Southeast Asia’s Coal Boom Could Cause 70,000 Deaths Per Year By 2030, Report Says

Mongabay - Isabel Esterman

Approximately 50,000 lives a year could saved by 2030 if no new coal-fired power plants are built in Southeast Asia, South Korea, Japan or Taiwan, a new study finds.

50 year-old Munjiah holds her chest X-Ray, showing specks in her lungs at her home near the Cilacap coal-fired power station in Central Java. Photo by Kemal Jufri/Indonesia.

Air pollution from coal-fired power plants is already a major killer in Southeast Asia and that death toll could more than triple in the next 15 years, according to a study by researchers from Harvard University and Greenpeace published last week in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
Indonesia, Vietnam, China and Myanmar would be the most affected, the study found.
Southeast Asia is in the midst of an intense drive to expand its power grid, with demand for electricity in 2035 projected to increase by 83 percent over 2011 levels. Much of that demand is slated to be met by coal, with Indonesia alone planning to build 176 new coal-fired power plants by 2030.
As a result, while emissions from coal have reduced in the United States and Europe (and are projected to decline in China), the researchers found that Southeast Asia, Korea and Japan could see their combined coal-related emissions triple by 2030.
If that happens, the region’s mortality rate will rise even faster. At present, air pollution from coal-fired power plants in the area of study were estimated to cause around 20,000 premature deaths per year. If all planned coal projects go through, that figure could reach 70,000 per year by 2030.

Current and projected premature deaths due to particulate matter and ozone pollution from coal. Graph courtesy of Lauri Myllyvirta/Greenpeace.

The researchers analyzed the impact of particulate matter and ozone pollution linked to existing and planned coal projects in 11 countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. (India and China were excluded due to the relative abundance of existing studies focusing on those countries.)
Calculations factored in the location and capacity of each project, local emissions standards and population trends in the project area. Results were analyzed using atmospheric models and global databases tracking and projecting causes of premature deaths.
Indonesia was found to be the most affected country, with coal-related air pollution projected to cause 24,400 excess deaths per year by 2030. Vietnam would follow with 19,220 excess deaths per year, while Myanmar could see 4,030 deaths per year. Although power plants within China were not included in the study, that country could face 8,870 premature deaths per year due to cross-border pollution from other Asian countries.
The extremely high death rate for Indonesia comes down to the country’s dense and rapidly growing population, the large number of planned projects, and its relatively weak emissions standards.
“Indonesia allows more than 10 times more pollution from a new coal-fired power plant than China does, which is quite astonishing,” study co-author Lauri Myllyvirta, air pollution specialist for Greenpeace East Asia, told Mongabay.
The densely populated island of Java was found to be a hotspot for projected air-quality impacts. “The power plants built next to large population centers have the worst overall health impacts,” Myllyvirta said.
That doesn’t mean that shifting plants to less populated areas is without costs. “If you are one person living, let’s say, 50 kilometers from a power plant the personal health risk is the same,” he explained. “It’s just because of the fact that more people are exposed that you see the bigger impact.”

The Wujiata Open Pit Coal Mine near Ulan Moron, China, fills the air with coal dust. Photo by Qui Bo/Greenpeace.

Improving emissions standards could lead to “a very substantial decrease in health impacts,” Myllyvirta said. This is a perhaps even more true in Myanmar: “They have no standards, every project is just choosing what they like, what they want to do in terms of controlling emissions, so that’s definitely a particular worry.”
However, Myllyvirta said he hopes the study’s findings will encourage policymakers to look at more than just emissions controls. “For a number of reasons – the public health impacts, the impacts of coal mining on communities, the impacts of this coal expansion on the climate, for all these reasons – it would make sense for Southeast Asia to shift new investments into renewable energy as soon as possible,” he said.

CITATION: Koplitz, S., Jacob D., Sulprizio, M., Myllyvirta, L., and Reid, C. (2017). Burden of Disease from Rising Coal-Fired Power Plant Emissions in Southeast Asia. Environmental Science and Technology, Publication (Web): Jan. 12, 2017.

