Climate activists clash with police after two protesters climbed outside the Melbourne Convention Centre, where an international mining conference is being held.

A lewd sticker on a police body camera lands a Victoria Police officer in hot water, with the force launching an investigation into the "extremely disappointing" incident.

Young people of Western Australia see a climate crisis developing and inappropriate action from decision makers.

If given the chance, which means protecting the waters and ecosystems, oceans can help in our challenge of turning around climate change.

The Climate Clever app helps you measure, monitor, compare and reduce your consumption of energy and your production on waste.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg from the University of Queensland, a world-renowned marine scientist and contributor to IPCC assessments, talks about the likely loss of the Great Barrier Reef. How does a determined, optimistic researcher keep going amid the upsets? 

Fine-dining chefs Tom Chiumento and Simon Evans usually serve seven-course degustations, but recently they've been using their talents to provide quality meals from food destined for the bin.

Nature Based Solutions is an environmental approach that seeks to counter the negative effects of climate change by working with nature.

MORNING BRIEFING: Police have arrested 38 people following a climate change protest on Monday, and there have been more than 240 major crashes on the roads over the long weekend.

Australian artworks will feature in a new international art-science exhibition in Venice, which hopes to educate people and raise talk about climate change and deforestation, and possible solutions.

Researchers monitoring the impact of climate change say golden bowerbirds and other highland rainforest species are being pushed to higher altitudes by temperature rises and fear they'll eventually have nowhere left to go.

MORNING BRIEFING: NSW Sports Minister John Sidoti says claims he misused his position in a conflict of interest are 'gross misrepresentations', while Deputy Premier John Barilaro urges governments to take climate change seriously.

They collect vital climate information, but weather balloons are also a daily contributor to plastic pollution levels it's a dilemma the Bureau of Meteorology is struggling to solve.

Researchers are scouring the planet for drought and heat resistant crops as many Australian grain farmers face another failed winter season.

A draft Victorian Government policy rocks the boat, by banning any new private jetties along the Victorian coast.

An rain gauge that uploads real-time climate data to the internet from remote locations could save farmers time, money and help them keep better records.

High water prices in the Murray-Darling Basin are blamed on foreign investors and corporate speculators. The simple truth is they are caused mostly by lack of rain.

Alpine real estate is getting more expensive at Australia's ski resorts, seemingly shrugging off concerns about the impact of climate change on natural snowfall.

The Northern Territory produces two thirds of Australia's total mango crop, but industry figures say the Top End's mango sector is facing serious threats from climate change.

There had been hopes of recovery at the site of Australia's worst recorded mangrove dieback in the Gulf of Carpentaria. But during a recent visit to the area, traditional owner Patsy Evans said she was devastated by the scene.

An advertisement about the ACT Climate Change Strategy 2019-2025, dubs Canberra "so freakin' liveable".

The ACT Government unashamedly asks the community to do more to help it reach the ambitious target of net zero carbon emissions by 2045, with transport and natural gas top of the list of targets.

Victorian Greens Senator Janet Rice announces her wife, renowned climate scientist and transgender woman Penny Whetton, has died suddenly at their home in northern Tasmania.

Siobhan Sutton is an academically talented student but is proudly choosing to fail a test today, and she is not alone as thousands of students across the country take part in the the global School Strike for Climate.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has used a senate estimates haring to grill Joe Evans, deputy secretary of the Department of Environment and Energy, about the effect of climate change.

The manager of Australia's best-known locally produced tea brand says there is a real shift in the climate on its plantations in Queensland's far north.

Astronaut screening programs have inspired a group of Australian scientists to study the individual personalities of 50 native rats and how they cope with environmental stresses.

While one in six Gold Coast properties could become 'uninsurable' due to natural disasters, its council has not had a climate change strategy since 2014.

Best known for his provocative signs, Father Rod Bower from the NSW Central Coast announces plans to run for the Senate as an independent candidate.

ABC Rural asks a group of industry leaders at this year's NT Cattlemen's Association conference to share their views on challenges and opportunities in 2019.

"How did Michael Moore become a hero to climate deniers and the far right?" asks a disturbed and tearful George Monbiot in the Guardian. Simple: by speaking the truth, for a change.

