20 July 2017, The Conversation, Farming the suburbs – why can’t we grow food wherever we want? Food provides the foundations for human flourishing and the fabric of sustainability. It lies at the heart of conflict and diversity, yet presents opportunities for cultural acceptance and respect. It can define neighbourhoods, shape communities, and make places. In parts of our cities, residents have embraced suburban agriculture as a way to improve access to healthier and more sustainably produced food. Farming our street edges and verges, vacant land, parks, rooftops and backyards is a great way to encourage an appreciation of locally grown food and increase consumption of fresh produce. Despite these benefits, regulations, as well as some cultural opposition, continue to constrain suburban agriculture. We can’t grow and market food wherever we like, even if it is the sustainable production of relatively healthy options. While good planning will be key to a healthier, more sustainable food system, planning’s role in allocating land for different uses across the city also constrains suburban agriculture. Two steps towards healthier food systems: Making our food systems healthier and more sustainable requires a two-step approach. First, we need to fortify the parts of the system that enable access to healthy food options. Second, we need to disempower elements that continuously expose us to unhealthy foods. Although food is a basic human need, the way we consume food in many countries, including Australia, is harmful to the environment and ourselves. Many of us don’t eat enough fresh and unprocessed foods. The foods we do eat are often produced and supplied in carbon-intensive and wasteful ways. Primarily through land-use zoning, town planners can help to shape sustainable and healthy food systems. Read More here
Yearly Archives: 2017
18 July 2017, Climate Central, At Midway Point, 2017 Is 2nd-Hottest Year on Record. At the halfway point of the year, 2017 remains the second-hottest year to date — a surprise given the demise of the El Niño that helped boost temperatures to record levels last year. The continued near-record warmth is a marker of just how much global temperatures have risen thanks to the greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere from fossil fuel use. “Personally, I wasn’t expecting it to be as warm as it has been,” Ahira Sanchez-Lugo, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientist, said in an email. “After the decline of the strong El Niño I was expecting the values to drop a bit and rank among the top five warmest years. This year has been extremely remarkable.” The odds are good that 2017 will stay in second place through the end of the year, and it is even more likely that it will remain in at least the top three hottest years. NOAA released its global temperature data for June on Tuesday, and ranked June as the third warmest in its records. The four-warmest Junes in its records have all happened in the past four years. (NASA, which released its June numbers on Friday, ranked June as the fourth hottest. The two agencies handle the data slightly differently, which can lead to small differences in their rankings, though they strongly agree on recent warming.) The hotspots around the world for June included central Asia and western and central Europe. A searing heat wave in western Europe that helped fuel deadly wildfires in Portugal was made up to 10 times more likely because of Earth’s rising temperature, according to a recent study done in partnership with Climate Central. Read More here
14 July 2017, The Conversation, Memo to COAG: Australia is already awash with gas. Federal, state and territory energy ministers are gathering today in Brisbane for the tenth meeting of the COAG Energy Council. In the wake of the Finkel Review, and against a backdrop of rising electricity and gas prices, they have much to discuss. Some of the focus will certainly be on gas policy and prices. Earlier this week, the federal energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, argued that state governments should develop their onshore gas reserves to relieve pressure on the gas market. Victoria and the Northern Territory both have bans on onshore gas development, introduced partly to protect prime farming land. Controversially, federal Liberal MP Craig Kelly suggested on Thursdaythat pressure from renewable resources on energy prices meant that “people will die” this winter if they’re afraid to turn on their heating. Yet it is gas generation, not renewables, that typically sets the price in the electricity market. As Fairfax reported yesterday, electricity prices move up and down with the gas price, almost exactly in tandem. What’s more, the reality is that Australia has enough existing gas reserves to keep producing at current rates, including exports to the international LNG market, for at least the next 25 years. Developing extra onshore gas potentially risks harming valuable agricultural land for little gain – and certainly won’t bring energy prices down by the end of this winter. Read More here
14 July 2017, Nature Communications, The unprecedented 2015/16 Tasman Sea marine heatwave. The Tasman Sea off southeast Australia exhibited its longest and most intense marine heatwave ever recorded in 2015/16. Here we report on several inter-related aspects of this event: observed characteristics, physical drivers, ecological impacts and the role of climate change. This marine heatwave lasted for 251 days reaching a maximum intensity of 2.9 °C above climatology. The anomalous warming is dominated by anomalous convergence of heat linked to the southward flowing East Australian Current. Ecosystem impacts range from new disease outbreaks in farmed shellfish, mortality of wild molluscs and out-of-range species observations. Global climate models indicate it is very likely to be that the occurrence of an extreme warming event of this duration or intensity in this region is respectively ≥330 times and ≥6.8 times as likely to be due to the influence of anthropogenic climate change. Climate projections indicate that event likelihoods will increase in the future, due to increasing anthropogenic influences. Read More here