Links

• Climate change a significant, growing threat to health, says US report
• Burden of Disease from Rising Coal-Fired Power Plant Emissions in Southeast Asia
• The Silent Epidemic: Coal and the Hidden Threat to Health
• Acclaimed Canadian author lays out dirty back story of fossil fuel industry and government
• British doctors and health professionals call for rapid coal phase-out

Australia Should Invest In Coal Power To Reduce Emissions, Minister Says

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

Economists and energy analysts question environmental and economic case for Matt Canavan’s coal push

Federal minister for resources Matt Canavan has touted new research on the benefits of replacing Australia’s existing coal power stations with ‘ultra-supercritical’ technology. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

Research touted by the resources minister that reportedly suggests Australia can rely on coal to meet emissions reduction has been attacked by experts and appears to have been misreported.
The Australian reported on Tuesday that research conducted by the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science – and commissioned by Matt Canavan, the federal minister for resources – showed Australia could cut its emissions by 27% if it replaced its existing coal power stations with the more efficient “ultra-supercritical” technology.
If true, that would get the country close to its 2030 target, which is a reduction of 28% below 2005 levels.
However, a summary of the analysis seen by Guardian Australia suggests the new coal technology – under a very expensive demolition and construction program – could reduce Australia’s emissions by 12% at most.
In fact, to reduce Australia’s emissions by 27% by relying on reductions in the electricity industry alone, the sector’s emissionswould need to be reduced to almost zero. Australia’s entire electricity sector only accounts for about a third of its carbon emissions.

On the basis of the analysis, Canavan released a statement attacking “people who oppose the coal industry for ideological reasons”.
“Coal has an important role to play as Australia, and the rest of the world, reduce carbon dioxide emissions,” he said. “Australia has the resources to be a low-cost and efficient energy superpower. Access to affordable and reliable power underpins our economy and is the key to long-term jobs in the manufacturing sector.”
But energy analyst Olivia Kember from the Climate Institute said locking in decades of emissions from new coal generators would jeopardise longer-term commitments made in Paris, including reaching net zero emissions in the second half of the century.
“Australia has committed through the Paris Agreement to achieve net zero emissions. Building new coal stations that can go no further than a reduction of 25% to 34% doesn’t achieve the net zero goal, and would lock Australia into decades of high-carbon electricity while the rest of the world is switching to clean power,” Kember said.
“That’s such a risky outcome that I doubt any financial institutions would even finance investments in ultra-supercritical coal in Australia.”
Australia’s chief scientist reached a similar conclusion in his preliminary report on the future security of the electricity market, which was commissioned by the Turnbull government.
In the report Alan Finkel said: “Owner-investors are exiting emissions-intensive power stations as these reach the end of their design lives. It has been clear from our consultations that no one is contemplating investing in new ones, nor would financial institutions provide finance.”
Rod Campbell, an economist at the Australia Institute, said an ambitious plan to replace all of Australia’s existing coal power stations with brand new ones would drive up electricity prices. And it would do so by more than if coal was replaced with renewable energy.
Campbell pointed to government-funded clean-coal research from 2015, which already showed energy from some new-built wind farms was cheaper than advanced coal power stations. And that report claimed that by 2030, all wind and solar would be cheaper.
But more up-to-date analysis from the US financial advisors, Lazard, shows that almost all new wind and and solar power is now cheaper than almost all new coal power.
Labor’s spokesperson for climate change and energy, Mark Butler, said Canavan’s intervention was part of an ideological attack on renewable energy.
“For a government that has been so vocal about not picking winners, the Turnbull government seems to be very comfortable picking coal as Australia’s future energy source,” he said in a statement.
“The latest intervention by Minister Canavan trumpeting coal isn’t about securing a reliable and affordable energy future; at its core it is just the latest ideological attack on renewables by a government desperate to draw attention away from the fact it has no plan on energy and climate,” Butler said.
Brendan Pearson, the chief executive of the mining lobby group, the Minerals Council of Australia, welcomed the departmental report saying it showed “new coal generation technologies can reduce Australia’s emissions sharply while providing reliable and affordable energy to households and businesses.”
“It is simply common sense that these technologies be part of Australia’s efforts to meet its emissions reduction targets while maintaining affordable and secure energy supply,” he said in a statement.

