Breaking Waves: Ocean News

The highest priority must be to ensure land-clearing is properly regulated to save our native forests Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here Australia’s parliament will soon consider proposed reforms to federal environmental laws – known as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Unfortunately, signals from the government suggest this may be another reform process that fails to deliver the progress we need – despite everyone agreeing that Australia’s biodiversity is in catastrophic decline. When introduced, the EPBC Act was a historic reform by a conservative government. For the first time since federation, the Australian parliament exercised its full suite of constitutional powers to regulate environmentally harmful actions on all tenures. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...

Peers say ‘woeful’ record on prosecutions has led to a ‘low-risk, high-reward’ criminal culture Organised crime groups in the UK are making millions every year from illegally dumping and burning rubbish, peers have told ministers, after an inquiry found a lack of enforcement made it a “low-risk, high-reward” criminal enterprise. “Criminality is endemic in the waste sector,” a Lords committee told the government on Tuesday, after it found at least 38m tonnes of waste was illegally managed every year, “leading to serious environmental, economic and social consequences”. Continue reading...

One energy industry source says they expected an annual budget as high as £2bn to meet UK’s green energy targets The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, has set aside £1.1bn a year for offshore wind power developers investing in new projects in a funding round seen by some in the industry as too small to meet the UK’s green electricity targets. The government’s energy department said today it had budgeted £900m to pay developers of fixed wind turbines at sea and £180m for floating platforms. Continue reading...

Do I really need to replace my telephone every two years? Could my next laptop be recycled rather than brand new? I have an urgent desire to shed myself of goods and chattels. The acquisitions of a fortunate life have accumulated like an overflowing email inbox and simply must be dealt with while I am alive, and not left to my children to wrangle when they’ll (hopefully, long down the track) be grieving. Continue reading...