Aussie Enviro

Melbourne Conversations: Future Proofing Green Spaces

Its a free event, but you have to book.

a few salient points from the article

To play our part in limiting global warming, Australia needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Progress is stalling: last year, national emissions fell slightly (0.6%) below 2023 levels but were still higher than in 2022. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions per person remain among the highest in the world.

We fly & drive big cars to travel, we're wealthy and consume. We build no intercity passenger rails instead ,making it easier to fly (new rail one to Melb Airport, expanding Brisbane Airport etc) when we should be shit canning flying, at least domestically.

Even the new inland rail ends which are supposed to help with road safety, road maintenance cost and reduce road emissions, end in the outer suburbs before it even gets to the port of Brisbane and has no spur to Gladstone.

Everything we do is ass backwards so its not surprising

Then we have

Biodiversity loss remains an urgent issue. The national threatened species list grew by 41 species in 2024. While this figure is much lower than the record of 130 species added in 2023, it remains well above the long-term average of 25 species added per year.

More than half of the newly listed or uplisted species were directly affected by the Black Summer fires. Meanwhile, habitat destruction and invasive species continue to put pressure on native ecosystems and species.

TERN.org Report

ANU Climate Update 2025: If not now, when? 13 February, 2025

From the conclusion,

...buffel grass is an important food source for cattle during drought periods.

Buffel doesn’t need to be eradicated from areas where it is valued such as pastoral stations. However, its management is crucial to the survival of our native ecosystems and Traditional Aboriginal knowledge.

Early research is promising. Native plants and animals in the NT have bounced back in areas where buffel has been removed.

Lyall says securing funding, listing the grass as a weed of national significance and supporting farmers to adapt to find an alternative food source are key to beating buffel.

Paladin Hydrogen, owned by Queensland businessman Dave Hodgson, who credits his success with "doing God's will, God's way", had planned to mine 1 million tonnes of coal per year near Fingal to fuel a proposed hydrogen plant at Bell Bay.

Mr Hodgson described his company's takeover of the Valley Road mine as "a transformation of wealth from the wicked to the righteous"

Wtf ????

Tasmanian Greens mining spokesperson Tabatha Badger said it was "absolutely fantastic" that the coal mine was no longer going ahead.

We are in a climate crisis and coal mines have no place in Tasmania, indeed Australia.

Eastern quoll populations have been declining in Tasmania since the turn of the century and the animal was declared extinct on mainland Australia in 1963.

Last month, two dozen captive-bred eastern quolls were released onto a large-scale regeneration property in Tasmania's Midlands as part of a conservation program to help bolster populations.

Being in NE Tassie this hits home, might help if we stop running them over. I've seen one live one cycling through the forest here in NE Tassie and two dead ones run over by cars when cycling (and numerous wombats, pademelons and uncountable other marsupials)

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/offtrack/tasmania-roadkill-capital-of-the-world/7021816

Politicians caught out lying about the science and bypassing any real consultation with communities.

You can choose either the transcript or the podcast audio. Source articles used in the story are also linked at the top of the page.

With extreme heat conditions predicted to escalate in Australia, new research suggests the threat is more dire for the country’s cities, with these temperatures already more intense and enduring than indicated.

Tl;dr lack of abikity to site BOM montoring stations combined with shitty urban design (suburbs)

For a more sustainable future, we need to embrace living in smaller spaces. This means not letting our houses be our primary space for every activity in our lives

Smaller, well insulated, medium density housing. Alas nothing like the current dystopian sprawl of Australian cities.

Tasmania has been burning for more than two weeks, with no end in sight. Almost 100,000 hectares of bushland in the northwest has burned to date. This includes the Tarkine rainforest and alpine ecosystems of Cradle Mountain that may never recover.

If you're like me, and need an explainer on tandem cells, they're simply talking about Multi-junction Solar Cells.... Yeah, i's not sure either, have a link! :)