true: If the polar stratosphere is even colder than usual, we expect wetter and cooler conditions over southeastern Australia.

For instance, over the 2023-24 spring and summer, forecasters predicted a dry spell driven by an El Niño event in the Pacific. But this didn’t happen. Instead, the very cold polar stratosphere produced a rather cool and wet summer.

There’s another effect, too. When the stratosphere is warmer, less ozone is destroyed in the ozone layer and more ozone is carried from the equator towards the poles.

That’s good for humans, as it means more dangerous ultraviolet rays are blocked from reaching the ground. But changing ozone levels can also contribute to the arrival of unexpected weather systems caused by a warmer stratosphere.

How often does this happen?

Media coverage has suggested these events are rare. But that isn’t entirely correct.

These events were first discovered in the Northern Hemisphere, where they happen roughly every second year.

But the northern polar stratosphere is warmer and has weaker winds. This means it’s easier for atmospheric waves to disturb the vortex. In the Northern Hemisphere, sudden stratospheric warming is defined as a complete disappearance of the polar vortex.

When the same definition is used for the Southern Hemisphere, only the 2002 event would meet the criteria in our entire observational record. That’s because the intense stratospheric winds of up to 300kmh over Antarctica are extremely difficult for atmospheric waves to penetrate.

Using this narrow definition, these events in Antarctica are estimated to happen about once every 60 years – and are expected to become even rarer.

But if we define these southern events more broadly as a weakening of the polar vortex producing sudden warming, the frequency is more common. Using this definition, we estimated the frequency of events like the 2019 event to be once every 22 years.

At present, I am leading international work to find better ways of detecting these events in the Southern Hemisphere.

What will this event lead to?

Forecasting chaotic systems such as the weather is a hard job. The sudden warming of the stratosphere over Antarctica will have some influence over spring and summer weather in Australia and New Zealand. But the stratosphere is just one factor among many in shaping the weather as we experience it.

At present, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting a warmer spring, and wetter in the southeast. This is because the sudden warming event is happening at the same time as ocean temperatures remain very warm, and hotter oceans lead to more evaporation and thus more rain.

But this could still change. Not all sudden stratospheric warming events end up influencing the weather near the surface. It’s worth keeping an eye on the seasonal forecasts this summer.

Martin Jucker, Senior Lecturer in Atmospheric Science, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

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

The federal government has announced a long-awaited climate change target for 2035, committing to a reduction in emissions of between 62% and 70% below 2005 levels. Environmentalists claim the target is a failure, while some business groups and the opposition are likely to slam it as economic sabotage.

Setting a range target has two advantages. First, it provides flexibility to respond to whatever unfolds on the environment, technology or political front. Second, it avoids a frustrating political debate fixated on a single, precise future target.

Announcing the target on Thursday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said:

This is an ambitious but achievable target – sending the right investment signal, responding to the science and delivered with a practical plan. It builds on what we know are the lowest-cost actions we can deliver over the next decade while leaving room for new technologies to take things up a gear.

The target seeks to balance positive action with pragmatism. Achieving it requires a step-up in policies and implementation well beyond what has been achieved to date. This is a mission Australia must now accept.

A pathway to 2035

Climate change targets provide a clear vision of what the government is committed to delivering domestically. They are required under the Paris Agreement and affirm Australia’s membership of the global community.

The government announcement is aligned with advice delivered by the Climate Change Authority. That advice was delayed for months due to the election of US President Donald Trump – the policy repercussions of which the authority needed to consider – and the May federal election in Australia.

Last year, draft advice by the authority suggested an emissions reduction target of 65–75% by 2035.

More recently, a report from the Business Council of Australia claimed the cost of meeting a target above 70% was economically unacceptable.

If Australia is to meet its commitment to net-zero by 2050, and emissions fall in a straight line from 2030 to 2050, the 2035 target must be about 57%. Of course, this assumes that net-zero by 2050 is environmentally acceptable – which many, including the Grattan Institute, have argued is not.

And this week, the government’s National Climate Risk Assessment outlined alarming damage if emissions are not dramatically curbed. All this suggests Australia must set the strongest possible target.

So has the government’s target hit the sweet spot? Let’s tease that out.

Deeper cuts this decade

Australia’s emissions target for 2030 is a 43% emissions reduction, based on 2005 levels. We currently emit 440 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year – 28% below 2005 levels.

To achieve the 2030 target, our annual emissions must fall by about 18 million tonnes a year. Meeting this target remains challenging. If the 2030 target is achieved, the annual rate of reduction would have to rise to 23 million tonnes or 33 million tonnes to meet the 62% or 70% target levels, respectively.

That’s why today’s targets are not lacking ambition. If the 2030 target is not achieved, then meeting the 2035 target – even the bottom of the range – only gets harder.

Disappointingly, however, the government has not clarified whether it’s essentially committing to 62% emissions reduction – with the option of greater ambition – or whether it will go for a 70% reduction but accept 62%. Or is it aiming for something in the middle?

The policy challenge ahead

Meeting the target will require progress across the economy – not just in the land sector and electricity generation, where most of the action has been to date. To achieve it, a major acceleration in government policy is needed.

So far, the Albanese government’s climate policy offering has been limited.

In 2022, the government established the Capacity Investment Scheme, which guarantees a certain revenue to renewable energy investors. It is designed to accelerate clean energy generation to meet Australia’s target of 82% renewables in the electricity mix by 2030. No further policy exists to reduce electricity emissions beyond that point.

The government also strengthened the Safeguard Mechanism, an innovation of the Abbott government to control emissions from heavy industry. And the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) aims to drive down emissions from personal and small commercial vehicles. These policies must be ramped up to meet the 2035 target. The government has committed to reviewing the Safeguard Mechanism and the NVES, presumably to do just that.

Most of the light lifting in policy work has now been done. What’s needed now is policy to propel emissions reduction in harder-to-abate sectors of the economy – such as heavy vehicle transport and agriculture.

On Thursday, the government released a Net Zero Plan, along with blueprints for six major sectors of the economy outlining what needs to be done to get there.

Among other spending measures, it announced:

• A$5 billion in the National Reconstruction Fund to help industrial plants cut emissions
• $2 billion for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation
• $1.1 billion to encourage domestic production of clean fuels
• $40 million for kerbside and fast-charging of electric vehicles.

These are positive moves. But it’s still unclear how the government plans to integrate the policies with actually meeting the target.

Now the real work starts

Australia now has 2035 emissions targets and plans to meet them.

The target is a much-needed step on the path to net-zero, but it’s just the beginning. Delivering it will demand action across all sectors of the economy – and that work must start now.

The alternative – unchecked climate change – is not just irresponsible, but unthinkable.

Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute

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

Australia has a new climate target: cutting emissions by 62-70% below 2005 levels by 2035. Meeting even the lower end means halving emissions in a decade.

That will entail drastic changes across the economy – especially in transport.

Transport is Australia’s third-largest and fastest-growing source of emissions. The sector is widely considered difficult to decarbonise, because it’s not easy to use renewable electricity in shipping and aviation.

On current trends, transport will become Australia’s largest-emitting sector by 2030. Unless this problem is tackled head-on, Australia’s new climate target cannot be met.

