International: All stories
Don’t abandon plans for high-speed rail in Australia
20 Jul 2020
The Grattan Institute’s call to abandon plans for any high-speed rail network in Australia fails to look at the wider benefits such a project can bring by way of more productive economies and more sustainable towns and cities.
Portugal ends coal burning two years ahead of schedule
20 Jul 2020
Portugal is the third EU country this year to announce early closure of its last coal plants, as rising carbon costs and competition from gas and clean energy bite.
South Korea backtracks on green promise
20 Jul 2020
For South Korea it seems, climate care is a case of going green at home – and doing the opposite overseas.
Plunge in mass transit ridership deals huge blow
20 Jul 2020
Transit agencies are asking Congress for relief as commuters return to their cars and fare revenues tank. Meanwhile, driving direction requests - and carbon emissions - soar.
Australian flying car wins $1m grant
20 Jul 2020
The New South Wales government has awarded almost $1m from a regional grants fund to a company developing what deputy premier John Barilaro describes as an electric flying car.
We're encroaching on Antarctica’s last wild places
17 Jul 2020
Since Western explorers discovered Antarctica 200 years ago, human activity has been increasing. Now, more than 30 countries operate scientific stations in Antarctica and more than 50,000 tourists visit each year.
US eyes climate disaster, but Biden plan might just work
17 Jul 2020
The world’s food supply is imperiled by a climate crisis already upon us, and Joe Biden this week put forward an agenda to address it that’s as bold as you could hope from a man who actually intends to get elected.
Official dietary guidelines are harming the planet, study finds
17 Jul 2020
Official dietary advice across the world is harming both the environment and people’s health, according to scientists who have carried out the most comprehensive assessment of national dietary guidelines to date.
Buffett coal-country utility wants to cut coal
17 Jul 2020
PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Energy, is a company aiming to ramp up its use of renewable energy at the same time as it navigates some extreme differences of opinion about what the energy future should look like.
Methane levels have hit a scary record high
16 Jul 2020
While the world has been focused on a global pandemic and widespread protests, another crisis is gathering in the atmosphere.
VERTICAL CRUISE SHIPS: How to remake housing towers
16 Jul 2020
After 3000 people in nine public housing towers in Melbourne were placed under the harshest coronavirus lockdown in Australia so far, acting Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly referred to the towers as “vertical cruise ships”.
EU spent lots on fossil fuels during energy crisis
16 Jul 2020
France, Germany and Italy have collectively spent $44 billion on fossil fuels during the coronavirus crisis, compared to $29 billion for clean energy, according to fresh data released yesterday.
Powerful backers support a UK nuclear future
16 Jul 2020
Insulating homes and installing renewable energy are the cheapest answers to climate change. Yet powerful backers urge a UK nuclear future.
Heat might leave tropical trees unable to germinate
16 Jul 2020
If a plant can’t germinate, it’s heading for extinction. For many tropical trees, conditions could soon become too hot to procreate.
Car tyres major source of ocean microplastics
15 Jul 2020
More than 200,000 tonnes of tiny plastic particles are blown from roads into the oceans every year, according to research.
STUDY SUCCESS: No doubts, carbon pricing works
15 Jul 2020
Putting a price on carbon should reduce emissions, because it makes dirty production processes more expensive than clean ones, right?
UK premier faces court over covid-19 recovery
14 Jul 2020
Lawyers who stopped the expansion of Heathrow Airport because it would be bad for the climate are now turning their sights on Boris Johnson's covid-19 economic recovery plans.
Melting glacier yields newspapers from 1966 plane crash
14 Jul 2020
COPIES of Indian newspapers onboard an Air India jet that crashed into Mont Blanc in the 1960s have been revealed by melting ice on the mountain’s Bossons glacier.
The plan to unite Biden and Bernie is finally here
13 Jul 2020
Once upon a time, many moons ago — ie back in April — Democratic presidential primary candidate Bernie Sanders agreed to exit the race and join forces with his mortal frenemy Joe Biden to help the former vice-president take the White House.
GAS CURSE: Mozambique’s multi-billion dollar gamble
13 Jul 2020
A decade after prospectors struck gas off Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique, a consortium led by Total is signing contracts worth $16 billion to exploit it.
Which species will win and lose in a warmer climate?
13 Jul 2020
As the global climate shifts, it’s important to know which species have adaptations to survive. Our research published today in PNAS found it largely depends on where they evolved.