Links

• Adani coalmine activists gear up to fight: ‘This will dwarf the Franklin blockade’
• Climate change: 90% of rural Australians say their lives are already affected
• Fossil fuel divestment is worth $7tn globally yet Australia still clings to coal
• Opposition to public funding for Adani rail link outweighs support, poll finds
• Australian unions call for 'just transition' from coal-generated electricity
• Energy security not about 'locking in status quo', says chief scientist
• Hazelwood coal power station to close with loss of up to 1,000 jobs
• Coal-fired power stations: Senate committee to examine how best to close them
• World carbon emissions stopped growing in 2015, says BP
• Labor proposes two emissions trading schemes costing $355.9m

Australia Joining US In Openly Trashing Global Climate Efforts

Fairfax - Bill McKibben*

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Here we are – Donald Trump is about to become the 45th president of the United States and we have to prepare for the onslaught.
It beggars belief that in 2016 an outright climate change denier could rise to the highest office in the US, dragging with him a Republican controlled Congress hungry to revive the old glory days of coal, gas and oil, not to mention a Secretary of State that until last month ran the biggest oil company on earth.

Bill McKibben (black cap) was among activists arrested outside the White House in 2013 protesting against the proposed expansion of the Keystone oil pipeline. Two years later, the expansion was canned. Photo: Getty Images

Yet while Australians may groan and worry at the destruction that Trump will bring, take a look at your own Trump-like administration.
Washington DC may be awash with fossil fuel operatives, but Australia is no stranger to fossil fuel barons holding political sway either – indeed, you elected one to Parliament a few years ago in the form of Clive Palmer. And as Trump thrusts the US firmly into a position as international climate pariah, we are sadly joining Australia as two rogue developed nations openly trashing global climate efforts.

Bill McKibben warns Australia risks missing out on the new jobs and investment opportunities offered by renewable energy industries. Photo: Nic Walker

Similarly, while Trump and his team talks big about slashing environmental regulations and opening up new federal lands to drilling, the Turnbull Government is pushing ahead to develop the first new minerals basin in 40 years through the Adani coal mine project in Queensland.
Driven by Resource Minister – and coal zealot – Senator Matt Canavan, the Adani proposal runs roughshod over the wishes of the local Traditional Owners and the glaringly obvious science that shows to stay within the safe limit of 2 degrees of warming there can be no new fossil fuel projects.
If all the coal in this mega mine is dug up and burned it will produce as much pollution as all the European Union countries put together and would put not only the Great Barrier Reef in harm's way but clearly the global climate.
The call for no new coal, oil and gas is not an ideological position. It is basic physics. It is the Trump and Turnbull governments that are pursuing their dangerous ideological agendas in the face of facts, science and the Paris climate agreement.

Illustration Matt Golding

Let's be clear – there is no mandate for these governments to destroy the global climate. Trump was not exactly swept into office – he lost the popular vote by more than 3 million people and aided by mass electoral interference by a foreign country.
I have met Malcolm Turnbull and I actually believe he wants (or once wanted) to see action on climate change. He believes, I think, in the role of science and innovation to create a cleaner future and a strong economy, but is being held hostage by fringe elements in his party and sadly seems unable to provide strong leadership. He has shrunk into his role and allowed rabid climate deniers to prevent Australia from benefiting from the rapidly growing low-carbon economy.

