Experts have said this election is the last chance to save the reef. We ask the three biggest parties about their policies to do soAs Australia goes to the polls on 2 July, the Great Barrier Reef will be reeling from its worst environmental crisis in recorded history and experts have said this election cycle is the last chance to save it. Both climate change and water quality need to be tackled quickly and aggressively.We asked the three parties a series of questions about their positions on the Great Barrier Reef. Continue reading...

Over time I’ve become painfully aware that decisions being made outside my community are defining not only my business, but the entire reef tourism industryIn the late 1970s, I literally underwent a sea change. After spending time as a deckhand on a mate’s boat I decided commercial fishing was the life for me. All my energy went into fishing so I could fund a carefree life of adventure – snorkelling and diving on the Great Barrier Reef.Life and work was good, but I figured out a way to make it even better. I spent a year building a fishing boat with long-range capability that was large enough to house myself, my wife and our first daughter. We could now spend months out at sea, eliminating the time and expense of a daily commute to fishing spots, as well as our living costs. Continue reading...

Many of the politicians fighting Australia’s election campaign talk about the economy and immigration but the world is listening for what they say about the impact of climate change

The US senator just can’t win – because the billionaire presidential candidate just can’t lose: whether he triumphs in the race for the White House or notIt occurred to me only recently that it’s never going to happen. Even if Donald Trump loses the race in November, he’ll act as if he’s won. He’ll repeatedly explain how, by many different measures, he was the true victor. He’ll blame others for whatever went wrong and insist that the outcome suits him perfectly anyway, because he’s a billionaire and therefore immune to dissatisfaction or regret. The bit where he loses and feels bad about himself, that’s never coming. And, of course, he might actually win.Instead it’s the Republican party that’s going to lose and feel bad about itself, whether Trump is victorious or not. It’s not yet clear precisely how this disaster will pan out, but here’s a telling example of what’s already happening. John McCain is a widely respected Republican senator. He may have lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama, but he held his Arizona senate seat two years later with 59% of the vote. He’s also a former prisoner of war, and when Trump implied that McCain didn’t qualify as a war hero because he’d been captured (this was back in July last year) it seemed like one of those sufficiently stupid moments. It wasn’t. Continue reading...

Christopher Abbott says orderly evacuation seen during Japan’s Fukushima incident would not work as well in western societiesWestern societies would not respond well to a Fukushima-style nuclear disaster due to a lack of public information, a leading disaster expert has warned.Christopher Abbott said he firmly believed that the public ought to be better educated over the hazards and risks they may face. Continue reading...

Janet Russell asks the right question (Letters, May 30). What has happened to the report on shale gas by the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC)? When Professor Cowern and I gave evidence in February, we were assured that the report would be published no later than May. We have also been told unofficially that the CCC has accepted our data on fugitive emissions of methane and that shale gas is two times worse than coal from a climate change perspective. We also submitted a further paper towards the end of March, indicating that over half of the rise in atmospheric levels of methane seen globally since 2007 is due to oil and gas, notably shale extraction in the US, and that this is obscuring the rise in methane emissions from the Arctic. I suppose it would be highly embarrassing for the government if its “dash for gas” was found to be incompatible with our climate change commitments, agreed by the UN but implemented via EU legislation. Embarrassing unless the government accepted the scientific case and announced it was going to abandon fracking and invest in renewables.

Longer days helped solar panels generate 50% more electricity than coal across the whole of May, analysis showsSolar power in the UK produced more electricity than coal across the whole of May, the first ever month to pass the milestone, according to research by analysts at Carbon Brief. Solar panels generated 50% more electricity than the fossil fuel across the month, as days lengthened and coal use fell. Solar generated an estimated 1,336 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity in May, compared to 893GWh output from coal.Coal was once the mainstay of the nation’s power system but the rapid rise of solar panels and of climate change concerns has seen its use plummet, leading to a series of milestones in recent weeks. Continue reading...

My lifelong friend and colleague Mike Croxford, who has died aged 71, was a pioneer of recycling in his native Wales. The Welsh government’s current recycling performance – at 60% it is fourth in Europe – owes much to Mike, who was a founder member of the Zero Waste movement worldwide and of the Zero Waste International Trust.His interest in recycling began in 1980, while running the Augusta Street youth project in Cardiff. The young people started collecting newspapers to improve their standing among local people and to fundraise to run events for the community. The project turned into the Community Support Anti-Waste Scheme (CSAWS) that in 1986 initiated the first citywide collection scheme in the UK. Continue reading...

Lizzie Carr catalogued vast amount of plastic junk clogging 400 miles of waterways as she paddled through during her 22-day journeyA woman who paddled 400 miles up the length of England’s waterways found them choked with thousands of plastic items, from bottles and bags to toys and dummies.Lizzie Carr completed the 22-day challenge on Sunday with swollen knuckles and more than 2,000 photos of plastic junk she found in canals and rivers from Godalming in Surrey to Kendal in Cumbria. Continue reading...

Former Unilever and Nestlé supplier says it now aims to comply with the RSPO’s highest level of accreditation by the end of the yearOne of the world’s largest producers of palm oil has dropped a lawsuit against the sustainability body that revoked its accreditation.IOI Group was suspended from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) scheme in April in the face of allegations it was not doing enough to prevent deforestation in Indonesia. Continue reading...

Sitting at a table with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of noxious silver cleaner is the worst – and it’s not even eco-friendly. Here’s a better methodWhen I was a child, one of my jobs was to polish the silverware. Saying this makes my family sound far more posh than we were. Our house was chronically filled with chaos and noise, and the shoes, toys and general detritus of the six children, dog and several guinea pigs who called it home. The silverware represented the only shred of civility my beleaguered parents had left, and they clutched it with all their might. Hauling the utensils out on special occasions meant they hadn’t completely capitulated to the army of small children they had created, so haul it out they did. And when they did, it was my job to polish it.This particular chore was one of my most hated. It meant sitting at the kitchen table with a roll of paper towel and a bottle of noxious silver cleaner, meticulously polishing each fork and spoon, trying to work the polish into each crevice without first passing out from the fumes. It was long, laborious, and always gave me a headache. Continue reading...

Morocco’s ‘gold’ is providing jobs for hundreds of women in a thriving network of co-operatives, and helping to reduce desertification amid climate change

Despite a backlash by some cyclists at the motoring organisation’s Cyclist’s Highway Code, the AA’s new book on cycling isn’t as bad as you might thinkWhen the AA, the UK’s largest motoring organisation, published a Cyclist’s Highway Code on Monday, I thought it seemed like a bizarre but effective way to wind up passionate cyclists such as myself.I already don’t like the official Highway Code for telling me I “should” wear a helmet and fluorescent clothing to ride around in daylight when studies have concluded neither will make cycling safer for me or the community in which I cycle. Continue reading...

Closing coal plants by 2023 rather than 2025 will cut carbon emissions and air pollution, and boost clean energy projects, Tory thinktank tells governmentThe UK should close all its coal-fired power stations two years earlier than the government’s pledge of 2025, according to green Conservatives including former energy minister Lord Greg Barker.The move would not cause the lights to go out, would cut both carbon emissions and air pollution and would boost cleaner energy projects, according to a report from Bright Blue, a thinktank of Tory modernisers. Continue reading...