International: Australia
Only 60% of Australians accept climate disruption is human-caused, global poll finds
25 Jun 2024
Exclusive: French survey of 26 countries finds fewer Australians than global average agree that climate change is the greatest health threat facing humanity.
Telstra ditches carbon credits to push harder on direct emissions
24 Jun 2024
Australia's telco giant is dumping its carbon credit offset scheme and claims its plans are “carbon neutral” or “carbon offset”, instead moving to a direct-investment model.
Australia’s foreign affairs minister warns dropping 2030 climate targets would abandon Pacific nations
18 Jun 2024
Foreign Affairs Minister labels the Coalition's decision to rule out setting a 2030 climate target as a move that will increase energy bills and risk further Chinese influence in the Pacific.
The anti-windfarm 'odd couple' joining forces to fight the renewable energy projects Australia's already failing to build
13 Jun 2024
Deep in coal country, a lifelong environmentalist and one-time Greens candidate is feeling the applause.
Australia’s leader says opposition will renege on greenhouse gas emissions target if elected
11 Jun 2024
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday said the opposition Liberal Party would renege on the nation’s ambitious target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 if it wins elections due within a year.
This week in Australia energy and climate collided; it’s a global story
28 May 2024
The announcement that the NSW government would extend the life of Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station was neither a surprise to energy observers in this country nor unique in a world struggling to at once battle climate change and keep pace with soaring energy demand.
More desalination is coming to Australia’s driest states – but super-salty outflows could trash ecosystems and fisheries
15 May 2024
From around 1996 to 2010, Australia was gripped by the millennium drought and as water shortages bit hard, most capital cities built large seawater desalination plants.
Australia’s PM faces internal revolt from inner-city Labor MPs over gas strategy
14 May 2024
Resources minister Madeleine King released party’s future gas strategy, which says new sources will be needed ‘to 2050 and beyond’.
Climate risks ignored in National Defence Strategy, Australian former defence chief says
6 May 2024
A former chief of Australia's defence force says the federal government has failed to understand the risk climate change poses to the nation's security.
Torres Strait Islanders in landmark Australian federal court case
1 May 2024
Uncle Paul Kabai and Pabai Pabai are suing the Australian government for "failing its duty of care" to protect their ancestral lands from the impacts of climate change.
Australia could reach an ‘ambitious’ emissions cut of up to 75% by 2035, advisers tell Labor
17 Apr 2024
Climate Change Authority says goal could be achievable if more action is taken by governments, business, investors and households.
Scientists warn Australians to prepare for megadroughts lasting more than 20 years
5 Apr 2024
New research shows megadroughts lasting up to 20 years or more have occurred in Australia in the past and could happen again.
Australia’s carbon credits system a failure on global scale, study finds
28 Mar 2024
Researchers find carbon offsets approach, which is supposed to regenerate scrubby outback forests, was not reducing emissions as promised.
Australia's New Vehicle Efficiency Standard weakened
27 Mar 2024
The Australian government will loosen fuel economy standards for utes and vans in its proposed climate laws for cars.
Climate-conscious investors put nuclear dead last on list of desirable Australian ventures
26 Mar 2024
Nuclear energy ranks last on the list of climate technologies that big institutional investors want exposure to, according to a survey of climate conscious investors with $37tn under management.
A role for nuclear in Australia’s climate response?
7 Mar 2024
In the facts-lite political debate, the opportunities and comparative advantages of solar are being sidelined.
Melbourne Extinction Rebellion climate activists jailed for disrupting traffic
6 Mar 2024
Two environmental activists have been jailed for causing major traffic disruptions in Melbourne, after they used a rental truck to block the West Gate Bridge.
Australia's capital cities will see number of hot days double by 2050 without urgent climate change action
29 Feb 2024
By the time today's children reach retirement, Australia's capital cities will swelter through at least twice as many days over 35 degrees and large swathes of the country will be all but uninhabitable for much of the year.
‘They ain’t seen nothing yet’: UN boss names climate change impacts coming to Australia
27 Feb 2024
Top UN climate official Simon Stiell says Australia will be “front and centre in resettling entire national populations” if climate targets are not met.
Australian Prime Minister vows full support amidst wildfires destroying homes
26 Feb 2024
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledges immediate assistance to Victoria amid wildfire crisis, emphasising urgency in addressing climate change.