By Ezra David Romero

Greenhouse Gas Reduction Opportunities for Local Governments: A Quantification and Prioritization Framework , released by the National Center for Sustainable Transportation at University of California, Davis

Issue 324 of TRB's magazine (November-December 2019) focuses on climate change resilience. Along with several explorations within that topic, a short history of TRB is offered as well as all the usual standing features of the magazine. TR News is TRB's bimonthly magazine featuring timely articles on innovative and state-of-the-art research and practice in all modes of transportation. It also includes brief news items of interest to the transportation community, research pays off articles , profiles of tr...

TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Research Report 199: Climate Resilience and Benefit–Cost Analysis: A Handbook for Airports provides information on how to apply benefit–cost analysis tools and techniques to improve decision making affecting resilience of airport infrastructure projects in response to potential long-term impacts of climate change and extreme weather events. The handbook is designed to improve the process by which infrastructure investment strategies are evaluated, with an...

Issue 324 of TRB's magazine (November-December 2019) focuses on climate change resilience. Along with several explorations within that topic, a short history of TRB is offered as well as all the usual standing features of the magazine. TR News is TRB's bimonthly magazine featuring timely articles on innovative and state-of-the-art research and practice in all modes of transportation. It also includes brief news items of interest to the transportation community, research pays off articles , profiles of tr...

By 2060 Phoenix Arizona will have 132 days a year over 100F. Dallas will 55 and Pecos Texas 101 days. My view about problems: We should solve them. If the Earth really does heat up substantially then we should pull the CO2 back out of the atmosphere while also releasing cooling gases. If its practical we should also raise the albedo (surface reflectivity) of the planet. Right now cities should change their zoning laws and roads policies to make buildings, roads, and other surfaces more reflective. No more dark buildings. Use light colors of concrete, white shingles, and other surfaces that reflect more light. That would be beneficial even if the Earth was not heating up. Hot cities are unpleasant...

IBM has been awarded a 2017 Climate Leadership Award by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and The Climate Registry.

Today, IBM announced that it achieved two major commitments four years ahead of schedule in its effort to help combat climate change.

As climate change accelerates, IBM is galvanizing the global science community with a massive infusion of computing resources, weather data, and cloud services to help researchers examine the effects of climate change, and explore strategies to mitigate its effects. IBM pledges to help direct the equivalent of up to $200 million for up to five climate-related projects judged to offer the greatest potential impact, and will then broadly share the experiments' results.

The Solutions to the Climate Crisis No One is Talking About

Both our economy and the environment are in crisis. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few while the majority of Americans struggle to get by. The climate crisis is worsening inequality, as those who are most economically vulnerable bear the brunt of flooding, fires, and disruptions of supplies of food, water, and power.

At the same time, environmental degradation and climate change are themselves byproducts of widening inequality. The political power of wealthy fossil fuel corporations has stymied action on climate change for decades. Focused only on maximizing their short-term interests, those corporations are becoming even richer and more powerful — while sidelining workers, limiting green innovation, preventing sustainable development, and blocking direct action on our dire climate crisis.

Make no mistake: the simultaneous crisis of inequality and climate is no fluke. Both are the result of decades of deliberate choices made, and policies enacted, by ultra-wealthy and powerful corporations.

We can address both crises by doing four things:

First, create green jobs. Investing in renewable energy could create millions of family sustaining, union jobs and build the infrastructure we need for marginalized communities to access clean water and air. The transition to a renewable energy-powered economy can add 550,000 jobs each year while saving the US economy $78 billion through 2050. In other words, a Green New Deal could turn the climate crisis into an opportunity - one that both addresses the climate emergency and creates a fairer and more equitable society.

Second, stop dirty energy. A massive investment in renewable energy jobs isn’t enough to combat the climate crisis. If we are going to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must tackle the problem at its source: Stop digging up and burning more oil, gas, and coal.

The potential carbon emissions from these fossil fuels in the world’s currently developed fields and mines would take us well beyond the 1.5°C increased warming that Nobel Prize winning global scientists tell us the planet can afford. Given this, it’s absurd to allow fossil fuel corporations to start new dirty energy projects.

Even as fossil fuel companies claim to be pivoting toward clean energy, they are planning to invest trillions of dollars in new oil and gas projects that are inconsistent with global commitments to limit climate change. And over half of the industry’s expansion is projected to happen in the United States. Allowing these projects means locking ourselves into carbon emissions we can’t afford now, let alone in the decades to come.