Getting our priorities straight

The Albanese set Australia’s new climate target earlier this month. It was accompanied by a Net Zero Plan and six blueprints for individual sectors.

The Net Zero Plan rightly identifies several priorities: clean electricity, lowering emissions by electrification and efficiency, and expanding clean fuel use. The transport plan is focused on electrifying light vehicles, expanding electric vehicle charging, and developing low-carbon fuels for heavy trucks, planes and ships.

Modelling by the Climate Change Authority shows major change is needed to meet the 2035 target. In transport, for example, half of all new light vehicles sold by 2035 must be electric.

Such shifts are technically feasible, but they demand policy settings far stronger than those now in place.

Where problems lie

To reduce transport emissions, the government is relying heavily on the use of hydrogen for freight transport. This is a shaky bet. Research shows hydrogen trucks are far less efficient than battery-electric ones.

Our own analysis found in real-world conditions, hydrogen trucks can have two to three times the emissions intensity (the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per kilometre travelled) of electric trucks. Other research has also found uncertainty about hydrogen as a fuel remained an obstacle to freight decarbonisation.

The government also proposes to use carbon-capture and storage technology to handle “residual” emissions – those that remain after available decarbonisation methods have been deployed.

There is no practical way to directly capture emissions from vehicles in use. Instead, transport emissions would be offset by capturing and storing carbon emitted by other activities such as industrial plants or gas facilities.

But Australia’s track record with carbon-capture is poor. Flagship projects such as Chevron’s Gorgon facility have consistently underperformed, and several international reviews concluded the technology has failed to deliver at scale.

The government also plans to offset residual emissions through carbon removal methods such as tree-planting. But there are longstanding concerns about the quality of Australian carbon credits. And carbon may only be stored in plants for a short period.

For these reasons, we must be sceptical about using offsets to balance out transport emissions. It doesn’t reduce fossil fuel use in transport, and it risks delaying investment in more proven solutions.

What else should be on the table?

There are proven transport decarbonisation strategies that deserve more weight than carbon-capture or hydrogen.

To accelerate the electrification of cars and buses, the government should set clear sales targets. This creates certainty for manufacturers, consumers and infrastructure providers.

We can look overseas for guidance. The United Kingdom has mandated that 80% of new cars and 70% of vans be zero-emission by 2030, rising to 100% by 2035. China has gone further, stating that by 2035, battery electric vehicles should become the mainstream of new car sales.

Fuel efficiency standards should also be tightened over time, and extended to heavy vehicles.

Urban planning needs to reduce car dependence by promoting public transport, walking and cycling. Large-scale investment in public and active transport is also needed.

Another policy that deserves serious attention is road-user pricing. This involves charging drivers based on how much, when and where they drive.

In places such as London, this has led to reductions in air pollution and passengers shifting to buses, walking or cycling. Modelling by my colleagues and I shows road-use charges in Melbourne could reduce car travel and cut emissions by around 13%.

Well-designed road pricing could help reduce demand for road freight on busy routes, discourage unnecessary trips and generate revenue to support public transport or electric vehicle infrastructure.

Data-driven logistics can enable more efficient freight. And heavy freight can be shifted from road to rail, supported by investment in modern rail corridors.

And instead of pursuing hydrogen to decarbonise freight transport, the government should direct resources to accelerating electrification – including offering incentives for electric trucks.

The window is closing

Australia needs clear and enforceable transport policies to ensure transport delivers its share of emission reductions and keeps the country on track for net zero by 2050.

Currently, Australia risks leaning too heavily on unproven transport solutions that may not deliver real cuts. We risk locking in high emissions and missing the 2035 and 2050 goals.

Real progress means focusing on what we know works: electrification, renewables, redesigning our cities and changing how we travel. Every year of delay makes the task harder. With just a decade to halve emissions, the window for action is closing fast.

Hussein Dia, Professor of Transport Technology and Sustainability, Swinburne University of Technology

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

Around 200 years ago, bettongs were the most common macropod in Australia. These small wallaby-like creatures were once found seemingly everywhere and in great numbers.

After colonisation, bettongs became harder to find. The five living species were decimated as land was cleared for farms, and feral cats and foxes spread across the continent. Weighing in at 1-2 kilos, these small rat-kangaroos were easy prey for introduced nocturnal ambush hunters.

Ecologists think of these species as ecosystem engineers, as they can turn over six tonnes of earth a year, spreading seeds and fungi across the landscape. As foxes and cats picked them off, their absence rippled through ecosystems.

To support and protect the species, conservationists have had success in translocating the critically endangered brush-tailed bettong (Bettongia penicillata ogilbyii) to fenced, feral predator-free reserves. But could these creatures – known as woylie to Noongar people and yalgi/yalgiri to Narungga – ever be released back into areas where they once roamed alongside cats and foxes? Our new research suggests it might be possible.

Trial and error

Between 2021 and 2023, we released almost 200 brush-tailed bettongs into Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula. These bettongs had been absent from South Australia for at least 120 years.

Like most national parks, feral cat and fox numbers are suppressed using lethal control. But foxes and cats still persist.

We were hopeful these bettongs stood a good chance in this national park because small tammar wallabies have thrived after their reintroduction and the park has dense native vegetation.

With greater pest control and careful planning, monitoring, and research, we hoped other species could be successfully reintroduced. The brush-tailed bettong was the first of hopefully many species to be reintroduced through the marna banggara project.

Some wild populations of bettongs have proven they can live alongside cats and foxes in Western Australia. But no new population had been established where these feral predators are.

Our goal was to try to establish a new population able to survive alongside low fox and cat numbers. To that end, we wanted to know which traits helped our bettongs survive. Would larger animals do better? Or would smaller, stealthier animals survive and breed? Did we need a mix of both? What about previous experience with predators?

We sourced brush-tailed bettongs from three different locations:

• Wedge Island, South Australia. In the early 1980s, 11 bettongs were released on this small island. Their numbers grew to an estimated few thousand. These are known to be smaller, less wary and not used to threats such as cats, foxes, and cars.

• Tone-Perup Nature reserve, Western Australia. These animals come from both a remnant wild and a fenced safe haven population. Overall, they’re bigger and faster. Wild population bettongs were familiar with native and introduced predators.

• Dryandra Woodland National Park, Western Australia. These animals are similarly drawn from both wild and safe haven populations. They are larger, and both groups had predator exposure.

Into the wild

We didn’t just set our bettongs free and hope for the best. We fitted each animal with small radio tags and monitored them remotely with the help of several towers in the national park. We conducted regular trapping surveys to check how healthy the population was and whether they were reproducing.

By December 2023, the brush-tailed bettong population had doubled to around 400 animals. Members from all source populations were still alive, breeding was occurring and baby bettongs were being born. Since then, surveys have shown the bettongs are thriving overall.

Which animals did best? We had expected the Tone-Perup bettongs to survive and thrive based on their size and predator familiarity. Sure enough, they were surviving at higher rates. But to our surprise, the smaller Wedge Island animals were surviving well, despite their lack of familiarity with foxes and cats.

