The sex industry isn’t the most obvious philanthropist, but conservation needs all the help it can getPresented with one or more of the innumerable crises currently facing our ailing planet, it’s easy to succumb to frustration; to think, “But what can someone like me do to help?” By this one usually means, “What can I do that doesn’t involve giving any money, or sacrificing anything, or looking up from my computer screen?”To the two most common courses of action – “nothing” and “retweet the outrage of others” – we may now add a third: “watch porn”. From now until the end of the month, Pornhub – a sort of giant online sex video clearing house - is mounting a campaign to save the whales, through its “official philanthropic division”, Pornhub Cares. The oceans, you may have heard, are Not Safe for Whales (or NSFW, as it’s commonly abbreviated), and Pornhub wants to put that right. Continue reading...

Plans to generate energy from Swansea Bay lagoon are further delayed as UK energy minister announces wider review of the sectorThe future of a revolutionary plan to generate electricity from a lagoon in Swansea Bay has been thrown into further doubt after the UK government unveiled plans for a six-month review of the wider tidal power sector.

To be able to adapt to climate change, we need scientists to project how the climate will change

Green group says claims by the head of fracking company Cuadrilla that they had ‘misled’ the charities regulator are an attempt to silence the oppositionFriends of the Earth (FoE) has defended its record on lobbying against shale gas fracking, after accusations from one of the companies involved in drilling that it had acted contrary to its charitable status.The green campaigning organisation sent out a press release last December, applauding the Labour party’s decision to call for a moratorium on fracking, which was posted automatically through its systems to its website. Continue reading...

Fibres from spinifex are being used to make condoms more reliable and as thin as a human hair, according to University of Queensland researchA tough, spiky grass might not sound like a good ingredient for condoms, but it could be the secret to making them thinner and more reliable.Fibres from the Australian grass spinifex are being used to make condoms that could be as thin as a human hair without any loss in strength, researchers said. Continue reading...

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire I resisted the temptation to point at the sky and yell at people to kneel before the visionA strange glow, a halo, an aura? The sky was so bright I wore sunglasses. After weeks of dishwater grey the light that made me blink found bands of small birds brightening their browns, blues and yellows, making their voices empty like a drawer of silver cutlery tipped out on to the path.My attention was drawn upward by a tree creeper spiralling an oak trunk through dark branches, up to where the wind shunted clouds about. At first I didn’t believe my eyes: the sky bore a splash of mother-of-pearl opalescence, a blur of fairly indistinct rainbow colours of indeterminate shape as if smudged out. Continue reading...

Queenslander Frank Standfast posted this video to Facebook on Wednesday showing thousands of moths filling the gutters of a car park and clinging to the walls of the Winton hotel after heavy rain in the region Continue reading...

Romilly Madew champions gender equality as well as sustainability, and says the Green Star rating system has the capacity to ‘truly transform’ our citiesAs a woman in the traditionally male-dominated property industry, Romilly Madew, the chief executive of the Green Building Council Australia (GBCA) and member of the leadership group Chief Executive Women, knows first-hand the difficulties of getting women into the limelight.The GBCA and the Property Council of Australia have a policy of ensuring 60% of those taking part in their joint annual Green Cities conference are women. She says this “makes women more visible and, in turn, could lead to recruiters seeing more women”. However, Madew notes that meeting this self-imposed quota can be hard work. Continue reading...

Australia gets to say it cut emissions – despite our emissions rising – because they rose a little bit less than it said they wouldAustralia’s environment minister, Greg Hunt, has been given an award for being the “best minister in the world”.“The aim of this award is to recognise innovation in global government work and highlight ministerial initiatives that have resulted in positive changes in their communities,” the United Arab Emirates minister of cabinet affairs, Mohammed Al Gergawi, said as he gave Hunt the award in Dubai. Continue reading...

Australia’s environment minister receives the inaugural ‘best minister in the world’ award at the World Government Summit in Dubai for his efforts to reduce carbon emissions. In a video posted by the summit, Greg Hunt tells the people of the United Arab Emirates they should be ‘immensely proud’ of the forum. The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said of Hunt’s award: ‘I’d like to see what competition he was up against’ Continue reading...

Environment minister responsible for approving expansion of Abbot point coal terminal in Queensland says he is ‘genuinely humbled’ by awardThe federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, has received the inaugural “best minister in the world” award at the World Government Summit in Dubai for his efforts to reduce carbon emissions.Related: Five reasons Greg Hunt may not be the best minister in the world Continue reading...

The scope of potential criminal charges that may be considered include misconduct in office and involuntary manslaughterThe state of Michigan’s inquiry into the Flint water crisis will consider any potential criminal conduct, including involuntary manslaughter, investigators said Tuesday.Michigan attorney general Bill Schuette and a team of investigators appointed last month to examine Flint’s water debacle said they’ve “hit the ground running” in the investigation. Continue reading...

