Search Result for 'Generation X'

Peat has been a staple ingredient of composts sold in British garden centres since the 1960s, even though it’s not actually that nutritious for plants. The reason why this spongy turf is coveted by gardeners is that it can hold onto both water and air and it’s generally free of ...

The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the air we breathe, the water we drink – it’s all underpinned by healthy and productive soils.

It comes after the Victorian government this week committed to reducing greenhouse emissions by 45-50% by 2030, and to reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

To help Australia adapt to climate change and manage the disasters that come with it, the federal government this week pledged A$600 million towards establishing the National Recovery and Resilience Agency, and $210 million for the Australian Climate Service initiative.

On the morning of Thursday 6 May, French fishers threatened to blockade Jersey’s main port of St Helier, following a threat by French maritime minister Annick Girardin to cut off the island’s electricity supply.

The space company Blue Origin announced that it would start selling tickets for suborbital flights to the edge of space. The first flight is scheduled for July 20, and Jeff Bezos’ company is auctioning off one single ticket to the highest bidder.

Australia’s diaspora is estimated to include around one million people, but this would be significantly higher if former residents, such as international students, were included.

Nations establish their borders through treaties. Rivers are sometimes relied on to set boundaries, but even here tensions rise when there are disputes about interpretation.

The UK and India have announced a new enhanced deal on trade at a virtual summit. The deal aims to double trade between the two countries by 2030 and declares their joint commitment to start working towards a comprehensive free-trade agreement, for which discussions are due to commence in the ...

Australian governments are busy designing the nation’s transition to a clean energy future. Unfortunately, in a misguided effort to ensure electricity supplies remain affordable and reliable, governments are considering a move that would effectively pay Australia’s old, polluting coal-fired power stations to stay open longer.

Limiting global warming to 1.5℃ this century is a central goal of the Paris Agreement. In recent months, climate experts and others, including in Australia, have suggested the target is now impossible.

In case you missed it, a major A$1 billion energy deal between the Morrison and the South Australian government was revealed recently.

Water is a vital tool for all nuclear power stations: it’s used to cool their heat-generating radioactive cores. During the cooling process, the water becomes contaminated with radionuclides – unstable atoms with excess energy – and must be filtered to remove as many radionuclides as possible.

The convictions of 39 Post Office workers were quashed on April 23 after the UK’s court of appeal heard that the crimes for which they’d been accused were in fact caused by the organisation’s Horizon IT system.

NASA has long been hesitant to play host to space tourists, so Russia – looking for sources of money post-Cold War in the 1990s and 2000s – has been the only option available for those looking for this kind of extreme adventure.

Biden promoted familiar values of American optimism, success and exceptionalism. He assessed a long list of issues facing Americans, from the pandemic to jobs, the environment and to foreign policy.

The COVID-19 virus hit China first and hard, stalling its rapid economic growth for the first time since the Great Recession. But China’s economy grew by a blistering 18.3% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to 2020, keeping it solidly in place as the world’s second-largest economy.

Most vaccines have side-effects and COVID vaccines are no different. The public are being reassured that if they experience a sore arm where the needle went in, or tiredness, a headache, fever or nausea, these are merely signs that the immune system is working as it should.

Department stores have not fared well under COVID-19. Thanks to changing government restrictions, stores have veered from near-normal trading to click-and-collect to complete closure apart from online offerings.

To stem migration from Central America, the Biden administration has a US$4 billion plan to “build security and prosperity” in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador – home to more than 85% of all Central American migrants who arrived in the U.S. over the last three years.

Defence is always one of the Australian government’s busiest — and most powerful — portfolios. Now, as Peter Dutton takes the helm, this is no exception, and he will have much work to do.

Plants absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere, transforming it into leaves, wood and roots. This everyday miracle has spurred hopes that plants – particularly fast growing tropical trees – can act as a natural brake on climate change, capturing much of the CO₂ emitted by fossil fuel burning.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison overnight addressed a much anticipated virtual climate summit convened by US President Joe Biden, claiming future generations “will thank us not for what we have promised, but what we deliver”.

The premises which produce much of the UK’s meat are relatively hidden from view. Not only do most people not want to think about how meat is raised, it is in the interests of the intensive livestock industry to keep a low profile. Many meat eaters understandably tend to avoid ...

The football world has been rocked by the announcement of a breakaway European Super League (ESL). The majority think it a bad idea, from governing bodies Fifa and Uefa through to national bodies such as the FA and English Premier League.