Both Tone-Perup and Wedge bettongs increased their survival likelihood over time. That’s because it’s a case of the quick and the dead. Slower, less wary and less capable individuals got eaten, outcompeted, or died of other causes, while better adapted animals kept going.

These findings are good news. They suggest some brush-tailed bettongs can adapt to life in the wild alongside foxes and cats – if they get past the crucial first few months.

The same can’t be said for our Dryandra population, who had lower survival rates than the other two groups. This was surprising, given Dryandra animals also had greater size and predator exposure.

Why did this happen? It’s most likely because we released these animals later. They may have struggled to find a niche not taken by the bettongs we had released earlier and were either outcompeted or moved further away.

How could these bettongs survive?

It can be hard to watch endangered animals get eaten. But it’s unlikely Australia will ever be rid of feral cats and foxes. This is why bold new techniques are worth trialling, to see if species can be returned to the wild.

Brush-tailed bettongs were last sighted on the Yorke Peninsula over 120 years ago. What changed to make it possible for them to return?

Most likely, it’s due to a combination of predator control and the dense, complex remnant native vegetation offering safer nesting and foraging. Bettongs can move faster through dense shrub than foxes and cats, and it’s harder for predators to spot them in these thickets.

What’s next?

It is still early days, but our research is encouraging. We think the key is active management. Monitor animals intensively in the early months when the animals are most at risk. If too many are being eaten, ramp up feral predator control efforts.

For the first time in over 100 years, yalgiri are digging, spreading seeds and fungi and shaping the soils of the Yorke Peninsula. Their return is good news, not just for the species but for the health of the whole landscape. These small, crafty creatures are finding ways to live alongside feral cats and foxes.

Chloe Frick, PhD Candidate in Ecology, University of Adelaide

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

Two years ago, Snowy Hydro announced a reset for its troubled Snowy 2.0 giant pumped hydro project amid cost blowouts. The supposed final cost was A$12 billion.

Last week, Snowy Hydro acknowledged this figure was no longer viable after a cost reassessment.

I estimate the final cost will be well over $20 billion, excluding new transmission lines – more than ten times higher than the original estimate of $2 billion.

As costs have climbed, Snowy 2.0 has lost supporters. The remaining defenders include former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who signed off on the project, the federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen and we know of one academic engineer but there may be more.

The question has always been whether this scheme is worthwhile. Despite repeated cost increases, its few defenders continue to argue that Snowy 2.0 offers much cheaper storage per kilowatt-hour than a battery would deliver. In this argument, the cost of Snowy 2.0 is set against the energy storage potential and then compared to the cost of installing chemical batteries to deliver the same storage.

This defence is simple but wrong.

Moving water

Storing energy such as in pumped hydro schemes and electro-chemical batteries is necessary to decarbonise electricity supply, as they make it possible for surplus renewable energy to be stored and used later.

Snowy 2.0 is a major new pumped hydro project that will become part of the existing Snowy Hydro scheme. It can be thought of as a “water battery”.

In the Snowy 2.0 scheme, water is pumped uphill from the Talbingo lower reservoir to the Tantangara upper reservoir when energy is cheap, and then runs back downhill through turbines to produce power when prices rise and more power is needed.

Talbingo in turn gets most of its water from Eucumbene Dam via the existing Tumut 1 and Tumut 2 generators.

So far, so good. But there are three practical complications:

• Talbingo is the upper reservoir for the 1,800 megawatt Tumut 3 pumped-hydro station, which means it needs to be kept near full so Tumut 3 is available to produce at maximum capacity and efficiency

• Talbingo is only two-thirds the capacity of Tantangara and hence can’t accommodate all its water as is the case for a typical pumped hydro system

• the downstream pondage for Tumut 3 (Jounama) is just one-sixth the capacity of Talbingo. So, depending on the water level in Jounama, Snowy 2.0 and Tumut 3 power generation has to be limited so as not to unintentionally lose water.

The end result is that if water is to be kept within the Talbingo/Jounama system and not lost be being released down the Blowering dam, filling Tantagara and then releasing it is heavily constrained by other elements of the system.

That’s not all. If Tantangara was full and Snowy 2.0 generated flat out for seven days, virtually all the water emptied from Tantangara would be lost downstream of Jounama and would then need to be replenished.

Whenever Snowy 2.0 is generating flat out, the Tumut 3 generator would also need to be generating to make use of the flowing water. But this would flood the power market, driving prices down and hence reducing the income needed to recover Snowy 2.0’s investment.

As a result, Snowy Hydro has no incentive to operate Snowy 2.0 in this way, and will almost certainly withhold its full capacity from the market just as it does now with Tumut 3.

Pumping water uphill

Snowy 2.0 faces economic constraints as well.

It takes energy to pump water uphill from Talbingo to Tantangara. Pumping will only be done when electricity prices are cheap, which will usually be for a few hours each sunny day when price are low. And it will only make sense to fill Talbingo from Eucumbene Dam by releasing water through Tumut 1 and 2 into Talbingo when prices are high.

The result: cost-effectively filling Tantangara will take many months.

Now let’s look at the demand for Snowy 2.0’s service. Defenders claim its ability to discharge power for a week is an advantage. But since Australia’s National Electricity Market began in 1998, there’s never been a period when the extremely high prices needed to make Snowy 2.0 worthwhile have been sustained for more than a few hours continuously.

If the energy market ever sees sustained, multi-day periods of extremely high prices, the market response will be to quickly build gas or diesel generators and add more batteries. Both are inexpensive, representing a tiny fraction of Snowy 2.0’s cost per kilowatt of added capacity. Greenhouse gas impacts would be inconsequential, given the generators would be very rarely used.

As a result, the vast bulk of Snowy 2.0’s storage capacity will sit unused in Tantangara because it is so difficult to cost-effectively fill Tantangara and there’s unlikely ever to be the demand to fully discharge it.

Chemical batteries are outcompeting water batteries

Now compare Snowy 2.0’s operational and technical constraints with those of electro-chemical batteries. These batteries go from charging to discharging in a fraction of a second. They do not have any of the operational and economic complexities of situating a new pumped hydro generator in an extremely complex cascade hydro system.

As a result, a kWh of battery storage capacity is likely to be used much more frequently than a kWh of Snowy 2.0 capacity. Grid batteries typically discharge their full capacity at least once per day and often many times a day. Snowy 2.0 is unlikely to ever discharge its full capacity.

So, while batteries may cost more to install upfront, they will be used much more intensively and so their higher costs absorbed over much higher volumes, so that their average costs are lower. It’s the same economic logic seen in the choice between trains versus buses versus cars – trains are usually cheaper per passenger-kilometre when heavily used, but much more expensive if near empty.

This is why battery storage is booming in Australia and many other countries. Private investors are piling in, typically with little or no public subsidy.

In the eight years Snowy 2.0 has been under construction, the battery equivalent of Snowy 2.0’s power capacity is already operational in the National Electricity Market. This will double in a year, and then double again in another year based on capacity contracted under the Capacity Investment scheme.

Despite enormous political will and vast amounts of taxpayer funds, pumped hydro schemes are struggling in Australia – just as they are in other countries.