Nature doesn't trust us any more
13 Jul 2020
Frozen ground in the Arctic is thawing, harming indigenous people’s hunting livelihoods and destabilising buildings and roads across the rapidly warming region.
First State to divest thermal coal assets
10 Jul 2020
One of Australia's biggest industry superannuation funds plans to sell down its investments in thermal coal miners in a bid to protect its members from the financial impact of climate change.
CO2 in atmosphere nearing levels of 15m years ago
10 Jul 2020
The amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is approaching a level not seen in 15m years and perhaps never previously experienced by a hominoid, according to the authors of a study.
Warming waters could see fewer common fish
10 Jul 2020
As many as 60 per cent of the world's fish species could struggle to breed and reproduce if climate change causes the Earth to warm by 5deg over the next 80 years, according to a new study.
Fossil fuel companies take at least $3b in covis aid
9 Jul 2020
More than 5600 companies in the fossil fuel industry have taken a minimum of $3b in coronavirus aid from the US federal government, according to a new analysis.
Climate activists see ‘new era’ after pipeline victories
9 Jul 2020
Climate activists sense a turning point in their war against the Trump administration's effort to cement a fossil-fueled future for the United States, with three major defeats for high-profile oil and gas pipeline projects.
Rare night clouds may be warning sign of climate crisis
9 Jul 2020
Something magical appeared at night over London and other parts of Britain last month: ripples of electric blue clouds shimmered in the twilight sky after sunset.
Sun has a secret plan to become a lithium factory
8 Jul 2020
Lithium is used in everything from medication to mobile phone batteries, but where does it come from?
Marseille turns green with election of first woman mayor
8 Jul 2020
Marseille has become the latest French municipality to elect a green mayor in a wave that has swept the country since local elections at the end of last month.
Tesla top on back of tech boost and China sales
7 Jul 2020
Electric motor manufacturer Tesla became the world's most valuable carmaker last week, overtaking Toyota, despite never having made an annual profit.
‘Million-mile’ batteries are coming
7 Jul 2020
Electric vehicles have a clear environmental advantage over their gas-guzzling counterparts, but when it comes to longevity, the two are in a dead heat.
Nuclear plans flounder through muddy dispute
7 Jul 2020
Vast quantities of mud, which campaigners say might contain radioactive particles, are the latest problem to confront the UK’s nuclear plans for two new reactors under construction in the West of England.
Aussies score on covid but limp on climate change
7 Jul 2020
Australia has been ranked third behind South Korea and Latvia in a global report on the effectiveness of its response to the covid-19 pandemic -- but 37th in in the fight against climate change.
What an ocean hidden under Antarctica reveals about our future climate
6 Jul 2020
Jules Verne sent his fictional submarine, the Nautilus, to the South Pole through a hidden ocean beneath a thick ice cap. Written 40 years before any explorer had reached the pole, his story was nevertheless only half fiction.
Proud California dairy farmer takes it on the chin
6 Jul 2020
Californian dairyman Scott Magneson just keeps on farming, despite the economic fallout from a pandemic and the extreme weather — floods, drought, wildfires — linked to climate change.
Air pollution likely to make coronavirus worse
3 Jul 2020
Air pollution is probably increasing the number and severity of covid-19 cases and could be important to managing the pandemic, experts say.
Australia claims climate success
2 Jul 2020
Despite three decades of relative inaction on climate change and stalling from successive Australian Governments, the Morrison Government has claimed success in meeting Australia’s targets under the Kyoto Protocol, which came to an end on Wednesday.
UK heading for the heat
2 Jul 2020
The likelihood of the UK experiencing deadly 40deg temperatures for the first time is “rapidly accelerating” due to the climate crisis, scientists have found.
Spain to close half its coal-fired power stations
1 Jul 2020
Spain is on track to become a coal-free country in record time. All of its remaining coal-fired thermal power plants started shutting down yesterday, a year-and-a-half after the closure of the coal mines.
How Pacific nations can survive climate change
1 Jul 2020
They contribute only 0.03 per cent of global carbon emissions, but small island developing states, particularly in the Pacific, are at extreme risk to the threats of climate change.
Beavers new threat as Arctic lakes thaw
1 Jul 2020
Beavers are creating lakes that accelerate the thawing of frozen soils and potentially increase greenhouse gas emissions, a study finds.
How Europe can be carbon-neutral by 2040
30 Jun 2020
The European Union can reach climate neutrality as early as 2040, according to a group of environmental NGOs which have mapped out a scenario to move the bloc towards a 100 per cent renewable energy system by then.