Pressure from young people for Anthony Albanese to consider duty of care over climate harm
23 Feb 2024
A group of young Aussies fronted up to demand Anthony Albanese do more to protect them from one issue.
Australia’s best known carbon-neutral farm can no longer offset its emissions
21 Feb 2024
Trees and soil on Jigsaw Farms in western Victoria have now passed peak sequestration – reflecting the challenge for the broader red meat industry.
Climate change is forcing Australians to weigh up relocating
19 Feb 2024
Big environmental changes mean ever more Australians will confront the tough choice of whether to move home or risk staying put.
Veteran economists say a carbon levy would cut emissions, cut inflation and raise billions, but see little prospect of adoption
16 Feb 2024
Two of Australia’s most respected economists have put forward a bold plan to lower global carbon emissions by at least 6 per cent, super-charge a new green export industry, deliver much cheaper power bills and dramatically cut the rate of inflation.
Climate change ambassador explains why Australia won't back Pacific's calls to urgently phase out fossil fuels
1 Dec 2023
Australia's climate change ambassador says the federal government cannot yet back the Pacific's call to rapidly phase out fossil fuels because it's grappling with "complex" and "difficult" issues thrown up by decarbonisation.
Australia climate change activists disrupt shipping at coal port
27 Nov 2023
A climate change protest off Australia's east coast disrupted operations at the country's biggest coal export port on Saturday.
World’s biggest carbon storage project off WA coast burying only a third of what it promised
15 Nov 2023
After seven years of operation US giant Chevron is burying just a third of the carbon pollution it committed to burying at its Gorgon gas export project.
We are looking for a transformational roadmap to transform our energy sectors: German envoy
8 Nov 2023
With less than four weeks until the next UN climate conference COP-28, Germany's special envoy for climate diplomacy, Jennifer Morgan, is in Australia for a series of meetings with key climate players.
The Beetaloo gas field is a climate bomb. How did CSIRO modelling make it look otherwise?
1 Nov 2023
As Australia braces for a summer of projected extreme heatwaves and bushfires, the fossil gas industry is gearing up for a truly enormous new fracking project in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin.
Australia’s compromised climate negotiators
10 Oct 2023
Sitting in a bar in Manhattan recently, there for Climate Week NYC and the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit, I watched as Australians from both government and the private sector worked the room.
Sydney smashes 1 October heat record as Victoria fights bushfires
4 Oct 2023
The previous hottest start to October in Sydney was 33.1C but Sunday’s mercury peaked at 35.6C.
Queensland carbon-negative soil project issued record number of credit units
29 Sep 2023
They look like any other cattle strolling through a grassy paddock in Queensland, but beneath their hooves the soil is doing more than producing feed. It is helping to fight climate change.
Australia would be raising $70 billion a year from the carbon price if it wasn't dismantled
19 Sep 2023
The problems at Qantas, and the explosion in executive remuneration this century, reflect a much more general problem in the Australian economy.
Australia braces for bushfire season
13 Sep 2023
Smoke sweeps through the treetops as a fire consumes the dense undergrowth of the Australian winter bush.
Canberra could protect decarbonising industries from unfair competition
8 Sep 2023
The Australian government has engaged an eminent academic to study the need for a carbon tariff to protect local manufacturers from unfair competition from imports which are not subject to restrictions on emissions of CO2.
Eco-anxiety looms as headspace survey reveals young people want climate change action
8 Sep 2023
An Australian survey of young people shows more than half fear for the future due to climate change.
Sydney is running out of water while facing climate change and a population boom
5 Sep 2023
Experts are getting increasingly nervous about a problem that’s been lying dormant for years: Sydney’s water supply is running out.
Aus govt acknowledges risk of climate change to bonds after court case
1 Sep 2023
The federal government has agreed to settle a world-first court case accusing it of misleading investors by failing to disclose the risk climate change poses to its bonds.
Australia's most popular carbon credit scheme questioned by experts
22 Aug 2023
Deep in the Australian outback, there are billions of dollars being made from carbon farming.
Australia weighs up green imports tariffs for steel, cement
18 Aug 2023
Imported steel and cement could face a tariff to ensure Australian producers seeking to reduce carbon emissions are not disadvantaged.
Santos’s deep-sea carbon capture fantasy
16 Aug 2023
New laws will allow a notorious gas field project to dump carbon dioxide in Timor-Leste waters – using a process that has not worked anywhere in the world – so it can meet its net-zero requirements.