With massively complex geology and mind-bogglingly complex operational and economic constraints, Snowy 2.0 is by far the least attractive of Australia’s pumped hydro possibilities.

How could the Australian government and Snowy Hydro have got it so wrong?

Bruce Mountain, Professor and Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University

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

Language enables us to connect with each other and coordinate to achieve incredible feats. Our ability to communicate abstract concepts is often seen as a defining feature of our species, and one that separates us from the rest of life on Earth.

This is because while the ability to pair an arbitrary sound with a specific meaning is widespread in human language, it is rarely seen in other animal communication systems. Several recent studies have shown that birds, chimpanzees, dolphins, and elephants also do it. But how such a capacity emerges remains a mystery.

While language is characterised by the widespread use of sounds that have a learned association with the item they refer to, humans and animals also produce instinctive sounds. For example, a scream made in response to pain. Over 150 years ago, naturalist Charles Darwin suggested the use of these instinctive sounds in a new context could be an important step in the development of language-like communication.

In our new study, published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution, we describe the first example of an animal vocalisation that contains both instinctive and learned features – similar to the stepping stone Darwin envisioned.

A unique call towards a unique threat

Birds have a variety of enemies, but brood parasites are unique.

Brood parasites, such as cuckoos, are birds that reproduce by laying their egg in the nest of another species and manipulating the unsuspecting host to incubate their egg and raise their offspring. The first thing a baby cuckoo does after it hatches is heave the other baby birds out of the nest, claiming the effort of its unsuspecting foster parents all to itself.

The high cost of brood parasitism makes it an excellent study system to explore how evolution works in the wild.

For example, our past work has shown that in Australia, the superb fairy-wren has evolved a unique call it makes when it sees a cuckoo. When other fairy-wrens hear this alarm call, they quickly come in and attack the cuckoo.

During these earlier experiments, we couldn’t help but notice other species were responding to this call and making a very similar call themselves. What’s more, discussions with collaborators who were working in countries as far away as China, India and Sweden suggested the birds there were also making a very similar call – and also only towards cuckoos.

Birds from around the world use the same call

First, we explored online wildlife media databases to see if there were other examples of this call towards brood parasites. We found 21 species that produce this call towards their brood parasites, including cuckoos and parasitic finches. Some of these birds were closely related and lived nearby each other, but others shared a last common ancestor over 50 million years ago and live on different continents.

For example, this is a superb fairy-wren responding to a shining bronze-cuckoo in Australia.

And this is a tawny-flanked prinia responding to a cuckoo finch in Zambia.

As vocalisations exist to communicate information, we suspected this call either functioned to attract the attention of their own or other species.

To compare these possibilities, we used a known database of the world’s brood parasites and hosts. If this call exists to communicate information within a species, we expected the species that produce it should be more cooperative, because more birds are better at defending their nest.

We did not find this. Instead, we found that species that produce this call exist in areas with more brood parasites and hosts, suggesting it exists to enable cooperation across different species that are targeted by brood parasites.

Communicating across species to defend against a common threat

To test whether these calls were produced uniquely towards cuckoos in multiple species, we conducted experiments in Australia.

When we presented superb fairy-wrens or white-browed scrubwrens with a taxidermied cuckoo, they made this call and tried to attack it. By contrast, when they were presented with other taxidermied models, such as a predator, this call was very rarely produced.

When we presented the fairy-wrens and scrubwrens with recordings of the call, they responded strongly. This suggests both species produce the call almost exclusively towards cuckoos, and when they hear it they respond predictably.

If this call is something like a “universal word” for a brood parasite across birds, we should expect different species to respond equally to hearing it – even when it is produced by a species they have never seen before. We found exactly this: when we played calls from Australia to birds in China (and vice-versa) they responded the same.

This suggests different species from all around the world use this call because it provides specific information about the presence of a brood parasite.

Insights into the origins of language

Our study suggests that over 20 species of birds from all around the world that are separated by over 50 million years of evolution use the same call when they see their respective brood parasite species.

This is fascinating in and of itself. But while these birds know how to respond to the call, our past work has shown that birds that have never seen a cuckoo do not produce this call, but they do after watching others produce it when there is a cuckoo nearby.

In other words, while the response to the call is instinctive, producing the call itself is learned.

Whereas vocalisations are normally either instinctive or learned, this is the first example of an animal vocalisation across species that has both instinctive and learned components. This is important, because it appears to represent a midpoint between the types of vocalisations that are common in animal communication systems and human language.

So, Darwin may have been right about language all along.

William Feeney, Research fellow, Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University; Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC); James Kennerley, Postdoctoral Fellow, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, and Niki Teunissen, Postdoctoral research fellow, Monash University

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

They look like tiny monkeys peering out from the mist. Known to scientists as Dracula, the so-called “monkey-face orchids” have become online celebrities.

Millions of people have shared their photos, marvelling at flowers that seem to smile, frown or even grimace. But behind that viral charm lies a very different reality: most of these species are teetering on the edge of extinction.

A new global assessment has, for the first time, revealed the conservation status of all known Dracula orchids. The findings are dire. Out of 133 species assessed, nearly seven in ten are threatened with extinction.

Many exist only in tiny fragments of forest, some in just one or two known locations. A few are known only from plants growing in cultivation. Their wild populations may already be gone.

These orchids grow mainly in the Andean cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador, some of the most biologically rich but also most endangered ecosystems on the planet. Their survival depends on cool, humid conditions at mid to high altitudes, where constant mist wraps the trees.

Unfortunately, those same slopes are being rapidly cleared for cattle pasture, crops like avocado, and expanding roads and mining projects, activities that are directly threatening several Dracula species (such as Dracula terborchii. As forests shrink and fragment, the orchids lose the microclimates (the specific temperature, light and humidity conditions) that they depend on for survival.

Another threat comes from people’s fascination with these rare and charismatic plants. Orchids have been prized for their flowers for hundreds of years, with European trade starting in the 19th century, when “orchid fever” captivated wealthy collectors leading to huge increases in wild collection in tropical areas.

Today, that fascination continues, fuelled by the internet. Many enthusiasts and professional growers trade in cultivated plants responsibly, but others still seek wild orchids, and Dracula species are no exception. For a plant that may exist in populations of just a few dozen individuals, a single collecting trip can be disastrous.

Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories. This article is part of a series, Plant Curious, exploring scientific studies that challenge the way you view plantlife.

Turning popularity into protection

In Ecuador’s north-western Andes, a place named Reserva Drácula protects one of the world’s richest concentrations of these orchids. The reserve is home to at least ten Dracula species, five of them found nowhere else on Earth.

But the threats are closing in. Deforestation for agriculture, illegal mining and even the presence of armed groups now endanger the reserve’s staff and surrounding communities.

Local conservationists at Fundación EcoMinga, who manage the area, have described the situation as “urgent”. Their proposals include strengthening community-based monitoring, supporting sustainable farming and developing eco-tourism to provide income from protecting, rather than clearing, the forest.

When you see these flowers up close, it’s easy to understand why they attract such fascination. Their name, Dracula, comes not from vampires but from the Latin for “little dragon”, a nod to their long, fang-like sepals, the petal-like structures that protect the developing orchid flower.

