To really address climate change, Australia could make 27 times as much electricity and make it renewable

Australia’s electricity system is on the road to becoming 100% renewable as coal-fired power stations close and wind and solar takes their place.

But as a proportion of electricity consumed domestically, it’s on the road to more than 100% renewable. That’s because renewable power set to be produced in Australia’s north could be exported in ways such as via subsea cables.

And if we get really serious about bringing down global emissions we will be doing much, much more.

In a newly-published study carried out as part of a multi-disciplinary team under the Zero-Carbon Energy for the Asia-Pacific project we analyse the potential for Australia to produce and export not only clean energy but also green value-added commodities, eliminating emissions that would have taken place elsewhere.

We find there is substantial scope for Australia to use its solar, wind and land endowments to become a major exporter of green electricity, green hydrogen, green ammonia, and green metals.

Australia’s Exports Are Emission-Intensive

Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal and liquefied natural gas, mostly to countries in the Asia-Pacific. Each year, the emissions from overseas use of these fuels vastly exceed the total emissions from Australia itself.

Australia is also a major producer and exporter of other commodities that go on to be used in emissions-intensive ways in destination markets - among them iron ore, bauxite and alumina.

The figure below shows our calculations of the “consequential emissions” associated with Australia’s exports of several key commodities.

To avoid double counting, coking coal is not shown. Its emissions are instead included in the emissions tied to the overseas use of Australian iron ore.

The consequential emissions associated with the key commodity exports shown below account for about 8.6% of total greenhouse gas emissions in the Asia-Pacific and about 4% of global emissions.

While importing countries are certainly not absolved from responsibility for emissions from use of Australian exports, the calculations show just how important Australia’s upstream role is.

Australia Could Export Zero-Carbon Products And Energy

To get an indication of the production possibilities, we calculated the land area and energy requirements for an indicative scenario in which Australia:

• exports the same quantity of energy in green electricity and hydrogen as it exports in thermal coal and liquefied natural gas.

• processes currently-exported iron ore, bauxite, and alumina into green steel and green aluminium for value-added export.

Using 2018–2019 data, we calculate that about 2% of Australia’s land mass would be needed for solar and wind farms. This is a large area, although small relative to the area currently dedicated to livestock grazing and other agricultural activities.

The energy requirement would also be large, involving about 7,000 terawatt-hours of solar and wind generation per annum – about 27 times Australia’s current electricity output and use.

Water would be needed for electrolysis to produce hydrogen. This could be largely based on desalination of seawater, an activity that would involve minimal additional energy requirements.

The best locations for mega-scale solar and wind farms for export commodities are commonly in arid or semi-arid areas outside the most productive agricultural zones, so negative implications for food supply could be avoided.

Land and electricity requirements under a zero-carbon export scenario

Key priorities include ensuring that the sustainable development opportunities for Indigenous communities from these projects are harnessed and protecting the natural environment.

Reducing the need for new coal mines and other fossil fuel projects would be a major environmental benefit.

There’s Private Sector Interest

Australia is already a world-leader in the adoption of solar and wind power, and there is substantial private-sector interest in zero-carbon export opportunities.

Proposals for exports of solar electricity (Sun Cable), green hydrogen (including Fortescue Future Industries and the HyEnergy Project) and green ammonia (including the Asian Renewable Energy Hub, Western Green Energy Hub, and Yara Pilbara) are pointing the way.

The combined renewable electricity peak capacity for these projects alone (>100 GW) already exceeds Australia’s present electricity generating capacity by a considerable margin.

They Are Opportunities We Should Grab

Achieving the rates of investment required to realise our clean commodity export potential will require world-class policy.

In 2019 Australia released a National Hydrogen Strategy, and most states and territories have similar plans. The Technology Investment Roadmap, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation are further examples of “green industrial policy” at work.

To facilitate access to premium markets, we need to ensure it is easy for new industries to prove that their production is clean. Australia is currently undertaking efforts to develop hydrogen certification.

International regulatory collaboration is essential. Negotiations for an Australia-Singapore Green Economy Agreement are a step in the right direction.

In October 2021 Australia announced a target of net-zero emissions by 2050.

Our research finds domestic emissions are only part of the story. Australia has an opportunity to contribute to global net-zero emissions via clean exports.