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org Photo: Supplied

The fossil fuel era now has an expiry date. Investors know it, businesses know it and global markets know it.
Large scale renewable energy projects are now cheaper than new coal power plants and every year the costs get cheaper. This year China has pledged to spend $US360 billion ($482 billion) over the next four year on renewable projects. This is as much as the whole world spent over the past four years.
Can you imagine what this will mean for clean technology in China? Not only will it create 13 million new jobs, but an investment of this size will drive even greater innovation. By vacating this space not only are Australia and the US blocking faster action on climate change, they are opting to miss out on the new jobs and investment opportunities offered by these industries.
We all have a role to play in ensuring our governments remain culpable for their failures and seize the opportunities of tomorrow. When our governments and laws fail to act in our best interests we have a responsibility to step up and take action.
That is why I will continue to protest the Donald Trump Presidency and all it stands for. I expect my friends in Australia to do the same. The next few years are going to test us. But with the cresting power of clean energy at our backs, we have a chance.

​*Bill McKibben is the founder of 350.org, an author and former New Yorker staff writer.

Links

• Australia facing questions at UN over post-2020 climate change stance
• Malcolm Turnbull dismisses climate change policy review criticisms from colleagues
• Government in damage control over climate confusion
• Climate policy review meaningless under Turnbull government
• 'Walking in the other direction': Malcolm Turnbull's broad retreat on climate

More Rain On The Horizon As Climate Change Affects Australia, Study Finds

Fairfax - Rachel Browne

Australians will need to batten down the hatches with more intense rain storms predicted as a result of higher humidity driven by a rise in global temperatures.
New findings from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, published in Nature Climate Change on Tuesday, reveal that a two-degree rise in average global temperatures would lead to a 10-30 per cent increase in extreme downpours.

The state of our climate in 2016
Australia is already experiencing an increase in extreme conditions from climate change - and it's projected to get worse.

The study's authors predict that while some parts of the continent will become wetter, others will experience increasing drought.
Steve Sherwood, a professor at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW who contributed to the research, said global warming would have a clear impact on rainfall.

More heavy rainstorms are on the horizon, according to climate scientists. Photo: Dominic Lorrimer

"There is no chance that rainfall in Australia will remain the same as the climate warms," he said.
"With two degrees of global warming, Australia is stuck with either more aridity, much heavier extreme rains, or some combination of the two."
The findings come as Sydney prepares for two days of above average temperatures with a maximum of 31 degrees forecast for Tuesday and 36 degrees forecast for Wednesday. The Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting rain towards the end of the week.
The scientists examined the heaviest rainstorms across Australia, focusing on the different climates of Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin.
They found greater average humidity led to an increase in heavy downpours. Even in areas where humidity and rainfall was lower, a two degree increase in global temperature led to an 11 per cent increase in total rainfall.
The study's lead author Jiawei Bao said most parts of Australia would be affected by an increase in global temperatures.
"Extreme precipitation is projected to increase almost everywhere in Australia from tropical regions in the north to mid-latitudes in the south and from dry deserts in the centre to wet places along the coast," he said.
"Rising air temperature is the primary reason for this change. Australia's infrastructure will need to be prepared to adapt to these more extreme rainfall events even if we act to moderate the global temperature rise to within two degrees."
Australia is a signatory to the 2015 Paris Agreement, a global aim to keep average temperature increases to well below two degrees.
Professor Sherwood warned that current policies worldwide are not enough to meet the Paris targets.
The study found that a four per cent rise in global temperature, possible based on current increases in the rate of carbon emissions, would lead to a 22-60 per cent increase in extreme rain storms.
"It is likely we face even greater changes unless policies are strengthened," Professor Sherwood said. "Australia can not use past observations alone to develop rainfall infrastructure.  This research tells us we need to be prepared to adapt to a world of far more intense rainfall extremes, if we can."

Links

• It's official: Sydney has its hottest year ever
• Explosion of Ross River virus prompts mosquito warning for Victoria
• Companies' climate change negligence will cost us all
• The eight weather events this year that shook world
• Arctic just had its warmest year on record 'by far'
• 'Earth On The Edge': EU Agency Confirms 2016 As Hottest Year On Record
• 2016 Was The Hottest Year Ever On Australia's East Coast, Confirms Bureau Of Meteorology
• 2017 To Be Third Hottest Year On Record, Scientists Say

Epic Antarctic Voyage Maps Seafloor To Predict Ocean Rise As Glacier The Size Of California Melts