Their strange shapes astonished 19th-century botanists, who thought they might be a hoax. Later, as more species were discovered, people began to notice that many resembled tiny primates, hence the nickname “monkey-face orchids”. They’ve been called the pandas of the orchid world: charismatic, instantly recognisable, but also deeply endangered.

That charisma, however, hasn’t yet translated into protection. Until recently, only a handful of Dracula species had had their conservation status formally assessed, leaving most of the group’s fate a mystery.

The new assessment was led by a team of botanists from Colombia and Ecuador, with collaborators from several international organisations including the University of Oxford and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commisso’s Orchid Specialist Group, finally closes that gap.

It draws on herbarium records (dried plant specimens collected by botanists), field data and local expertise to map where each species occurs and estimate how much forest remains. The results confirm what many orchid specialists had long suspected: Dracula species are in serious trouble.

Despite this grim outlook, there are reasons for hope. The Reserva Drácula and other protected areas are vital refuges, offering safe havens not only for orchids but for frogs, monkeys and countless other species.

Local organisations are working with communities to promote sustainable agriculture, develop ecotourism and reward conservation through payments for ecosystem services. These are modest efforts compared with the scale of the challenge, but they show that solutions exist, if the world pays attention.

There’s also an opportunity here to turn popularity into protection. The same internet fame that fuels demand for these orchids could help fund their conservation. If viral posts about “smiling flowers” included information about where they come from and how threatened they are, they could help change norms about the need to avoid overcollection.

Just as the panda became a symbol for wildlife conservation, monkey-face orchids could become icons for plant conservation, a reminder that biodiversity isn’t only about animals. Whether future generations will still find these faces in the forest, and not just in digital feeds, depends on how we act now.

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Diogo Veríssimo, Research Fellow in Conservation Marketing, University of Oxford; Amy Hinsley, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Martin Programme on the Wildlife Trade, University of Oxford, and Luis Baquero, Researcher, Orchid Ecology, Universidad de las Américas (Ecuador)

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

The Australian Energy Market Operator estimates data centres will consume 6% of Australia’s grid-supplied electricity by 2030.

To put that in context, that’s more than the current share of Australia’s healthcare and social assistance industry.

This reflects the rapid growth of Australia’s data centre industry – the backbone of artificial intelligence (AI). This growth is, in part, being driven by multi-billion-dollar investments from major tech players including AWS, Microsoft, CDC and NextDC. Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar has even suggested Australia could become Southeast Asia’s data centre hub.

The federal government is also fertilising the data centre industry. In August, for example, Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced the development of “national interest principles on data centres” as an outcome of the economic reform roundtable.

The power-hungry nature of data centres, however, poses major problems for the current energy grid in Australia. But there are three steps Australia can take to help power these facilities reliably and sustainably.

Increased volatility, increased risks

Unlike households and most industries, data centres require constant power. This adds pressure to an energy grid designed for variable consumption.

As more people use AI for more complex tasks, the workloads on data centres will intensify. This leads to increased baseload demand. But it also leads to unpredictable spikes and drops in demand which the grid was not built to manage. This volatility creates real risks.

In 2024, 60 data centres in northern Virginia suddenly disconnected from the grid due to a tripped safety mechanism. This unleashed a massive surge of excess electricity – which, were it not for network operators implementing emergency countermeasures, would have caused a massive blackout.

This near-miss highlighted the fragility of the grid when faced with sudden, large-scale data centre disconnections.

Clean energy can’t do it alone

The limitations of Australia’s current energy mix are another source of volatility.

While renewable energy is central to the clean energy transition, it alone can’t meet baseload and peak demands from data centres. The problem is twofold. First, renewables are intermittent. Second, energy storage and backup options can only be scaled to a limited degree.

This means most data centres will continue to rely on coal or gas in some form.

Most data centre operators have committed to 100% renewable energy by 2030. But in practice, this often means purchasing annual renewable credits or power purchase agreements.

These mechanisms don’t guarantee clean energy during actual operations – they simply help offset annual consumption. Meeting real-time demand with clean energy is a far more complex challenge. It requires greater investment in renewables, storage and transmission infrastructure. It also requires better coordination between energy regulators, utility companies and data centre operators.

These challenges were reflected in Australia’s new climate target – a 62–70% cut below 2005 levels by 2035. This sits below the 65-75% range initially proposed by the Climate Change Authority last year. Why the reduction? Among the cited “transition risks” is the significant growth of data centres.

Becoming a global champion

Australia has an opportunity to develop policies that synchronise data centre expansion with more efficient energy and grid management.

First, Australia should promote computing methods at scale that reduce emissions but don’t compromise capabilities.

For example, smart scheduling software can automatically shift energy-intensive tasks, such as model training, to off-peak periods when renewable energy is most abundant. This wouldn’t affect more everyday, less energy-intensive tasks, such as using ChatGPT, that require immediate responses. Companies such as Google have already adopted this approach to reduce grid strain without impacting user experience.

Alongside this, data centres should be required to inform power companies in advance of large-scale AI training runs that can cause dramatic energy spikes. Companies such as Hitachi Energy have called on governments to implement such rules to support grid management, citing other energy-intensive industries, such as smelting, where prior warning is already a common practice.

Second, Australia needs to accelerate advanced energy storage innovations, including batteries, pumped hydro and thermal energy storage. Research in many of these technologies is already underway, backed by government initiatives and private investments.

Data centre company AirTrunk, for example, is exploring different ways of implementing battery energy storage systems in its new data centres. However, more targeted financial incentives and support – such as through the Future Made in Australia and the National Reconstruction Fund – can help to bridge the gap between research and commercial scalability.

Third, Australia can require data centres to set what are known as “power usage effectiveness” – or PUE – targets to drive energy efficiency.

PUE targets are calculated by dividing the data centre’s total energy use by its IT equipment energy use. A PUE closer to 1.0 indicates greater energy efficiency.

PUE limits in China helped reduce its average PUE from 1.54 to 1.48 in just one year. Similarly, voluntary initiatives such as the European Union’s code of conduct for data centre energy efficiency, have consistently lowered the average PUE among participating facilities.

There is no shying away from the reality that data centres are energy-hungry behemoths. However, with the right planning and policies, Australia could be a global champion for data centre growth that supports, not derails, the clean energy transition.

Johanna Lim, Research Associate, Strategic Technologies, University of Sydney

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

One approach to help fight climate change is to protect natural forests, as they absorb some atmospheric carbon released by burning fossil fuels and store large volumes of carbon.

Our new research on Australia’s tropical rainforests challenges the assumption that they will keep absorbing more carbon than they release.

We found that as climate change has intensified over the past half-century, less and less carbon has been taken up and converted to wood in the stems and branches of the trees in these forests. Woody biomass is a large and relatively stable store of carbon in forests, and acts as an important indicator of overall forest health.

The effect has been so pronounced that the woody biomass of these forests has gone from being a carbon sink to a carbon source. This means carbon is being lost to the atmosphere due to trees dying faster than it is being replaced by tree growth.

This is the first time woody biomass in tropical forests has been shown to switch from sink to source. Our research indicates the shift likely happened about 25 years ago.

