"The Pacific island nation of Nauru and its roughly 11,000 residents are at the center of the increasingly contentious debate over whether the world's seabeds should be mined for nickel and other green energy transition minerals."
"The Australian Parliament created landmark new laws Thursday that will make the nation’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters reduce their emissions or pay for carbon credits."
"Marilene Capentes pushes a cart along the streets of Malabon city just north of Manila every morning except Sundays, collecting bags of segregated garbage."
Geothermal has long been hyped as the next big thing in renewable energy, but its breakthrough moment hasn’t happened yet. Barriers to expansion include the elusiveness of sites offering the magic trio of heat, water and permeability and concern for unique ecosystems. Contributor Jessica McKenzie on geothermal energy’s possibilities and challenges and the government funding that may finally fire it up.
"The Australian government plans to make an area about the size of Germany in the Southern Ocean a marine zone, strengthening protections around Macquarie Island for millions of penguins and seals."
The cuteness of the fuzzy koala appears not to be winning it special protection in its native Australia, despite dwindling numbers, per a new volume on the endangered marsupial. BookShelf contributor Melody Kemp offers praise for “Koala: A Natural History and an Uncertain Future,” with a review that begins amusingly with bodily functions but ends dispiritedly with yet more koala habitat lost to housing tracts and wildfire.
"Australia for the first time has rejected a coal mining application based on environmental law, with the government minister citing the open-pit mine’s potential harm to the nearby Great Barrier Reef."
"Under President Joko Widodo, Indonesia has gained international praise for its conservation policies. But now the government is clamping down on scientists who are questioning official claims that the country’s endangered orangutan and rhino populations are increasing."
"The Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem and one of its most biodiverse, is under significant threat from climate change and should be placed on a list of world heritage sites in danger, a United Nations-backed mission has recommended."
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