Tag: SB001

Transport accounts for 21% of global carbon emissions. It is now the largest emitting sector in many developed countries. While Europe and North America dominate historic transport emissions, much of the projected growth in emissions is in Asia.

Social media sites like Facebook are designed for constant interaction to engage users’ attention. To rein in Facebook, lawmakers must first understand the harm that results from algorithmic manipulation on these platforms.

In less than two decades since a United Nations report drew attention to the concept, ESG investing has evolved into a US$35 trillion industry. Money managers overseeing one-third of total U.S. assets under management said they used ESG criteria in 2020, and by 2025 global assets managed in portfolios labeled ...

Despite high rates of vaccination in Australia (more than 80% of over-16s are double-dose vaccinated) and COVID cases trending down, hospitals in NSW, Victoria, and the ACT are still under pressure.

Unlike the Working Holiday Maker scheme, Seasonal Worker Programme visas are typically arranged by labour-hire companies, who recruit and then place workers on client farms.

History is weighing heavily on a hotel in the western suburbs of Beijing this week, as the 300 members of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party chart a course for China’s next five-year political cycle.

Domestic politics on climate change in Russia are fiercely contested, with key individuals and groups competing for influence. These debates occur mostly at an elite level, with little space given to civil society actors.

Musk, the world’s richest person as of late 2021, is a revolutionary entrepreneur. The United Nations is the world’s largest international organization, and its World Food Program won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020. Naturally, there’s going to be some tension, because they have completely different ways of thinking and ...

UK prime minister Boris Johnson launched the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow with the mantra of “coal, cars, cash and trees”. But thus far the summit has largely ignored the elephant in the room. Or rather, the cows, pigs, chickens and fish.

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, drew ire from across the political spectrum for trying to overhaul the rules that hold MPs to account during the recent Owen Paterson affair. Johnson whipped his MPs to support a parliamentary amendment that undermined an independent watchdog’s decision on Paterson’s lobbying activities. It passed, ...

Between 2014 and 2018, 57% of adaptation finance in sub-Saharan Africa arrived via loans, mainly, from wealthy countries and the World Bank. Only 42% of this money came through grants. Loans increase the debt burden on already beleagured countries.

After demonising Labor’s policy on electric cars before the 2019 election, the federal government has put electric vehicles at the centre of a new “Future Fuels and Vehicles Strategy” to be released by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday.

The fall of the Afghanistan government to the Taliban has presented the world with some stark choices. In recent weeks, the international community has raised alarm about the rapidly escalating humanitarian emergency in the country, calling for an influx of aid to reach millions of Afghans ahead of the winter.

Despite a landslide 50% election victory in October 2020, the New Zealand Labour Party annual conference last weekend – apparently incongruously – made it easier for the party’s leader to be replaced.

The relative success of the populist right-wing Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Ishin no Kai or JIP), which increased its vote to emerge as the third-largest party in the recent elections, has paved the way for the country to revise its 75-year-old Peace Constitution.

Only 1.7% of Papua New Guineans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. This has been a cause of concern for the international community, who are watching the virus spread through an exposed population with high rates of co-morbidities and minimal access to healthcare.

A fatal crowd surge during a performance by US rapper Travis Scott on Friday night has become one of the deadliest live music incidents in recent years. Crowd crushes during the Houston show, which was part of the Astroworld Music Festival, led to eight deaths and dozens of injuries.

If a voter is unable to produce ID on election day, there is an option for a fellow voter (who has their own ID) to vouch for them. Potential voters could also sign a declaration for their ID, which is then attached to their ballot.

Shipping, which transports 90% of the world’s trade, contributes nearly 3% of global emissions – a little more than the carbon footprint of Germany. If gone unchecked, this share could increase to 17% by 2050 as the world’s GDP keeps growing.

The New Zealand government is currently developing plans to address two crises — climate change and waste — and to embrace a circular economy. But it has no clear path for how to do this. The resulting muddle is watering down the potential of a circular economy to bring lasting ...

The U.S. East Coast has been experiencing hurricane-like flooding in recent days, with Georgia and the Carolinas getting the latest round. High tides are part of the problem, but there’s another risk that has been slowly creeping up: sea level rise.

Now that kids ages 5 to 11 are eligible for COVID-19 vaccination and the number of fully vaccinated people in the U.S. is rising, many people may be wondering what the endgame is for COVID-19.