It remains to be seen whether Australian tropical forests are a harbinger for other tropical forests globally.

What did we find?

Since 1971, scientists have tracked around 11,000 trees in 20 tracts of tropical rainforest in Australia’s far northeast, now part of the Queensland Permanent Rainforest Plots Network. This 49-year research effort is one of the world’s longest and most comprehensive of its kind.

We analysed this long-term data and found a clear signal: woody biomass switched from being a carbon sink to a carbon source about 25 years ago.

Why? One reason: trees are dying twice as fast as they used to.

Tropical rainforest tree species are adapted to generally warm, wet conditions. As the climate changes, they are subjected to increasingly extreme temperatures and drier conditions.These kinds of extreme climate events can damage wood and leaves, limiting future growth and leading to higher rates of tree death.

We also found tree deaths from cyclones reduced how much carbon these forests could absorb. Cyclones in far north Queensland are projected to become increasingly severe under climate change. They are also likely to push further south, potentially affecting new areas of forest.

Isn’t carbon dioxide plant food?

Burning fossil fuels and other human activities have increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. This should make it easier for plants to absorb CO₂ from the air, photosynthesise and grow. Given this, Earth system models predict higher atmospheric CO₂ levels will stimulate plant growth and increase how much carbon tropical forests can take up.

Also, remote sensing shows the canopies of tropical forests on Australia’s east coast are about 20% greener than they were in the 1980s. This suggests forest canopy growth has increased due to higher levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere. But this isn’t the whole picture.

Our data shows any potential increase in photosynthesis resulting in greener forest canopies has not translated to greater carbon storage in stems and branches.

The reason may be that tree growth can be limited by water, nutrients and heat. Our work suggest that warmer and drier conditions have limited tree growth even as CO₂ concentration has increased.

In a separate study, scientists artificially increased CO₂ and found the extra carbon taken up by leaves wasn’t being stored as extra woody growth. Rather, it was quickly released through roots and soil microbes.

What about other forest carbon stocks?

It will be challenging to find out whether these forests as a whole (including wood, roots, leaves and soils) have declined in carbon sink capacity.

The use of a specialised research tool known as eddy covariance towers could help, as these measure overall CO₂ movement into and out of ecosystems.

As of yet, only 15 years of this kind of data from three tropical Australian sites is available, which currently limits our ability to describe the fuller impact of climate change.

In any case, we know carbon stored in forest canopies and soils is often broken down and released back to the atmosphere faster than carbon in woody biomass.

So while Australia’s tropical rainforest carbon stores remain large, they may be less secure and reliable than in decades past.

Long term datasets are vital

When people visit Australia’s tropical rainforests, they can see intact stretches of biodiverse forest and large, carbon-rich trees. It’s hard to directly see the changes we have detected – for now, they’re only visible in the data.

Without high-quality long-term datasets, this signal would have been almost impossible to detect. Unfortunately, persistent funding shortages for long-term ecological monitoring threaten the continuity of these hugely valuable datasets.

Australia has the potential to assume a globally leading role in tropical ecosystem science. In light of state and national biodiversity and emission reduction commitments, Australian governments should support continued monitoring of vital ecological research sites.

Tropical forests may not be saviours

The fact that woody biomass in Australia’s tropical rainforests is now a net source of carbon has major implications.

These findings challenge our future reliance on forests as natural absorbers of extra atmospheric carbon.

We don’t know yet whether all tropical forests will respond similarly. Evidence on carbon sink capacity is mixed. Rainforests in South America are showing a decline while African rainforests are generally not.

Overall, the world’s tropical forests remain very significant stores of carbon and biodiversity. Their protection remains essential despite the climate risks they face.

Hannah Jayne Carle, Postdoctoral Researcher in Tropical Forest Ecology, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, WSU, Australian National University; Adrienne Nicotra, Professor of Ecology and Evolution, Research School of Biology, the Australian National University, Australian National University; David Bauman, Research Scientist in Plant Ecology, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD); Michael N Evans, Professor in Earths Systems Science, University of Maryland, and Patrick Meir, Chair of Ecosystem Science, University of Edinburgh

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

We’ve all seen the alarming images. Smoke belching from the thick forests of the Amazon. Spanish firefighters battling flames across farmland. Blackened celebrity homes in Los Angeles and smoked out regional towns in Australia.

If you felt like wildfires and their impacts were more extreme in the past year – you’re right. Our new report, a collaboration between scientists across continents, shows climate change supercharged the world’s wildfires in unpredictable and devastating ways.

Human-caused climate change increased the area burned by wildfires, called bushfires in Australia, by a magnitude of 30 in some regions in the world. Our snapshot offers important new evidence of how climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme fires. And it serves as a stark reminder of the urgent need to rapidly cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The evidence is clear – climate change is making fires worse.

Clear pattern

Our study used satellite observations and advanced modelling to find and investigate the causes of wildfires in the past year. The research team considered the role that climate and land use change played, and found a clear interrelationship between climate and extreme events.

Regional experts provided local input to capture events and impacts that satellites did not pick up. For Oceania, this role was played by Dr Sarah Harris from the Country Fire Authority and myself.

In the past year, a land area larger than India – about 3.7 million square kilometres – was burnt globally. More than 100 million people were affected by these fires, and US$215 billion worth of homes and infrastructure were at risk.

Not only does the heating climate mean more dangerous, fire-prone conditions, but it also affects how vegetation grows and dries out, creating fuel for fires to spread.

In Australia, bushfires did not reach the overall extent or impact of previous seasons, such as the Black Summer bushfires of 2019–20. Nonetheless, more than 1,000 large fires burned around 470,000 hectares in Western Australia, and more than 5 million hectares burned in central Australia. In Victoria, the Grampians National Park saw two-thirds of its area burned.

In the United States, our analysis showed the deadly Los Angeles wildfires in January were twice as likely and burned an area 25 times bigger than they would have in a world without global warming. Unusually wet weather in Los Angeles in the preceding 30 months contributed to strong vegetation growth and laid the foundations for wildfires during an unusually hot and dry January.

In South America, fires in the Pantanal-Chiquitano region, which straddles the border between Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, were 35 times larger due to climate change. Record-breaking fires ravaged parts of the Amazon and Congo, releasing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Not too late

It’s clear that if global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, more severe heatwaves and droughts will make landscape fires more frequent and intense worldwide.

But it’s not too late to act. We need stronger and faster climate action to cut fossil fuel emissions, protect nature and reduce land clearing.

And we can get better at responding to the risk of fires, from nuanced forest management to preparing households and short and long-term disaster recovery.

There are regional differences in fires, and so the response also need to be local. We should prioritise local and regional knowledge, and First Nations knowledge, in responding to bushfire.

Action at COP30

Fires emitted more than 8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2024–25, about 10% above the average since 2003. Emissions were more than triple the global average in South American dry forests and wetlands, and double the average in Canadian boreal forests. That’s a deeply concerning amount of greenhouse pollution. The excess emissions alone exceeded the national fossil fuel CO₂ emissions of more than 200 individual countries in 2024.

