International: All stories

For cattle farmers in Brazil, money can’t buy love
31 Oct 2017
In regions of the Amazon where farmers could choose to grow more sustainable and lucrative crops like fruit or vegetables, ranchers persist in their low-income cattle business.

Climate change looms like a tragedy for Greeks
31 Oct 2017
Greece is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in Europe, according to experts, and faces a gloomy future.

WHALE TALE: 100 years of protection and still hurting
31 Oct 2017
For some whale populations, even 100 years of protection is not long enough to recover from the excesses of commercial hunting.

Super-rich's supersonic private jets will be super-polluting
30 Oct 2017
Hundreds of supersonic jets could be flying businesspeople over Europe within 10 years, but documents show the EU preparing to cede oversight of their huge CO2 emissions.

Italy eyes a coal-free future with new energy strategy
30 Oct 2017
Italy plans to phase out coal power plants by 2025, the country’s industry minister said during a presentation of a new energy strategy.

Changing climate is blurring the lines for map makers
30 Oct 2017
As soon as cartographers had finished drawing the Arctic ice sheet in 2013, their map was already out of date.

Big sweet firms 'breaking promises over palm oil use'
30 Oct 2017
Nestlé, Mars and Hershey have been accused of breaking pledges to stop using conflict palm oil from deforested Indonesian jungles with the annual Halloween confectionery frenzy just around the corner.

Rising seas are flooding Virginia’s vast naval base
27 Oct 2017
The giant United States naval base at Norfolk is under threat by rising seas and sinking land - and little is being done to hold back the tides.

EPA scrubs website clean of ‘climate change’
27 Oct 2017
The US Environmental Protection Agency has removed dozens of online resources dedicated to helping local governments address climate change.

US unprepared to face costs of climate change
27 Oct 2017
The risks to the US are big, and they’re rising, a new report says - just as the Trump administration is changing how it calculates costs to make them look smaller.

If nothing is done, we will be 'toasted, roasted and grilled'
27 Oct 2017
If we don't do anything about climate change now, in 50 years we will be toasted, roasted and grilled, says International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde.

China’s carbon market exposes Australia’s energy paralysis
27 Oct 2017
When China’s national carbon market is launched later this year it will be the world’s second-largest carbon market, after the European emissions trading scheme.

Fewer poor means more climate work for the rich
26 Oct 2017
Ending poverty means the world’s rich will have to work harder to keep climate change under control, new research shows.

EU eyes green clause in trade deals (including ours)
26 Oct 2017
As Europe embarks on a new round of trade talks with New Zealand, Japan, Australia, and various South American countries, calls are growing for the EU to enforce environmental and social clauses in commercial agreements.

Pollution getting in the way of China's solar goals
26 Oct 2017
Although China is increasing its solar energy supply, air pollution is blocking sunlight and reducing energy output, according to a new study.

BBC apologises over interview with climate denier
26 Oct 2017
The BBC has apologised for an interview with climate change denier Lord Lawson after admitting it had breached its own editorial guidelines for allowing him to claim unchallenged that global temperatures have not risen in the past decade.

WINE WOBBLES: Production is heading for a 50-year low
26 Oct 2017
If you haven’t got a wine cellar, it’s time to get one and start stockpiling because global wine production is about to fall to its lowest level in more than 50 years.

LEAPING LIZARDS: Giants thrive in wasted oil palm plantations
26 Oct 2017
Of Borneo’s large native scavengers, a giant lizard is the only species that has successfully adapted to the land devastated by oil palm plantations.

Fires last year cost an area of forest the size of New Zealand
25 Oct 2017
Forest fires in Brazil and Indonesia contributed to a record loss in global tree cover in 2016, equivalent to the size of New Zealand.

KIRIBATI CRISIS: A long time waiting for the tide to turn
25 Oct 2017
The 33 islands of Kiribati are under threat from climate change. But the islanders have not given up hope.

Texas power giant to shut coal-fired plants
25 Oct 2017
Texas power generator Luminant has announced it will close three coal-fired plants in early 2018. Combined, they account for 12 per cent of the state's coal power plant capacity.

Corals clue to sudden bursts of ocean rise
25 Oct 2017
Fossilised corals off Texas show that in the past, sea level rose several meters in just decades, probably due to collapsing glaciers.

Car lobby wants better testing to combat emissions
25 Oct 2017
Australia’s motoring lobby wants “real-world” vehicle emissions testing, arguing the current system is misleading consumers and regulators.

Twelve major cities vow to buy zero-emissions buses
25 Oct 2017
Twelve major cities including London, Paris, Los Angeles and Cape Town have promised to buy only zero-emissions buses from 2025.

Dirty cars must pay for using London streets
25 Oct 2017
Drivers of the most polluting vehicles must from now on pay a daily charge of up to $NZ40 to drive into central London.