The Guardian - Calla Wahlquist

Global research group will trace Totten glacier’s history back to last ice age, in hope of predicting future melting patterns

The Totten glacier is under threat from warming ocean temperatures, scientists say, and a team has left for the Antarctic region on a research voyage. Photograph: Department of Environment/AAP

In East Antarctica, 3,000km south of the West Australian town of Albany, an ice shelf the size of California is melting from below.
The concerning trend was confirmed by Australian scientists in December, who reported that warming ocean temperatures were causing the rapid melt of the end of the Totten glacier, which is holding back enough ice to create a global sea rise of between 3.5 metres and six metres.
On Saturday, a team of international scientists left Hobart aboard the Australian research ship Investigator to map the seafloor ahead of the glacier to trace its history back to the last ice age, in the hopes of predicting its future melting patterns.
The 51-day mission is one of the longest ever voyages by Australian scientists to Antarctica and will involve mapping the unexplored Sabrina Coast seafloor and taking samples of piles of glacial sediment left behind by the retreating ice sheet.
It has been four years in the planning for the chief scientist Dr Leanne Armand, an associate professor with Sydney’s Macquarie University.
The focus will be the area around the base of the Totten glacier, which is usually surrounded by ice. Reports from researchers aboard the Aurora Australis, which was in the area in December, show that fast ice has melted back.
“If that goes, then we’ll be able to get in and provide the very first seafloor maps on the continental shelf itself and that will be really critical to a whole bunch of different sciences,” Armand said.
She will head a team of 22 researchers from Australia, Italy, Spain and the United States. They will be assisted by 12 support staff from the Marine National Facility, a subdivision of the CSIRO, which operates the Investigator; a Tasmanian high school science teacher; and 20 crew.
Also on board is Dr Tara Martin, a CSIRO scientist who helped design the Investigator and will act on this mission as the ship’s geophysicist, monitoring the sonar and seismic equipment used to map the seafloor.
Martin said the seismic equipment, borrowed from the Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia in Italy, would be used to examine the composition of the sediment layers to help researchers pinpoint the best locations for extracting rock cores, which will in turn be used to map past glacial melting patterns.
“One of the things we’re trying to understand here is, is this [glacial] retreat normal, has this kind of retreat happened before, and has this speed of retreat happened before,” Martin said. “If it’s not normal, how much of what we’re observing today can we isolate from what is normal, and therefore maybe see what could be an anthropogenic effect.”
The worst scenario, Martin said, was that the ice tongue of the glacier could disappear.
“If you remove that ice tongue, in theory you’re releasing the break on the rate of flow of the glacier,” she said. “So the concern is ... if the whole ice tongue melts away, potentially the whole glacier could rush out to sea over a geological timescale, and we don’t know what that timescale is. Losing an ice tongue and having it break off – it’s already in the water, that doesn’t add to sea level rise very much. But losing a glacier the size of California that’s currently on land and dumping that in the water – that’s going to change sea level rise estimates.”
The expedition is authorised to take a maximum of 15 cores, measuring 10cm in diameter and up to 24 metres long.
The cores will be cut into one metre lengths in an area known as the “wet and dirty lab”, capped at both ends, and placed in cold storage until they can be transported to Geoscience Australia, where interested researchers will hold a party to divide up the samples.
It is Armand’s ninth voyage to the Antarctic, and Martin’s 14th. Both have refined their list of items to bring to stave off boredom on the lengthy voyage, in the little downtime provided at the end of a 12-hour shift.
The ship is kitted out with a gym, a video and games room, and twin bunk rooms with en suites, as well as sophisticated scientific equipment and laboratories.
The bunk beds have curtains to help roommates on opposite shifts.
But even in those comparatively comfortable environments, Armand says, most people bring some form of creature comfort.
Armand’s must-have is natural raspberry cordial, followed by a box of her favourite muesli and her own mug. Martin’s is more extensive: a “a seriously embarrassing amount of books,” as well as a camera, binoculars and field guide for spotting wildlife. She also brings knitting.
Her list of books is eclectic: Dickens, Austen, a few popular science geology books recommended to her by a “geeked out” pack of geoscientists on her last sub-Antarctic voyage, the memoirs of Philip Law, who directed the Australian Antarctic Division in the 1950s, and a “standard range of fiction”.
On top of personal luxuries, and Martin’s small library, everyone on board is required to bring, at minimum: two pairs of gloves (one waterproof, one woollen); one beanie; two pairs of woollen or thermal pants, two woollen or thermal tops, three pairs of woollen socks; one polar fleece jacket; one pair of polar fleece pants; one pair of steel-toe boots; and one pair of polarised sunglasses.
A strap for said sunglasses, a balaclava, a snood, an insulated down jacket, and steel-toe gumboots are highly recommended.
Other safety gear, such as hard hats and high-visibility jackets, is provided.