Next month, world leaders, scientists, non-governmental organisations and civil society will head to Belem in Brazil for the United Nations annual climate summit (COP30) to talk about how to tackle climate change.

The single most powerful contribution developed nations can make to avoid the worst impacts of extreme wildfires is to commit to rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions this decade.

Hamish Clarke, Senior Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

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

More public electric vehicle (EV) chargers will be built across Australia through a A$40 million funding boost, according to a recent government announcement. The new chargers will be a mix of fast chargers and kerbside chargers.

More chargers should mean more confidence for drivers to make the switch to EVs. But as researchers who study charging networks, we see a critical design flaw. The government is focusing on expanding the number of chargers. The problem is ensuring chargers actually do what they should: charge your car.

Most EV drivers charge at home. But when they use the public network, they need to know the charger is working. To track this, the government uses a metric called “uptime”, requiring chargers to be online 98% of the time. That sounds good. But it only measures whether a charger is connected to the network – not whether you can actually use it.

Fixing this gap will be essential to give motorists confidence in EV chargers – and speed up the slow shift to electric transport.

The uptime fallacy

Imagine you’re on a long road trip. You pull into a regional town, low on charge, and find the only fast charger is blocked by a petrol car. Or maybe the payment system is down. Or the cable has been vandalised. Or the charger simply refuses to “talk” to your car, failing the digital handshake needed to start a session.

For all these cases, the charger would still pass the uptime test. It’s online, communicating with its network. But it’s not actually able to do what drivers need it to do: charge the battery.

These issues are now common in Australia, especially the failed handshake problem where charging attempts fail right after they begin due to a communication problem between car and charger.

Australia has limited data on the prevalence of the problem. Our analysis of DC fast chargers funded by the Californian government shows the scale of the problem in a similar market. We found that while charger networks reported roughly 95–98% uptime, the chance of drivers successfully charging was substantially lower at 75–83%.

Public chargers aren’t just convenience – they’re essential

Around 80% of EV charging happens at home or at work in Australia.

But the public network is a lifeline for three crucial groups.

First, the millions of people who live in apartments (about 10% of the population as of 2021) or homes without off-street parking (about 25%). For them, public kerbside chargers aren’t a backup – they’re essential.

Second are the long-distance drivers who depend on highway fast chargers to travel between cities and towns. At present, our charger locations don’t always match up with where people actually want to drive and charge. This creates potential charging deserts. A single broken charger in one of these low-access areas can ruin a family holiday or a crucial work trip.

The third group is the growing number of freight and fleet operators shifting to electric vans and trucks. Charging reliability directly affects logistics schedules and business costs.

For all these users, charger reliability is especially important. Uptime won’t cut it.

Most popular EV charger apps rely on uptime as a way to show charger reliability, but some apps go beyond this to show more useful data, such as the last successful charge. Drivers can feel more secure choosing a charger proven to have recently delivered a successful charge.

Reliability beyond uptime

One solution is to shift away from a reliance on uptime and use a better metric.

In the United States, a large industry consortium recently hashed out what this might look like. Our research contributed to one of the outcomes: new customer-focused KPIs (key performance indicators) for chargers.

How do they work? Rather than relying on network data showing a charger is online, these KPIs draw in multiple sources of data, such as:

• using charger reviews to quickly spot repeat failures such as blocked charging, payment glitches and safety issues
• using vehicle and charger telemetry to pinpoint where and why charging sessions fail (while protecting privacy)
• regular on-site audits for damage, accessibility, lighting and the ease of locating the charger to catch issues missed by data
• verifying these data sources by comparing reported uptime with actual charging success rates.

Better still, by combining this data with maintenance logs and weather patterns, we can build predictive models to forecast when a charger is likely to fail and schedule proactive repairs.

This rigorous approach would give drivers far better confidence in public chargers.

Australia could easily adopt a similar approach, given the data, partners and capabilities already exist.

The first step would be a proof-of-concept to demonstrate how to fuse data from networks, vehicle telemetry and user check-ins and reviews with real world audits. Next would be publishing an open standard for charger KPIs and work with states and networks to roll it out nationally.

Boost security

A truly reliable network must also be secure. In the US, vandalism and copper theft have become real issues. One operator has installed GPS trackers in its charging cables. Thankfully, Australia hasn’t yet seen these issues at the same scale. But it would be naive to think our network is immune. As the charger network grows, so does its vulnerability.

The solutions are to invest in proactive measures such as good lighting, CCTV and tamper-proof designs, as seen across Norway and other leading EV nations.

If these problems escalate in Australia, it will be another source of charger anxiety, where drivers fear being left with a drained battery far from home. The end result will be that more drivers stick with petrol cars or choose plug-in hybrids.

Kai Li Lim, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia and Research Fellow in E-Mobility, The University of Queensland and Tisura Gamage, Graduate Student Researcher in Transport Technology, University of California, Davis

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

Australians love rooftop solar power. About 4 million homes have solar panels on their roofs, and we generate more solar energy per person than any other country.

But affordability pressures on home owners are holding them back from installing rooftop solar on millions of homes. Without this, Australia could struggle to meet its goal of generating more than 80% of electricity) from renewables by 2030.

We propose a bold new “use it or lend it” solar program, under which the owners of detached and semi-detached homes would have the option of allowing the government to install and operate solar panels on their rooftops.

This could be an effective alternative to traditional energy rebates to accelerate the energy transition. And the electricity generated from these systems could be allocated to low-income households and renters, who are currently unable to access solar power.

Boosting solar

Slightly more than half of owner-occupied houses in Australia have solar panels.

Our new research looked at the factors that influenced household solar panel uptake in the Sydney metropolitan area from 2013 to 2024.

We found that as the cost of panels and batteries dropped over time and electricity prices soared, more homeowners decided to install solar. In contrast, the feed-in tariffs – the payment from electricity retailers for surplus electricity you put back into the grid – seem to have little impact on solar adoption.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found that high house prices relative to household incomes resulted in reduced solar adoption, showing housing affordability is a barrier for solar uptake. Despite the long-term savings offered by solar, home owners battling housing affordability simply didn’t have as much disposable income to spend on solar panels.

At present, a typical 6.6 kilowatt system costs about $8,500, but the owner only pays about $6,200 because of the Commonwealth Small-Scale Renewable Energy Scheme rebate. These rebates are being phased out by 2030.

Untapped potential

Australia has a legislated greenhouse emissions target of 43% below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050. Last month, it announced a more ambitious interim target of 62–70% below 2005 levels by 2035.

To meet this goal, we will need to generate more than 80% of Australia’s electricity from renewables by 2030. We are not yet on track.

To overcome the shortfall on solar adoption, bold policies are needed to make rooftop solar accessible to all households, not just those who can already afford it.

What has been proposed so far? The Climate Council advocates for the mandatory inclusion of solar on new and substantially renovated houses, as well as suitable new apartment buildings. The Grattan Institute says state and territory governments should provide certainty with a long-term date for the end of gas.

But these approaches take time. We propose a third and complementary “use it or lend it” option. Under this scheme, owners of detached and semi-detached houses that have not installed solar could “lend” their rooftop space to the government for publicly owned solar panels.