Ireland latest country to set net-zero target
30 Jun 2020
Ireland’s new coalition government has set itself a goal to deliver steep greenhouse gas emissions cuts every year to reach neutrality by 2050.
World's biggest renewables companies abysmal on human rights
30 Jun 2020
Renewable energy companies are falling short on efforts to safeguard the rights of workers and communities in their operations and throughout mineral supply chains, placing the sector’s legitimacy and the global clean energy switch at risk, a new analysis says.
KENYA CALL: My land is now owned by lions
29 Jun 2020
PARSOLOI KUPAI'S home, situated on the edge of Ol Kinyei conservancy near the Maasai Mara game reserve, is no different from any other Maasai homestead – oval-shaped huts with an almost flat roof and walls plastered with a mixture of water, mud and cow dung.
Trump plan would open huge area of Alaska to drilling
29 Jun 2020
Some of most ecologically sensitive lands in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a few hundred miles west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, might soon be open for business to the oil industry.
Extremists exploit rural nostalgia and farmers’ anger
29 Jun 2020
The poster advertising an evening of debate and organic canapés looked familiar to environmentally conscious Germans - a rugged pair of hands, cupping fertile brown soil, underneath the slogan “Farms instead of agricultural factories”, written in a font mimicking that of a popular biodynamic food brand.
THAT'S RICH: Affluence is killing the planet
26 Jun 2020
iN SOCIETIES where money can buy almost everything, being rich is generally perceived as something good. But there's a catch: affluence trashes our planetary life support systems.
Border villagers prepare to dethrone the duke
26 Jun 2020
The 2300 villagers of Langholm, a Scottish settlement a few miles north of the English border, hope to buy one of the UK’s most famous grouse moors, owned by one of the Britain's most-powerful hereditary landowners, the Duke of Buccleuch.
“There was so much death.” A toxic algal bloom is ravaging Australia’s southern coast – warming waters are to blame
Fri 29 Aug 2025
Three ingredients are required for an algal bloom to get going – temperature, the right conditions and food. South Australia had all the preconditions necessary, thanks to climate change.
We used to stash gold in Fort Knox. What if we did the same with carbon?
Fri 29 Aug 2025
If we could convince the masses that waste carbon dioxide is sacred and worth hoarding — like gold — one of our most existential problems might solve itself.
China's carbon market to introduce absolute emissions caps from 2027
Wed 27 Aug 2025
China will tighten its carbon trading market by introducing absolute emissions caps in some industries for the first time starting by 2027.
Apple Watch not a 'CO2-neutral product,' German court finds
Thu 28 Aug 2025
Apple can no longer advertise its Apple Watch as a "CO2-neutral product" in Germany, following a court ruling on Tuesday that upheld a complaint from environmentalists, finding that the U.S. tech company had misled consumers.
What happens to net zero if the trees don’t survive?
20 Aug 2025
When climate change undermines the climate plan.
Challenges persist in bid to mine the deep sea, even after boost from Trump
29 Jul 2025
After years of delay, the deep-sea mining plans of Canadian firm The Metals Company (TMC) now appear to be progressing as it pursues a controversial new path to securing a license to mine in international waters under U.S. jurisdiction.
Singapore seals carbon credit deal with Thailand, its first South-east Asian partner
Thu 28 Aug 2025
The agreement, the eighth for Singapore, helps both nations meet climate targets under the Paris Agreement, directing finance to Thai projects.
Rise in dengue fever outbreaks across the Pacific driven by the climate crisis, experts say
13 Aug 2025
Samoa, Fiji and Tonga among the worst affected amid warning the disease and others will become ‘more common and more serious’ as the planet warms.
Iconic Antarctic species at risk amid 'regime shift', with 'rapid and self-perpetuating changes'
22 Aug 2025
Scientists say there is emerging evidence of abrupt and potentially unstoppable changes in the Antarctic environment.
Is Africa about to see the solar energy boom it needs?
Thu 28 Aug 2025
African countries imported a record number of solar panels in the past year, which could be the beginning of a green energy boom on the continent.
Lessons from the Incas: How llamas, terraces and trees could help the Andes survive climate change
Thu 28 Aug 2025
New research suggests solutions may lie in environmental knowledge that the Incas and their predecessors developed centuries ago.
Brazil issues last-ditch plea for countries to submit climate plans ahead of COP30
20 Aug 2025
Only 28 countries have submitted carbon-cutting proposals to the UN, with some of the biggest emitters yet to produce plans.