Fossil fuel sites in Australia releasing climate-damaging methane into atmosphere
11 Aug 2023
An investigative report published by a global nonprofit has made worrying revelations about methane leaks from as many as 35 fossil fuel sites located in Australia.
Australian aid policy to focus on climate — and countering China
10 Aug 2023
Australia has put the climate and job creation in the Pacific at the centre of its new foreign aid policy, part of an effort to woo back island nations that have fallen under China’s deep-pocketed influence.
Climate crisis: Australia must ready for ‘devastating’ regional disruption, MPs told
4 Aug 2023
Failed states, a rise in authoritarian politics and heightened risks of conflict among potential threats outlined in thinktank’s assessment.
Australian doctors want urgent action on climate threats
2 Aug 2023
Medical colleges representing over 100,000 doctors, physicians and medical experts say Australia's healthcare system is unprepared for the next disaster.
Australia's kelp forests an underwater 'Amazon' could help climate change
17 Jul 2023
To most people, the word "forest" would conjure images of vast tree communities, like the towering karri forests of WA's South West.
Asparagopsis seaweed: scientists call for stricter oversight in livestock sector
4 Jul 2023
Safety concerns have been raised about the native seaweed asparagopsis, which is now being commercialised to help farmers reduce methane emissions in sheep and cattle.
Aus sides with China, Russia in bid to sink Pacific nations’ climate plan
4 Jul 2023
Australia has been criticised for siding with China and Russia to oppose a popular plan from a group of Pacific Island nations to tackle carbon emissions from the shipping industry.
Scientists researching cloud brightening in bid to cool Great Barrier Reef
28 Jun 2023
Queensland scientists who have been altering clouds with tiny particles to try and limit the effects of global warming are presenting their findings for the first time this week.
Australia commits to build $34 million renewable hydrogen plant
27 Jun 2023
Australia has green-lit plans to build a A$51 million (US$34 million) renewable hydrogen plant in Victoria state, as the country moves to cut carbon emissions and boost alternative power resources.
Rare win for renewable energy: Trump administration funds geothermal network expansion
Fri 5 Dec 2025
A first-in-the-nation heating and cooling network in Massachusetts is set to double in size.
China’s BEV trucks and the end of diesel’s dominance
Thu 4 Dec 2025
Cheap Chinese battery electric heavy trucks are no longer a rumor. They are real machines with real price tags that are so low that they force a reassessment of what the global freight industry is willing to pay for electrification.
Spain announces $1.5 billion package to boost electric vehicle market
Fri 5 Dec 2025
Spain's plan includes 400 million euros in direct subsidies in 2026 for consumers to buy EVs.
UK farmers lose £800m after heat and drought cause one of worst harvests on record
Fri 5 Dec 2025
Many now concerned about ability to make living in fast-changing climate after one of worst grain harvests recorded.
Canada rolls back climate rules in energy deal with Alberta
1 Dec 2025
Under the agreement, the federal government will scrap a planned emissions cap on the oil and gas sector and drop rules on clean electricity.
Families on rooftops, homes buried by mud: Asia floods show water is overtaking wind as main threat
Thu 4 Dec 2025
The fallout marks a grim escalation in deadly weather across the region that has been aggravated by the blanket of carbon pollution heating the planet.
Asia-Pacific faces ‘$500bn-a-year’ hit from rising seas if current policies continue
Thu 4 Dec 2025
Coastal flooding could bring $500bn of annual damages to the Asia-Pacific by the year 2100, if countries do not adapt to rising sea levels.
Scientists discovered something alarming seeping out from beneath the ocean around Antarctica
13 Oct 2025
Planet-heating methane is escaping from cracks in the Antarctic seabed as the region warms, with new seeps being discovered at an “astonishing rate".
European Investment Bank pledges over 2 billion euros for African renewables projects
26 Nov 2025
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is pledging more than 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) of financing for renewable energy projects on the African continent over the next two years.
In blow to Lula, Brazil Congress revives controversial environmental bill
Tue 2 Dec 2025
Brazil's conservative-led Congress on Thursday reinstated much of a bill that makes it easier for companies to secure environmental permits, infuriating the leftist government and green groups.
Analysis: Why COP30’s ‘tripling adaptation finance’ target is less ambitious than it seems
Fri 5 Dec 2025
One of the headline outcomes to emerge from COP30 was a new target to “at least triple” finance for climate adaptation in developing countries by 2035.
