Add more products
Peatlands store more carbon per square metre than any other ecosystem on Earth. These waterlogged, mossy bogs beat even dense rainforests for their ability to act as carbon reservoirs.
Read More
For years there have been suggestions of widespread poor wellbeing among architects. In many ways this is not surprising. It’s well established the profession has a culture of long hours and (often unpaid) overtime, relentless and pressured deadlines, high responsibility and liability and surprisingly low starting pay, even after five years of university education.
I met with a friend for a walk beside Merri Creek, in inner Melbourne. She had lived in the area for a few years, and as we walked beside the creek, past trees, native grasses, a small wetland echoing with frog calls, I talked about how it had looked before we started the site’s restoration around 25 years ago. She stopped in her tracks, astonished. “But I thought it had always been like this!”
It’s National Road Safety Week and it comes on the back of a year in which 1,286 people died on Australian roads. The rising road toll – up 8.2% for the year to March – included 62 children. Tragically, road deaths remain the number one killer of children in Australia.
As home ownership moves further out of reach for many Australians, “rentvesting” is being touted as a lifesaver.
Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport.
Some reports and popular books, such as Bill Gammage’s Biggest Estate on Earth, have argued that extensive areas of Australia’s forests were kept open through frequent burning by First Nations people.
I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, double-storey brick homes with Greek columns that aspirational migrants built in the 1970s and half-crumbling, Federation-era mansions once occupied by people whose names still appear in history textbooks.
An important principle was invoked by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in defence of the government’s Future Made in Australia industry policy announcement.
Landscapes that have escaped fire for decades or centuries tend to harbour vital structures for wildlife, such as tree hollows and large logs. But these “long unburnt” habitats can be eliminated by a single blaze.
In February, the South Australian Museum “re-imagined” itself. In the face of rising costs and inadequate government funds, CEO David Gaimster, who took the reins last June, declared the museum is “not a university”, and will gut its research capabilities, starting this July.
We’ve long known Australia’s main environmental protection laws aren’t doing their job, and we know Australians want better laws. Labor was elected promising to fix them.
