Why we need engineers who study ethics as much as maths
The decisions engineers make, if not fully thought through, can have unintended consequences – including building failures and climate change.
The decisions engineers make, if not fully thought through, can have unintended consequences – including building failures and climate change.
India is the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and its transition to a low-carbon economy is crucial to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. But unfortunately, the nation is still clinging firmly to coal.
Legacy pollutants like PCBs are chemical contaminants that take a long time to break down in the environment and often still cause harm to humans and wildlife many decades after they are banned.
Earlier this year, militants stormed the coastal town of Palma, Mozambique, which lies close to vast plants for extracting liquefied natural gas (LNG). Dozens of people were killed and thousands more displaced.
India is the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and its transition to a low-carbon economy is crucial to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. But unfortunately, the nation is still clinging firmly to coal.
There are new trade frictions across the Irish land border, but not of the type that require checks and controls there (for example, the provision of services).
Let’s say a new irrigation scheme is proposed and all the land it’ll take up needs to be cleared — trees felled, soil upturned, and habitats destroyed. Water will also have to be allocated. Would the economic gain of the scheme outweigh the damage to the environment?
Trees have always been a point of conflict between colonisers and Indigenous people.
Football (whether you like it or not) is the world’s favourite sport. In England, it’s considered the national game. An estimated 1.9 million Britons played the game at least twice a month in 2020. And England’s major tournament matches are consistently watched by over 10 million households.
There is a reason that Tom Bower’s biography of Boris Johnson is subtitled “The Gambler”. The book details the life of a Teflon-coated politician who seemingly defies the usual rules of political life when it comes to scrapes and scandals, brinkmanship and buffoonery.
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian today confirmed what Sydney was fearing: the city’s lockdown will be extended for another week.
Yet another familiar fashion retailer is about to disappear from the British high street. The once-mighty Gap is the latest brand to pull down the shutters.
As North America enters its peak summer growing season, gardeners are planting and weeding, and groundskeepers are mowing parks and playing fields. Many are using the popular weed killer Roundup, which is widely available at stores like Home Depot and Target.
There are only four known species of horseshoe crabs alive today. But the fossil record shows that hundreds of millions of years ago they came in a huge range of shapes and sizes.
Increasing the gap between COVID-19 vaccine doses (up to a maximum of 12 weeks) was one of the more controversial decisions made by the UK government during the pandemic.
Vast, treeless paddocks and fields can be dangerous for wildlife, who encounter them as “roadblocks” between natural areas nearby.
A growing global push to halt biodiversity decline, most recently agreed at the G7 on Sunday, leaves Australia out in the cold as the federal government walks away from critical reforms needed to protect threatened species.
The Australian government on Tuesday expressed shock at a draft decision to list the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger”. But the recommendation has been looming for some time.
UK and international scientists find that giant land mammal evolved in isolation to become a comparatively tiny shadow of its former self.
Managed retreat is controversial, particularly in the United States, but it isn’t just about moving – it’s about adapting to change and building communities that are safer, addressing long-overlooked needs and incorporating new technologies and thoughtful design for living and working in today’s world.
Immigrants in occupations that are urgently needed to help the economy recover from the pandemic will be fast-tracked for entry into Australia.
The federal Coalition has the characteristics of one party while formally remaining separate entities, which has been a successful, but unusual political arrangement.
Latest modelling shows only around 3,200 breeding pairs, which could decline to as little as 400 pairs by 2050 if no action is taken.
In the past, Olympic Games have resulted in soaring budgets — Tokyo’s US$15.4 billion budget being the latest example — and infrastructure that has lain unused after the 16-day event is over. This has led to justified criticism the Olympics are not the jewel in the crown they were once ...
New Zealand faces two enormous challenges if it is to meet its international climate change commitments under the Paris Agreement: biogenic methane emissions from agriculture, and carbon emissions from industry and transport.
The author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott announced on June 15, 2021, that she and her husband Dan Jewett had given US$2.7 billion to 286 organizations, including universities, arts organizations and other nonprofits. It was her third announcement of this kind since she first publicly discussed her giving intentions in May ...