Links

• World's largest marine park created in Ross Sea in Antarctica in landmark deal
• Sea ice extent in Arctic and Antarctic reached record lows in November
• UK's Antarctica research base to relocate as 'precautionary measure'
• New studies show Rex Tillerson is wrong about climate risks
• Giant iceberg poised to break off from Antarctic shelf
• Antarctic expert and HIV research pioneer among scientists made dames
• Experience: I survived a power cut in Antarctica
• Briton swims Antarctic in campaign for three marine sanctuaries
• Sea ice extent in Arctic and Antarctic reached record lows in November
• World's largest marine park created in Ross Sea in Antarctica in landmark deal

Koalas Are At The Centre Of A Perfect Storm. The Species Is Slipping Away

The Guardian - Kevin Evans

Australia is one of the worst performing countries in terms of protecting its ecoregions. Koalas are a litmus test for conservation of a habitat in crisis

‘As you may expect from a species inhabiting a crisis ecoregion, the koala is not faring so well.’ Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

In 2016 koalas were sighted for the first time in decades at Mount Kembla, Wollongong and in Kosciuszko national park in New South Wales. Although these sightings are a source of hope, it’s important we don’t get lulled into a false sense of security about the extent to which nature, including koalas, is threatened in Australia. We have serious work to do to protect our unique plants and animals.
Most environment news these days focuses on climate change. In many ways this isn’t surprising. Climate change threatens to alter our entire environment as rainfall patterns change, temperatures rise and extremes become more common. Many species are already finding their habitats shrinking – just look at polar bears and the rapidly vanishing Arctic sea ice.
Yet amid this climate emergency “mere” species extinctions have largely been pushed out of mind. Of course the issues are intertwined as climate change can cause extinctions: in July the Bramble Cay melomys (a rodent) was reported as the first animal to have been made extinct primarily due to climate change. In its case, its single-island habitat had been repeatedly inundated by rising sea levels destroying the native vegetation and ultimately the species itself. And of course climate change threatens to exacerbate and amplify other threats to species like bushfires and heatwaves.
But human destruction of habitat is, at least in the short term, a much greater threat to species than climate change. In mid-December, scientists from the University of Queensland were part of a team that found, of all developed countries on Earth, Australia was performing worst in protecting its ecoregions (areas containing broadly similar habitat). The researchers identified “crisis ecoregions” where habitat loss is greatest. A crisis ecoregion in Australia? Temperate forests.
Enter the koala. Undoubtedly the most famous inhabitant of Australian temperate forest ecosystems, and arguably the world’s favourite species. But as you may expect from a species inhabiting a crisis ecoregion, it’s not faring so well. Historical accounts describe large numbers of koalas being seen regularly in the late 1800s in NSW. In 1921, 200,000 koala pelts passed through Sydney and in 1924 two million pelts were exported from eastern Australia.
Yet now all koala populations, bar a few in eastern Australia, are in decline. Some sharply so. So whether or not you find, as we do, the most recent estimate of 329,000 in Australia (36,000 koalas in NSW) to be optimistic one thing is clear: koala numbers are a fraction of what they once were and the species is slipping away.
In NSW, koalas are in the centre of a perfect storm largely of the government’s own making: changes to land clearing laws have already devastated bushland in Queensland and history threatens to repeat itself in NSW with the Baird government recently passing its land-clearing legislation.
Much remaining high-quality koala habitat is either on private land, thus at risk of clearing, or in state forests and thus subject to ever more intense state-sanctioned logging. Urban development is eating into koala habitat up and down the coast. And following this habitat destruction, koalas are vulnerable to dog attacks and vehicle strike as they spend more time on the ground.
If this were happening to a snail, or even a frog, it would probably be ignored. But koalas are one of the few animals whose plight the government finds it hard to ignore. That’s why the NSW government is currently beginning the development of a whole of government koala strategy and asking for community feedback on planning issues and its Saving Our Species conservation strategy. At a federal level, the National Koala Conservation and Management Strategy expired in 2014. Word is that a new strategy is in the pipeline but at the moment we’re flying blind.
The best way to protect koalas is a tried and tested one. The scientists that identified the crisis ecoregion problem also identified the solution: large, well-connected protected areas. Only by protecting and connecting remaining koala habitat can the government enact meaningful conservation. Everything else is tinkering round the edges.
And only by demonstrating that it can effectively protect koalas can we have any confidence that the government can protect the rest of Australia’s extraordinary wildlife that doesn’t share the koala’s high profile.