Rare-earth metals are currently mined or recovered via traditional e-waste recycling. But there are drawbacks, including high cost, environmental damage, pollution and risks to human safety.

In May 2011, almost precisely a decade ago, the government-appointed Climate Commission released its inaugural report. Titled The Critical Decade, the report’s final section warned that to keep global temperature rises to 2℃ this century, “the decade between now and 2020 is critical”.

As a fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic worsens in Japan, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga faces a formidable challenge to successfully host the increasingly beleaguered Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, with less than 100 days left to go.

The big question facing Australia’s National Electricity Market is how to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 without disrupted energy supplies or skyrocketing prices.

Because 5G relies upon a dense network of masts and a powerful series of antenna, it’s possible that the same infrastructure, with some tweaks, could beam power to small devices.

A new measurement has now confirmed the initial result. This means new particles or forces may exist that aren’t accounted for in the standard model. If this is the case, the laws of physics will have to be revised and no one knows where that may lead.

On November 30, six Portuguese children and young people brought a historic court case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Dubbed Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and Others – or the Agostinho case, for short – it argues that those states which fail to solve the climate ...

Australia introduced its policy of mandatory hotel quarantine for returning travellers. In the past year, some 211,000 travellers have been confined for two weeks in hotel rooms, in conditions many have found difficult to endure.

Like Bitcoin, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are cryptocurrencies. But whereas individual bitcoins all have the same value, NFTs are more like baseball cards.

Solar geoengineering strategies are very controversial within and beyond the climate science community. It is a major step forward to have 16 experts from different disciplines agree that now is the time to establish a research program on this topic.

The Australian Energy Markets Commission has produced a draft decision that will make households and small business with solar panels pay to inject their surplus production into the grid.

Aussie scientists release landmark climate-change report and say country must rapidly remove greenhouse gas emissions from a range of sectors.

Single parents with dependent children — eight out of ten of them women — were far more likely than others to lose work at the height of the pandemic and are far more likely to still be out of work now.

The BBC intends to use the drive to get out of London to better reflect the makeup and views of other parts of the UK. Too often England has been treated as the default setting. But just because BBC2’s Newsnight is broadcast from Cardiff or Manchester a handful of times ...

Former Australian finance minister Mathias Cormann was last week elected Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), after campaigning on a platform with climate action as a central plank.

Danone’s chief executive and chairman, Emmanuel Faber, is to step down after activist shareholders called for his removal. In particular Artisan Partners and Bluebell Capital Partners, which together own less than 6% of the Paris-based food giant, explicit requested the board find a replacement.

Kevin Rhoades, one of the bishops who issued the statement, attempted to clarify things when he said, “There’s no moral need to turn down a vaccine, including the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is morally acceptable to use.” But only hours later, the bishop of Bismarck, North Dakota said the ...

Australia’s nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, is battling an unfolding COVID crisis. The Morrison government is urgently deploying 8,000 vaccine doses to the nation’s health workers – but poor electricity access means there are serious questions over PNG’s broader vaccine roll-out.

Symptoms of silicosis can include a cough, breathlessness and tiredness. Generally, the more widespread the disease becomes in the lungs, the more trouble a person will have with breathing.

If you thought that vaccine hesitancy was the biggest challenge of the pandemic, think again. A new challenge is approaching: supply chain hesitancy. The potential for interruption along vaccine supply lines may lead to pauses in vaccination rollouts that will affect millions of people.

In the lead-up to the new season, however, the focus has not solely been on the footy. Much attention is also being paid to the darker side of the sport: concerns over concussions and the safety of its players.

Thanks in part to the pandemic-induced economic slowdown and the collapse of coal and triumph of wind power over the last decade, a new analysis suggests the UK is halfway to meeting its net zero greenhouse gas emissions target. The ultimate goal of a fully renewable grid will depend on ...

At first glance, prosecuting current or past top officials accused of illegal conduct seems like an obvious decision for a democracy: Everyone should be held accountable and subject to the rule of law.

What do we do when times get tough? We reach for that escapism. And with more time to ourselves than ever before, Covid showed us some new - and old - avenues to pursue with our escapism.

Green hydrogen is being touted as an alternative to fossil fuels in New Zealand. The government has invested NZ$8.4 million to explore its potential and $19.9 million in a hydrogen energy facility.