New Zealand faces two enormous challenges if it is to meet its international climate change commitments under the Paris Agreement: biogenic methane emissions from agriculture, and carbon emissions from industry and transport.
Tired of bad bush roads and impassable rivers? Buy your very own historic tank today and make these problems a thing of the past.
There are no cheap, widely available solutions that can lower the shipping industry’s planet-warming carbon emissions – in fact, shipping is considered one of the hardest industries on the planet to decarbonize – but some exciting innovations are being tested right now.
State’s newly announced $2-billion investment in renewable energy will tackle climate change, which is the greatest threat to the Reef’s future.
World leaders including Prime Minister Scott Morrison will gather in the UK this weekend for the G7 summit. In a speech on Wednesday ahead of the meeting, Morrison said Australia recognises the need to reach net-zero emissions in order to tackle climate change, and expects to achieve the goal by ...
Senator Matt Canavan sent many eyeballs rolling yesterday when he tweeted photos of snowy scenes in regional New South Wales with a sardonic two-word caption: “climate change”.
Around 4.6 billion people use the internet every day. In fact, 350,000 tweets have been sent in the past minute. We tend to think of the internet as something ephemeral – partly thanks to terms like “web” and “cloud” – but the servers that host all that data produce huge ...
Steel is a major building block of our modern world, used to make everything from cutlery to bridges and wind turbines. But the way it’s made – using coal – is making climate change worse.
Environmental scientists see flora, fauna and phenomena the rest of us rarely do. In this series, we’ve invited them to share their unique photos from the field.
Having to work multiple insecure jobs leaves more than half of Australians believing this generation will be worse off than their parents.
Steel is a major building block of our modern world, used to make everything from cutlery to bridges and wind turbines. But the way it’s made – using coal – is making climate change worse.
Despite the tragic deaths, suffering and sadness that it has caused, the pandemic could go down in history as the event that rescued humanity. It has created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset our lives and societies onto a sustainable path. Global surveys and protests have demonstrated the appetite for fresh ...
This debate about the near-term outlook is matched by an equally lively debate about long-term inflation, relating to drivers such as the effect of baby boomers retiring, China’s changing labour force, automation and so on. So who is right in all this? Are the inflation numbers a blip or are ...
But Climate Council says the Federal Government is trying to claim credit for something that it played no part in achieving.
With COVID-19, thinking like a pathogen leads to an inevitable conclusion: Getting the vaccine out to everyone in the world as quickly as possible is not just an ethical imperative, but also a selfish one.
In 2020, as lockdowns were enforced across the country, unemployment and underemployment soared. Even for those in stable jobs, wages growth was stagnant.
Growth requires more material extraction, which in turn requires more energy. The fundamental problem we face in trying to replace fossil energy with renewable energy is that all our renewable technologies are significantly less energy dense than fossil fuels.
The Federal Court today dismissed a bid by a group of Australian teenagers seeking to prevent federal environment minister Sussan Ley from approving a coalmine extension in New South Wales.
Installing solar panels is an easy way to lower your carbon footprint and cut electricity bills. But our recent research found there are many incentives to remove them prematurely, adding to Australia’s massive waste problem.
Government is expecting businesses and consumers to cough up more money, but not creating its own efficiencies, says employer organisation.
Even if every country meets its current climate targets, Earth’s temperature will still rise by a dangerous 2.1℃ this century, according to sobering findings from a new International Energy Agency report.
Established in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, the International Energy Agency (IEA) was created to maintain the stability of the international oil supply. As an independent adviser to many governments on energy policy, the IEA has the authority to make member states release reserve oil stocks to stabilise ...
More than 2.4 million older adults are supported each year by Meals on Wheels, a program through which seniors and people with disabilities receive healthy and tasty meals for free from a network of volunteers.
On May 11, 2021, the World Food Prize Foundation announced that its 2021 laureate is Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted, a nutrition scientist who in my view has done more than anyone to draw attention to the essential but often overlooked role of aquatic foods in sustainable healthy diets.