Few countries can boast a national animal with the status as India. The tiger, as a symbol of India, is as recognisable as the Taj Mahal and as loved as Mahatma Gandhi.
Here’s a question for you: how much of a masterpiece can you remove, before it loses its value and beauty for which it is recognised? That’s the question the Australian government is wrestling with as the coal industry makes greater and greater inroads into the masterpiece that is the Great Barrier Reef.
Last Friday, the Environment Minister Tony Burke effectively told UNESCO, ‘don’t worry, be happy’, in response to grave concerns about the future of the Great Barrier Reef.
The Australian continent might be about 4,000 km wide from east to west, but even the far west coast cannot escape the winds of Cyclone Rusty and the alarming impacts of climate change caused by coal mining, such as the planned Galilee Basin project, in the nation's east.
Amid all the news about coal and pollution problems in China you might have missed this one: According to new statistics from the China Electricity Council, China’s wind power production actually increased more than coal power production for the first time ever in 2012.
I don’t know much about zombies. What I do know has been taught to me by my thirteen-year-old son: one of the first rules is don’t ever turn your back on them if you’re not sure they’re dead.
On May 26, oil began flowing down the Kolva River through Komi Indigenous land in Northern Russia. For a week now the oil has been coating the river and building up on the banks, with no reaction from Rusvietpetro, the joint venture company of VietPetro and Zarubezhneft, a state-controlled Russian oil company, and no cleanup being organised by the company or even the local authorities.
By Brett Parris, Monash University
In the coming months our new federal government will be promoting a massive expansion in Australia’s coal exports. In all likelihood they’ll hail it as “good For Australia”. It isn’t.
As a local man whose family has been farming in the Maules Creek area for five generations, I can tell you I am blown away by what has happened here this week.