Fiji PM accuses Scott Morrison of ‘insulting’ and alienating Pacific leaders

Frank Bainimarama with New Zealand’s
prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, at the forum. 

Scott Morrison has been accused of causing an extraordinary rift between Australia and Pacific countries by the prime minister of Fiji, who said the Australian prime minister’s insulting behaviour while at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu would push nations closer to China.

In an exclusive interview with Guardian Australia after the conclusion of the PIF, Frank Bainimarama, the prime minister of Fiji and a political heavyweight in the region, said Morrison’s approach during the leaders’ retreat on Thursday was “very insulting and condescending”.

“Yesterday was probably one of the most frustrating days I have ever had,” he said of the leaders’ retreat, which lasted for nearly 12 hours and almost broke down over Australia’s red lines on the climate crisis.

Read the story from The Guardian by Kate Lyons - “Fiji PM accuses Scott Morrison of ‘insulting’ and alienating Pacific leaders.”

We must rip up our environmental laws to address the extinction crisis

Humans are causing the Earth’s sixth mass extinction event, with an estimated one million species at risk of extinction.

The Christmas Island pipistrelle (Pipistrellus murrayi) became extinct in 2009.

Addressing this crisis requires transformative change, including more effective environmental law and implementation.

Improved legislation is one of five main levers for realising change identified in the recent United Nation’s global biodiversity report and the key lesson arising from the Senate’s interim report into Australia’s faunal extinction crisis.

Read the story from The Conversation - “We must rip up our environmental laws to address the extinction crisis.”

Melbourne weather: Heatwave continues as wild winds cause flight delays

If you woke up warm and wondering what season we're in, you weren't alone.

A dust storm covered the city this morning.
In some parts it was 30 degrees at 5am.

Thursday morning brought a confusing array of wild weather to the city including wild winds, a dust storm causing flight delays and temperatures as high as 30 degrees at 5am.

The dust storm was reported across Deer Park, Manor Lakes and Laverton and was moving into Footscray on Thursday morning. The State Emergency Service said a dust storm hit Ballarat and Ararat overnight.

Melbourne Airport is reporting 30-minute delays on flights - mainly arrivals - due to the dust storm and strong winds.

Read the story by Anna Prytz from The Age - “Melbourne weather: Heatwave continues as wild winds cause flight delays.”

Rising CO2 levels are making your food less nutritious

Rising carbon dioxide levels are causing climate change. But they could also be making the food on your plate less nutritious.

This looks great, but as the world
warms it is becoming less nutritious.

Loladze: “Every time you eat, say, a carrot or a bread or potatoes, the quality of it is different than, all else being equal, it was, say, a hundred years ago.”

Irakli Loladze, of Nebraska’s Bryan College of Health Sciences, studies how carbon dioxide levels affect plant nutrients. He analyzed studies from around the world that examined the nutrient levels of plants grown in experiments with elevated levels of CO2.

The data include more than 7,000 samples of 130 plant varieties, including rice, wheat, and other grains, as well as fruits and vegetables.

Read the Yale Climate Connections story by Jan O’Brien - ‘Rising CO2 levels are making your food less nutritious.”

$180bn investment in plastic factories feeds global packaging binge

The global plastic binge which is already causing widespread damage to oceans, habitats and food chains, is set to increase dramatically over the next 10 years after multibillion-dollar investments in a new generation of plastics plants in the US.

One million plastic bottles are bought around the world every
 minute, with most ending up in landfill or in the sea. Photograph:

Fossil fuel companies are among those who have ploughed more than $180bn since 2010 into new “cracking” facilities that will produce the raw material for everyday plastics from packaging to bottles, trays and cartons.

The new facilities – being built by corporations like Exxon Mobile Chemical and Shell Chemical – will help fuel a 40% rise in plastic production in the next decade, according to experts, exacerbating the plastic pollution crisis that scientist warn already risks “near permanent pollution of the earth.”

Read Matthew Taylor’s story on The Guardian - “$180bn investment in plastic factories feeds global packaging binge.”

Ipsos poll: Only 18 per cent think Turnbull government is doing a good job on climate change

One in two Australians believe climate change is already damaging the Great Barrier Reef and causing more extreme storms, floods and droughts.

But only 18 per cent think the Turnbull government is doing a good job tackling global warming, a new poll has found.

An annual survey by Ipsos, which has probed public opinion on climate change for the past 12 years, shows eight in 10 agree human activity is contributing to climate change – 42 per cent say humans are mainly or entirely responsible while 38 per cent believe climate change is caused partly by humans and partly by natural processes.

Just 3 per cent of respondents think there is no such thing as climate change, a share that has hardly shifted during the past decade. Another 12 per cent believe climate change is caused entirely or mostly by natural processes.

Read Matt Wade’s story in today’s Melbourne Age -“Ipsos poll: Only 18 per cent think Turnbull government is doing a good job on climate change."