In total, 531,000 jobs were added in October – outstripping the already optimistic predictions of economists. This caused the unemployment rate to fall 0.2 percentage points to 4.6%.

LED face masks are the latest device promoted on social media as a marriage of technology and beauty.

Two major reports on mental health and suicide released this week suggest two very different solutions to preventing suicides.

The U.S. Congress passed an infrastructure bill that funds more than a trillion dollars in nationwide federal spending on Nov. 5, 2021.

After COVID emerged, it didn’t take long for clinicians and scientists to notice the SARS-CoV-2 virus affects children and adults very differently.

In the first major deal of the Glasgow climate summit, more than 100 nations have pledged to end, and reverse, deforestation by 2030.

Just 2% of the Great Barrier Reef remains untouched by bleaching since 1998 and 80% of individual reefs have bleached severely once, twice or three times since 2016, our new study reveals today.

Coal supplied 41% of the UK’s electricity in 2012, but just 1.6% in 2020. Much of the shortfall left by coal has been met by natural gas – another fossil fuel.

Immune checkpoint blockade therapy works by blocking the checkpoint proteins from binding with their partner proteins and sending the “off” signal. This means that the cancer cells will become “visible” to the T cells, which can then go about destroying the tumour.

Just 2% of the Great Barrier Reef remains untouched by bleaching since 1998 and 80% of individual reefs have bleached severely once, twice or three times since 2016, our new study reveals today.

Meta has proposed that the metaverse will eventually allow us to engage across education, work and social contexts, while Microsoft looks to be focusing specifically on the realm of the virtual office for now.

The Fair Work Commission’s ruling that Australian farm workers paid piece rates to pick fruit and vegetables must now get a base wage of $25.41 an hour is long overdue and absolutely necessary.

China introduced new rules on November 1 that restrict the extent to which internet companies can collect and store user data. Known as the personal information protection law, it is said to be among the toughest data-protection regimes in the world.

The European Union’s Farm to Fork strategy, often described as the heart of the European Green Deal, was adopted in 2020 and strengthened in October 2021. It sets forth ambitious 2030 targets: a 50% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, a 50% cut in pesticide use and a 20% ...

Global carbon dioxide emissions have bounced back after COVID-19 restrictions and are likely to reach close to pre-pandemic levels this year, our analysis released today has found.

This week, at the global climate summit in Glasgow, business, government, and civil society leaders discussed how a “just transition” can help address the social challenges ahead. The term “just transition” is about prioritising decent work and quality jobs for displaced workers as coal mines, oil refineries, power plants and ...

At COP26 in Glasgow, a public artwork intervention stands at Govan Graving Docks, directly opposite the main delegate zone. Still/Moving’s unmissable NO NEW WORLDS is a text and light-based piece that alternates between nine iterations of the three words in its title.

The potential long-term neurological effects of concussions and other knocks to the head in professional sport have attracted significant attention and research interest over recent years.

Leaked internal documents suggest Facebook – which recently renamed itself Meta – is doing far worse than it claims at minimizing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on the Facebook social media platform.

Many universities, including the University of Florida, have policies that ask faculty to seek approval for “outside activities.” This is true for both paid and unpaid activities.

When ABC chair Ita Buttrose told a National Press Club lunch earlier this year that the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol could be blamed on the lack of a “well-funded public broadcaster”, she echoed a dangerous misunderstanding about the American media landscape.

At the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, more than 90 nations signed a global pledge led by the United States and United Kingdom to cut methane emissions. However, Australia was not among them.

Consider the UK government, which now permits its citizens to visit public places without wearing masks, despite surging COVID infection rates. Does that permission mean that people in England now have good reasons to abandon their masks?

A dispute between Britain and France about fishing territories has escalated rapidly. French authorities detained a British trawler on Thursday, October 28, and Britain promptly summoned the French ambassador for talks.

Humanity injects an almost incomprehensible 42 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere every year. The majority of this comes from burning fossil fuels, but a substantial portion, about 16%, arises from how we use the land. Most of these land-use emissions are caused by deforestation, particularly in ...

The Reserve Bank of Australia had a Cup Day surprise in store for the country, announcing it was abandoning its policy of “yield curve control”, meaning it was no longer going to defend any particular interest rate for borrowing over any particular duration.

Japan’s ruling conservative nationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will remain comfortably in power under its new prime minister Fumio Kishida, after the weekend’s national election.

There is a need for greater regulation of the ways these products are promoted. It should always be made clear that this is a form of debt, not just a way to pay.