Links

• Koalas 'under siege' from policy changes set to destroy habitat, report finds
• 'We have to stop the bulldozers': swaths of koala habitat lost, say activists
• Revealed: first mammal species wiped out by human-induced climate change
• Animals Threatened By Climate Change

Prince Charles Co-Authors Ladybird Climate Change Book

BBC

The cover of the book was based on an image of flooding in Uckfield, East Sussex. Penguin

Prince Charles has co-authored a Ladybird book on the challenges and possible solutions to climate change.

It is part of a series for adults written in the style of the well-known children's books that aims to clearly explain complicated subjects.
The 52-page guide has been co-authored by former Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper and climate scientist Emily Shuckburgh.
Mr Juniper said he hoped the book would "stand the test of time".
Ladybird produced a series of books for children in the 1960s and 1970s and has recently found renewed success with a range of humorous books for adults.
Titles include the Ladybird Book of the Mid-Life Crisis and the Ladybird Book of the Hangover.
The latest series involves experts explaining complex subjects in simple form.
The prince previously co-authored a book with Mr Juniper and Ian Skelly called Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World. He also wrote a children's book entitled The Old Man of Lochnagar.

The full cover of the climate change book, which goes on sale later in January. Penguin

Mr Juniper told the Mail on Sunday: "His royal highness, Emily and I had to work very hard to make sure that each word did its job, while at the same time working with the pictures to deliver the points we needed to make.
"I hope we've managed to paint a vivid picture, and, like those iconic titles from the 60s and 70s, created a title that will stand the test of time."
A publishing director for Penguin, which produces Ladybird books, revealed Clarence House had put the latest idea to the publisher.
Rowland White told the Sunday Times: "It was a coincidence where we were thinking about a new series for adults after the huge success of the spoof books, but this time wanted some factual books by experts on science, history and arts subjects."
Penguin Books said the title, which will be released on 26 January, had been read and reviewed by figures within the environmental community.
The other books in the series are Quantum Mechanics by Jim Al-Khalili, and Evolution by Steve Jones.
Asked how the book might be received in the academic community, Dr Phillip Williamson, an associate fellow at the University of East Anglia's School of Environmental Sciences, said: "There's the obvious danger that this won't be taken seriously.
"But if the style is right, and the information is correct and understandable, the new Ladybird book with royal authorship could be just what is needed to get the message across that everyone needs to take action on climate change."

Ladybird Books has recently had renewed success with a range of humorous books for adults. Ladybird

Links

• Prince Charles pens Ladybird book on climate change
• Ladybird Books
• What Prince Charles gets wrong – and right – about climate change and conflict in Syria
• ‘Unprecedented level of cooperation’ needed to tackle climate change, says Prince Charles