There is no chance of Australia becoming more economic resilient if we don’t have robust national laws that set clear environmental standards
One Big Idea is a new series on how to transform Australia’s economy ahead of Jim Chalmers’ economic roundtable
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We must reform Australia’s broken national environment laws, as they have failed to protect the environment. Projects critical to our future prosperity are bogged down in slow, opaque, duplicative and contested environmental planning and approvals processes based on poor information, and mired in administrative complexity.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/14/2025 - 19:37
08/14/2025 - 13:59
Talks continue amid warnings from environmental groups over being ‘sold out’ without meaningful or legally binding measures
Talks between nations to hammer out a plastics treaty to end plastic pollution continued behind closed doors in Geneva on Thursday, the final day of negotiations, as civil society groups urged countries to “hold the line” to secure a strong agreement.
With time running out to seal a deal between 184 countries, environmental groups expressed concern that frontline communities, Indigenous people and others suffering the worst impacts of the world’s growing plastic crisis were being “sold out” in an effort to secure a treaty, without meaningful or legally binding measures that would address the scale of the problem, “at any cost”.
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08/14/2025 - 12:55
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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08/14/2025 - 11:59
Satellite imagery shows the impact on Europe after wildfires raged across the south of the continent
Wildfires claim third life in Spain as intense heat continues across Europe
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08/14/2025 - 10:53
US president is pushing an ‘end run around’ on safeguards, risking harm to wildlife, air and water, attorney says
A draft executive order from Donald Trump that aims to largely exempt space launches from environmental review is viewed as a gift to commercial space industry players such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and others who have long targeted the regulations.
But its central components may be illegal and the US president “is trying to do an end run around” the law, said Jared Margolis, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has litigated environmental issues around launches.
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08/14/2025 - 10:00
Glencore says it is working with state and federal governments to minimise the impact of flora and fauna in the 680ha area west of Mackay
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Habitat for threatened koalas that are part of a population described by one expert as nationally significant would be bulldozed under plans to extend a Queensland coalmine.
The campaign group Lock the Gate used drones with thermal imaging cameras to find 13 koalas in one night in trees earmarked for clearing by mining company Glencore.
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08/14/2025 - 09:53
Cottontails seen in Fort Collins have mostly harmless Shope papillomavirus, which cannot be spread to other species
A group of rabbits in Colorado with grotesque, hornlike growths may seem straight out of a low-budget horror film, but scientists say there is no reason to be spooked – the furry creatures merely have a relatively common virus.
The cottontails recently spotted in Fort Collins are infected with the mostly harmless Shope papillomavirus, which causes wart-like growths that protrude from their faces like metastasizing horns.
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08/14/2025 - 09:50
Deal for Europe’s biggest facility for LNG imports comes as overall UK gas demand fell sharply last year
The owner of British Gas has placed a £1.5bn bet on the UK’s future reliance on fossil fuel imports after striking a deal to buy Europe’s biggest gas import terminal.
Centrica plans to partner with a US private equity firm to acquire the Isle of Grain terminal in Kent, which can import 15m tonnes of liquefied natural gas a year, even after Britain’s gas demand fell last year to its lowest level since the early 1990s.
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08/14/2025 - 08:44
People on popular pilgrimage route were washed away by flood waters triggered by cloudburst, officials say
At least 56 people have died and 80 are missing after a sudden rainstorm in Indian Kashmir, the second such disaster in the Himalayas in a little over a week.
The incident in the town of Chashoti, Kishtwar district, occurred at a stopover point on a pilgrimage route. Days earlier, a flood and mudslide engulfed a village in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.
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08/14/2025 - 08:30
Exclusive: 17 sites recorded elevated levels, in some cases thousands of times higher than proposed safe limits, as experts warn of potential risk to drinking water
“Alarmingly high” levels of toxic forever chemicals have been detected at English airports – in some cases thousands of times higher than proposed EU safe levels – with experts raising concerns over the potential impact on drinking water sources.
Seventeen airports recorded elevated levels of Pfas in the ground and surface water sample on their sites, according to unpublished Environment Agency documents, obtained exclusively by the Ends Report and the Guardian via an environmental information request.
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