How do we finance the climate adaption needed to stop global temperatures rising above 1.5 degrees? Our panel of experts share their thoughtsHundreds of billions of dollars could be made available for climate finance by placing a small tax on financial transactions such as the trading of stocks and bonds. There’s a big Robin Hood Tax movement behind this, with a group of European countries already on the cusp of establishing the world’s first regional financial transaction tax. Karen Orenstein, senior analyst, Friends of the Earth US, Washington DC, USA @KarenOrenstein @foe_us Continue reading...

Summit, an invite-only ideas conference, is setting up a permanent home on a mountain in Utah. But can it avoid being just another meet-up for Silicon Valley tech bros?Elliot Bisnow, the co-founder of Summit – which he calls an events community for people who are “passionate and nice and interested in doing something impactful” – said he never thought he’d be living on a mountain in Utah, but in a lot of ways, he’s coming back to his roots.The idea for Summit began there, in 2008. Bisnow had started a real estate business in college, but after graduation he was feeling isolated. So he called up 19 of the entrepreneurs who impressed him most, like Blake Mycoskie from Toms, and Ricky Van Veen, who founded College Humor, and asked if they’d want to come skiing with him. “I cold called them and said, ‘I have a startup I think it would be interesting to get a group of interesting people together. I’m renting this big house at Alta, Utah.’” Continue reading...

In the first post of a short series, I take a look at the European eel fishery, which is beset by illegal trade as European Eel becomes a prized commodity in AsiaThis year the banks of France’s great rivers have become the stage for an intensifying conflict, cued by the arrival of millions of baby European Eels migrating from the North Atlantic into Europe’s rivers. Alongside the legitimate eel fishing season, which runs from November to March each year, a thriving black market usurps young eels from European waters, transporting tonnes of them, live, to Asia annually. This year the issue has reached a head, as those illegal forces clash with conservationists who are trying to draw attention to the eels’ fate—especially along the waterways of France.The European Eel species (Anguilla anguilla) is a centuries-old staple in European cuisine, but in the last 45 years, it’s undergone estimated declines of 90-95 percent that make it a critically endangered species today. “We’re actually dealing with a species on the very edge of survival,” says Andrew Kerr, chairman of the Sustainable Eel Group (SEG), an organisation working to aid the recovery of European Eel across its habitat. Continue reading...

While some believe the palm oil certifier is taking a significant step forward, others fear the creation of a system that excludes smaller companiesThe world’s leading body for the certification of sustainable palm oil has created new standards to tackle deforestation, human rights violations and greenhouse gas emissions on certified plantations.The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) published the RSPO Next standards on 9 February following rising pressure from industry and campaigners who claim that certified firms are still participating in deforestation, land-grabbing and the destruction of biodiversity, such as the loss of habitat for orangutans. Continue reading...

Cuts to the CSIRO’s climate and land and water research will make finding solutions – and making milk Australian families can afford – ever more difficult“… in the last decade we’ve definitively answered the question that the world’s climate is changing. What keeps me up and night and I think what keeps most of the country up at night is what are we going to do about it? How are we going to mitigate it?” – CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall, ABC’s 7.30, February 4Perversely, I’m pleased CSIRO chief Larry Marshall is lying in bed worrying about how to mitigate the effects of climate change. I’m only glad he’s not a farmer like me, because I doubt he’d cope.

Rodents are threatening the unique natural environment of Australia’s sparsely populated Lord Howe Island. But a plan to eradicate the pests by dropping 42 tonnes of poisoned cereal is splitting the close-knit community in halfDescribed by the UN as “an area of spectacular and scenic landscapes”, Lord Howe Island is nothing if not dramatic. Formed from an inferno of underwater volcanoes more than six million years ago, the 10km long crescent-shaped island sits in a bath of turquoise water, exactly where the warm East Australian Current meets the icy waters of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.Those ancient lava flows left a rugged landscape with steep cliffs, which drop off into an ocean which supports the world’s most southerly coral reef. Between those cliffs and the reef lies a calm blue lagoon that laps against a yellow-sand beach. Continue reading...

Scientists tell ABC’s Four Corners that nets are not effective barriers and that a bigger shark population does not increase attacksThe shark nets used at most beaches might make you feel safer, but they do nothing to reduce your chance of being attacked, according to a new analysis of data.The data, compiled over half a century by Laurie Laurenson from Deakin University, was presented on ABC’s Four Corners program on Monday night. Continue reading...

Engie to shut Staffordshire power station this summer, putting 150 jobs in doubt and raising fresh concern over outagesThe government has issued a fresh denial that the UK is at risk of blackouts after one of the country’s biggest coal power stations announced plans to close.The French company Engie said it would shut its Rugeley power station in the summer, putting 150 jobs in doubt and affecting 190 contractors. Continue reading...