Tag Archives: environment

7 ways environmentalists have had it wrong

A GRAND NEW VISION for how humans can exist on this planet without destroying the lives and homes of the creatures with which we share it has been published by some of the most noted earthenvironmental thinkers alive today.

But the document, “An ecomodernist manifesto”, is likely to upset a lot of environmentalists working hard to save the planet. So much of their work is the entirely wrong way to bring about planetary salvation, according to the ecomodernists…

 

Read more http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2015/05/18/4220842.htm

Advertisement

Explainer: why is World Heritage important?

Two of Australia’s World Heritage listed places have made the headlines in the last week. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority gave the go-ahead for silt from a government-approved dredging operation to be dumped within the World Heritage listed park boundaries. And the federal government announced that it was seeking to have a recent extension of Tasmania’s World Heritage listed forests partially overturned.

What is World Heritage listing and why is it important?

Back in 1972, various international bodies united to draw up the World Heritage Convention. It was designed to provide a way for international co-operation to occur to protect cultural or natural places of ‘outstanding universal value’ so that future generations may enjoy them as we do now. It is administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Australia was an early adopter of the Convention, ratifying it in 1974 and signing up the nation’s first ‘property’, Kakadu, in 1981. Australia even has its own Act of parliament to protect World Heritage properties, which was established in the battle for the Franklin Dam back in 1983….

 

Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2014/02/07/3939538.htm

The election that forgot the environment

IN 1996, WHILE campaigning as Opposition Leader hoping for election, John Howard promised a one billion dollar fund to help the environment. He won that election and, true to his word, established the Natural Heritage Trust and set about putting those dollars to work.

In 2007, Kevin Rudd swept Howard aside with promises of faster action on climate change and an immediate ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Not three years later, Julia Gillard was moved to topple Rudd as party leader in part because his approval ratings had plummeted following his fluffing of the climate change policy solution. She was victorious that same year while promising the emissions trading scheme that Rudd had failed to deliver, defeating Tony Abbott and his ‘direct action’ plan on carbon abatement.

Every Prime Minister for the last 17 years has made it to the top job with a little bit of environmental promise; a little bit of green flair, a nod to our collective love of our wide brown land.

But don’t expect to see any of that in 2013. This will be the election that forgot the environment.

Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/08/16/3826412.htm