Global pollution kills 9m a year and threatens human survival
24 Oct 2017
Pollution kills at least nine million people and costs trillions of dollars every year, according to the most comprehensive global analysis to date, which warns the crisis “threatens the continuing survival of human societies”.

No China, so what happens now to world’s recycling?
24 Oct 2017
In the wake of China's announcement earlier this year that it would cut imports of the world's waste there are concerns that much of the lower grade materials will have nowhere else to go.

Development banks join forces to fight climate change
24 Oct 2017
Credit institutions worth $3000 billion have joined forces to throw their weight behind sustainable development.

UK hints at e-bike subsidy to get people moving
24 Oct 2017
The UK government might consider providing subsidies for electric bicycles and electric cars as part of a concerted policy effort to get more people cycling.

Brazilian Amazon loses 660,000ha of forest in one year
24 Oct 2017
The Brazilian Amazon lost 6,624 sq km of forest between August 2016 and July 2017.

How can we cook a more sustainable Sunday roast?
24 Oct 2017
Messing with the Sunday roast proably is a step too far for many people. So how might we create a more sustainable Sunday roast?

Fiji announces $100m ‘climate bond’ ahead of climate talks
20 Oct 2017
Fiji aims to raise $100 million ($NZ68m) to build resilience to climate change and support a shift to 100 per cent renewable energy.

Environmental activism no racket, rules judge
20 Oct 2017
A judge has dismissed a Canadian logging company's lawsuit against Greenpeace and another activist group that accused them of running a criminal enterprise through their environmental campaigns.

Hunger increasing thanks to wars and climate change
20 Oct 2017
Despite efforts to end food shortages, hunger is on the rise again after years of decline, a UN report says.

How Thailand built a top sustainable stock exchange
20 Oct 2017
Sustainability reporting is not mandatory in Thailand - and yet Thai firms outnumber their Asean peers in the latest Dow Jones Sustainability Indices.

Toxic firefighting chemicals public health challenge
20 Oct 2017
The contamination of drinking water by toxic firefighting chemicals is the most seminal public health challenge of coming decades, says a US environmental official.

Turnbull convinces party to unite on energy policy
19 Oct 2017
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has secured party-room backing to impose new reliability and emissions reduction guarantees on energy retailers and large energy users from 2020.

Planting the planet could cut as much carbon as halting oil
19 Oct 2017
Planting forests and other activities that harness the power of nature could play a major role in limiting global warming under the 2015 Paris agreement.

KITCHEN CRIMES: The hidden scandal of hotel food waste
19 Oct 2017
What if every time you sat down for a meal, you threw one-quarter of it in the trash? That’s the hidden story of waste in the hospitality industry.

How potatoes and bananas can keep your house warm
19 Oct 2017
Potatoes and bananas reborn as insulation, peanuts processed into partition boards and mushroom bricks that grow in five days ... just some of the ways the building trade could change its wasteful ways and construct virtuous new cities.

Texas town mayor turns green-power tyro
19 Oct 2017
The mayor of Georgetown, Texas, Dale Ross is ‘a good little Republican’ – but ever since his city weaned itself off fossil fuels, he has become a hero to environmentalists.

Egypt shaped by volcanoes and climate change
19 Oct 2017
Volcanic eruptions and climate change have been linked to periods of social unrest and the eventual downfall one of Ancient Egypt's most famous dynasties.

NZ goes for 'triple win' at Bonn climate talks
18 Oct 2017
New Zealand will push a “triple win” for agriculture at international climate talks in Bonn next month.

Qantas eyes transpacific biofuel flights by 2020
18 Oct 2017
Qantas has announced that its Los Angeles to Melbourne flights will be powered by biofuel from 2020.

World's choking cities need fewer cars, not cleaner cars
18 Oct 2017
Electric cars won’t eradicate city gridlocks and air pollution, but carbon footprints could be cut by favouring pedestrians, cyclists and mass transit.

Trump stance on Paris deal sad, says Pope
18 Oct 2017
Speaking on World Food Day, Francis said climate change was a driver of hunger and migration and the Paris climate agreement was the legal basis for the solution.

NZ fires first COP23 shots in Fiji today
17 Oct 2017
Acting climate minister Paula Bennett will deliver New Zealand’s opening statement at the pre-COP climate talks in Fiji today.

Starving penguins a sign that all is not well in Antarctica
17 Oct 2017
The awful news that all but two penguin chicks have starved to death out of a colony of almost 40,000 birds is a grim illustration of the enormous pressure Antarctic wildlife is under.

Chevron dumps plan to drill in Australian Bight
17 Oct 2017
Chevron has become the second big oil company to abandon plans to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight, almost exactly a year after BP ditched its more advanced plans for the untapped basin.

One-third of population could be living in Africa by 2100
17 Oct 2017
Today, one out of six people on Earth live in Africa. These same projections predict that the proportion will be one in four in 2050 and more than one in three by 2100.