How ‘use it or lend it’ would work

Owners who chose this option would retain full ownership of their property while receiving compensation, such as annual lease payments, for allowing public use of their rooftop space.

This arrangement would give property owners the clear, risk-free benefit of financial compensation without the cost of installation or responsibility for maintenance of the panels themselves. We expect the program would appeal to low-income homeowners who cannot afford solar panels, as well as rental property owners who may be reluctant or unable to invest in solar.

For the government, the electricity from these systems could be allocated to low-income households and renters, two groups that face the greatest barriers to direct solar participation. This could be done through [virtual energy networks], a digital platform that allows solar households to sell excess electricity to non-solar households. The “use it or lend it” policy could be an effective tool to address equity concerns in solar uptake.

Property owners could choose to buy back the rooftop solar panel system installed by the government at any time. If existing owners initially opt out but later wish to opt back in, or if new property owners decide to participate, the purchase price would be determined based on the “cost neutrality” principle, meaning the government does not profit.

To ensure feasibility and fairness, the program would have to include safeguards covering roof integrity and owner indemnity against potential damage or injury. It would need fair access principles for the installation, service and removal of the solar panels and batteries.

Each property’s solar suitability would be assessed by accredited professionals, considering technical viability as well as the property owner’s priorities, for example planned subdivisions or renovations.

With only five years until the current solar rebates are phased out, now is the time to consider how to boost solar installation without them.

With careful design and drafting, a landowner lending their roof space to the government does not disadvantage them. Owners, renters, the government and the climate would all benefit from solar panels on unused roofs.

Song Shi, Associate Professor, Property Economics, University of Technology Sydney; David Robinson, Sessional Lecturer, Planning and Environmental Law, University of Technology Sydney, and Mustapha Bangura, Senior Lecturer in Property Economics, University of Technology Sydney

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

Australia’s sluggish electric vehicle transition has begun to accelerate. In the first half of the year, more than 72,000 battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles were sold. That’s about 12% of all new cars, up almost a quarter over the same period in 2024.

Despite this momentum, progress is still too slow. EVs now dominate in countries such as Norway (98.3% of new cars), Nepal (76%) and China (51%). Australia is lagging.

If nothing is done, transport is projected to be Australia’s largest emissions source by 2030. Cutting emissions 62–70% by 2035 under the government’s new target will require rapidly shifting from combustion engine vehicles to EVs.

This week, the Electric Vehicle Council called for an end to the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035 to speed up the shift. Setting a sunset date would align Australia with major trading partners.

Despite the risk of pushback, a phase-out deserves serious public debate. Letting the market decide is leading to a very slow transition. This policy leap could trigger the rapid shift we need.

Why is a phase-out needed?

At present, transport accounts for 22% of Australia’s total emissions. It’s also the fastest-growing source.

EVs will be essential in cutting these emissions. Australia has to reach an EV market share for new cars of at least 50% in the next decade to achieve its broader 2035 emissions target.

Without tougher measures and a firm phase-out, that looks unlikely. The task is sizeable. Despite growing momentum, EVs only make up about 2% of the 21.7 million cars on the road today.

Several countries have already committed to banning or phasing out new petrol, gas or diesel cars.

The United Kingdom has mandated 80% of new cars and 70% of vans be zero-emission by 2030 and 100% by 2035.

Europe’s experience shows safeguards are essential

The tussle over the European Union’s legislated ban is worth examining.

All cars and vans sold after 2035 in the EU are legally required to produce zero emissions – other than an exemption for vehicles running under strict conditions on synthetic e-fuels made from captured carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

It wasn’t easy to get these laws through. The bloc’s top carmaking nation, Germany, threatened to block the laws unless e-fuels were allowed. The EU was forced to negotiate a compromise opening a loophole for combustion engines to persist under the guise of “climate-neutral fuel”.

Even so, the EU’s hard-fought ban remains one of the world’s strongest measures to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles. Most major carmakers support the ban and automakers such as Volkswagen have already announced plans to end new petrol and diesel car sales well before 2035. Mercedes has been the most vocal in opposing the ban.

The mistake Brussels policymakers made was to move to ban fossil fuel cars without laying out clear transition pathways. When bans like this are proposed, powerful interests invested in the status quo will look for ways to weaken them.

Ensuring these phase-outs work depends on preventing backsliding through safeguards such as clear interim targets to track progress, flexible review mechanisms, protections against loopholes, and support for equity and infrastructure.

Politics and industry pressure will complicate Australia’s path

Any move to ban or restrict a product will meet resistance. When the federal government rolled out its New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, it met strong pushback – even though the standards have no binding sales targets or bans but rather set targets for exhaust emissions from new vehicles.

Federal minister Chris Bowen has repeatedly emphasised that the transition must rely on levers such as efficiency standards, incentives and infrastructure rather than bans.

Bowen has stated Australia “cannot just wish away fossil fuels” and dismissed earlier proposals to ban new combustion engine vehicles. His consistent opposition suggests he views bans as politically risky.

Any such ban would likely be seized on by the opposition and even government MPs in car-dependent regional and outer metropolitan areas.

Car dealers and industry lobby groups focused on legacy combustion engine cars are likely to oppose any legislation speeding up the shift to EVs. But EV makers and charging companies would hail the ban.

Rising EV sales show the community is increasingly supportive. But affordability, range of models and charger reliability remain concerns.

How to build a ban

Any such ban in Australia would have to be legislated or regulated, not aspirational. It would have to come with robust targets for EV uptake and infrastructure expansion offering certainty to manufacturers and markets.

It would have to be paired with steadily tightening fuel-efficiency standards and incentives, as well as fair road pricing and registration reforms to ensure equity.

The charging infrastructure rollout would have to be scaled up aggressively and with particular focus on filling in gaps in rural, regional and remote areas.

Any ban would have to be equitable. This would mean extra support for lower-income and rural households, pragmatic trade-in schemes, and measures to preserve used-vehicle markets so people who can’t yet afford new EVs still have access to affordable transport.

Importantly, the policy must guard against backsliding by limiting loopholes, undertaking regular reviews and building in transparency mechanisms.

The car industry will need transition support such as workforce reskilling and incentives for local manufacturing to support the EV industry.

Any ban should be part of a wider strategy focused on ending subsidies and incentives for fossil fuel vehicles and potentially creating a cost-neutral feebate scheme, where levies on buyers of new high-emissions vehicles are used to offer rebates for zero or low-emission vehicles to offset higher prices.

Examples include France’s Bonus Malus and New Zealand’s Clean Car Discount.

A question of resolve

Banning petrol cars by 2035 isn’t radical – it’s necessary. Voluntary transitions and market forces will be too slow.

Opponents will frame any ban as coercive and unfair. Europe’s experience suggests powerful interest groups will seek to delay or weaken any ban.

A phase-out date cannot be a slogan – it must give certainty and set the direction for the entire transport system.

For car-dependent Australia, a 2035 ban may sound like a tough ask. But without it, transport risks becoming an albatross around our necks. The question now is whether Australia has the discipline to match the ambition.

Hussein Dia, Professor of Transport Technology and Sustainability, Swinburne University of Technology

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