Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Australia’s political landscape is barely recognisable from four years ago. Will Labor abandon its risk-averse past and take an aggressive stance on emissions? Want to get this in your inbox when it publishes? Sign up for the Clear Air Australia newsletter here In 2021, the Labor party was in a bit of a climate crouch. It needed policies that could be presented at the 2022 election as credible steps towards addressing the century’s greatest social and economic challenge after nine years of the Coalition doing next-to-nothing, or less. It also felt it needed to not leave itself exposed to another round of damaging climate scare campaigns from its opponents in the Morrison government, industry lobby groups and the media, particularly at News Corp. It had experienced too many of those, from claims that a lamb roast would cost more than $100 and Whyalla would be wiped from the map, to baseless attacks in 2019 that its policies would cost an economy wrecking $60bn and, ludicrously, stop people enjoying weekends. Continue reading...

Delegates at UN treaty talks must not allow negotiations to be derailed again by fossil fuel interests Plastic pollution has reached the most remote and inaccessible parts of our beleaguered planet. It has been found in Greenland’s ice cap, near the summit of Mount Everest, and in the deepest depths of the western Pacific Ocean. Nature programmes have sounded the alarm over a human-made crisis that has become an environmental scourge and a serious threat to our health. Yet global production of plastics is on course to triple to more than a billion tonnes a year by 2060, after increasing by more than 200 times over the past 75 years. This gloomy backdrop should inject a sense of urgency into UN-convened talks in Switzerland this week, aimed at agreeing a binding global plastics treaty. In 2022, when 173 countries committed to work towards such an accord, there was widespread relief that at last a multilateral route was to be taken towards solving a quintessentially global problem. Sadly, as delegates gather in Geneva, there are reasons to be fearful. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

To develop cold symptoms, you need to be infected by a virus. There’s a reason that happens more in winter – and the answer hangs indoors, in the air Read more in the Antiviral series It was inevitable that I would, as Oscar Wilde quipped, become like my mother. After decades of being told to “Put on more clothes! You’ll catch a cold!” I now, despite knowing better, insist the same for my daughter. “Another layer!” I demand of my partner, who begrudgingly bundles up a toddler already as puffy as the Michelin Man. The scientifically literate part of my brain understands that no jacket will shield her from the onslaught of daycare viruses. And yet I cling to the conviction that underdressing or stepping out the door with wet hair in winter must be avoided at all costs. Continue reading...

The Great Barrier Reef has seen the sharpest annual drop in the amount of live coral recorded by scientists in its northern and southern sections since monitoring started four decades ago, according to a report from the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The report is the first to comprehensively document the devastating impacts of the early 2024 mass coral bleaching event – the most widespread and severe event on record A bellwether of change’: speed of glacier shrinking on remote Heard Island sounds alarm Continue reading...