Even if the U.S. were to transition to 100 percent renewable energy today, continuing to dig fossil fuels out of the ground will lead us further into climate crisis. If the U.S. doesn’t stop now, whatever we extract will simply be exported and burned overseas. We will all be affected, but the poorest and most vulnerable among us will bear the brunt of the devastating impacts of climate change.

Third, kick fossil fuel companies out of our politics. For decades, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP have been polluting our democracy by pouring billions of dollars into our politics and bankrolling elected officials to enact policies that protect their profits. The oil and gas industry spent over $103 million on the 2016 federal elections alone. And that’s just what they were required to report: that number doesn’t include the untold amounts of “dark money” they’ve been using to buy-off politicians and corrupt our democracy. The most conservative estimates still put their spending at 10 times that of environmental groups and the renewable energy industry.

As a result, American taxpayers are shelling out $20 billion a year to bankroll oil and gas projects – a huge transfer of wealth to the top. And that doesn’t even include hundreds of billions of dollars of indirect subsidies that cost every United States citizen roughly $2,000 a year. This has to stop.

And we’ve got to stop giving away public lands for oil and gas drilling. In 2018, under Trump, the Interior Department made $1.1 billion selling public land leases to oil and gas companies, an all-time record – triple the previous 2008 record, totaling more than 1.5 million acres for drilling alone, threatening multiple cultural sites and countless wildlife. As recently as last September, the Trump administration opened 1.56 million acres of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, threatening Indigenous cultural heritage and hundreds of species that call it home.

That’s not all. The ban on exporting crude oil should be reintroduced and extended to other fossil fuels. The ban, in place for 40 years, was lifted in 2015, just days after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement. After years of campaigning by oil executives, industry heads, and their army of lobbyists, the fossil fuel industry finally got its way.

We can’t wait for these changes to be introduced in 5 or 10 years time — we need them now.

Fourth, require the fossil fuel companies that have profited from environmental injustice compensate the communities they’ve harmed.

As if buying-off our democracy wasn’t enough, these corporations have also deliberately misled the public for years on the amount of damage their products have been causing. 

For instance, as early as 1977, Exxon’s own scientists were warning managers that fossil fuel use would warm the planet and cause irreparable damage. In the 1980s, Exxon shut down its internal climate research program and shifted to funding a network of advocacy groups, lobbying arms, and think tanks whose sole purpose was to cloud public discourse and block action on the climate crisis. The five largest oil companies now spend about $197 million a year on ad campaigns claiming they care about the climate — all the while massively increasing their spending on oil and gas extraction.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans, especially poor, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, already have to fight to drink clean water and breathe clean air as their communities are devastated by climate-fueled hurricanes, floods, and fires. As of 2015, nearly 21 million people relied on community water systems that violated health-based quality standards. 

Going by population, that’s essentially 200 Flint, Michigans, happening all at once. If we continue on our current path, many more communities run the risk of becoming “sacrifice zones,” where citizens are left to survive the toxic aftermath of industrial activity with little, if any, help from the entities responsible for creating it.

Climate denial and rampant pollution are not victimless crimes. Fossil fuel corporations must be held accountable, and be forced to pay for the damage they’ve wrought.

If these solutions sound drastic to you, it’s because they are. They have to be if we have any hope of keeping our planet habitable. The climate crisis is not a far-off apocalyptic nightmare — it is our present day.

Australia’s bushfires wiped out a billion animals, California’s fire season wreaks more havoc every year, and record-setting storms are tearing through our communities like never before. 

Scientists tell us we have 10 years left to dramatically reduce emissions. We have no room for meek half-measures wrapped up inside giant handouts to the fossil fuel industry. 

We deserve a world without fossil fuels. A world in which workers and communities thrive and our shared climate comes before industry profits. Working together, I know we can make it happen. We have no time to waste.

On the occasion of both Earth Day and World Intellectual Property Day, which this year centers on the theme of Innovation for a Green Future, we’d like to underline the importance of cultural heritage preservation as a response to the threats posed by climate change. In this post, we’ll also share some insights on how … Read More "Using CC Licenses and Tools to Share and Preserve Cultural Heritage in the Face of Climate Change"

The post Using CC Licenses and Tools to Share and Preserve Cultural Heritage in the Face of Climate Change appeared first on Creative Commons.

Climate change is affecting everybody, even narwhals. These mysterious “unicorns of the sea” may decline by 25% by the end of this century, according to a new study.[...]