Paul Burke, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University; Emma Aisbett, Fellow, Australian National University, and Ken Baldwin, Inaugural Director, ANU Grand Challenge, Zero-Carbon Energy for the Asia Pacific, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

1.7 million foxes, 300 million native animals killed every year: now we know the damage foxes wreak

Foxes kill about 300 million native mammals, birds and reptiles each year, and can be found across 80% of mainland Australia, our devastating new research published today reveals.

This research, the first to quantify the national impact of foxes on Australian wildlife, also compares the results to similar studies on cats. And we found foxes and cats collectively kill 2.6 billion mammals, birds and reptiles every year.

This enormous death toll is one of the key reasons Australia’s biodiversity is suffering major declines. Cats and foxes, for example, have played a big role in most of Australia’s 34 mammal extinctions, including the desert rat-kangaroo which rapidly declined once foxes reached their region.

Australia must drastically scale up the management of both predators, to give native wildlife a fighting chance and to help prevent future extinctions.

Australia Is Home To 1.7 Million Foxes

European colonisers brought foxes (and cats) to Australia. From 1845, foxes were released into the wild in Victoria for the “sport” of hunting them on horseback with a pack of hounds.

Fox populations soon exploded, thanks to the deliberate introduction of rabbits and hares in the 1800s. Rabbits and hares are not only a food source for foxes, they also eat the vegetation that native animals need for food, habitat, and to hide from predators. They continue to boost fox numbers today.

Our study estimates there are now 1.7 million foxes in Australia, spread across 80% of the mainland and on 50 Australian islands. They’re largely absent from tropical northern Australia and Tasmania.

By comparison, cats occur over more than 99.9% of the country, including on far more islands.

Fox densities are highest in temperate mainland regions, including forests and farms, and near urban areas where food and shelter are abundant. The Victorian government estimates there are as many as 16 foxes per square kilometre in Melbourne.

What Are Foxes Eating?

The 300 million native animals that foxes kill every year consists of:

• reptiles: foxes kill 88 million reptiles each year, and all are native. They’ve been recorded killing 108 different species – or 11% of all Australian reptile species – including the tjakura (great desert skink) and loggerhead turtle

• birds: foxes kill 111 million birds each year, and 93% of these are native. They’ve been recorded killing 128 species – or 18% of all Australian bird species – including the mallee-fowl and little penguin

• mammals: foxes kill 368 million mammals each year, and 29% of these are native. They’ve been recorded killing 114 species, or 40% of all land mammal species and half of all threatened mammal species. This includes the mankarr (greater bilby), quenda (southern brown bandicoot) and warru (black-footed rock-wallaby).

Foxes also kill another 259 million non-native invasive animals every year, predominately house mice and rabbits. They also kill livestock, such as lambs, piglets and chickens.

While rabbits and house mice form a major part of fox diets, there’s no evidence foxes (or cats) limit their numbers. Changes in rabbit and mice populations are largely driven by climate fluctuations.

Our findings are underpinned by modelling data assembled from almost 100 field studies. This included 49,458 fox poo and stomach samples, and fox density estimates at 437 locations.

Foxes are also known to eat bird and reptile eggs, and threaten the breeding success of many turtle species. However, we didn’t tally their impact on turtle eggs (or on fish, frogs or insects) because of insufficient data - they’re highly digestible and often hard to identify in fox poo.

Carrion (dead animals) account for an average of 10% of fox diets, but we excluded carrion in the estimated numbers of animals killed.

Foxes And Cats: A Deadly Combination

Although they eat many of the same species, foxes take larger prey than cats and have a bigger toll on kangaroos, wallabies and potoroos.

Cats eat smaller prey, so eat a lot more of them. Nationally, feral cats kill about five times more reptiles, two and a half times more birds and twice as many mammals than foxes.

In total, feral cats kill 1.5 billion animals every year (not including invertebrates and frogs). Pet cats kill another 500 million animals.

The impacts of both predators are concentrated in some regions more than others. And although cats kill more animals overall nationally, in some areas foxes take a greater toll.

This includes the Warren and Jarrah Forest in Western Australia, the Eyre and Yorke Penninsula in South Australia, across Victoria and in NSW’s Blue Mountains.

This is why foxes take a larger toll on forest animals such as possums and gliders, and kill over 1,000 animals per square kilometre each year in these areas.

To understand and manage these threats, it’s essential to take the cumulative impacts of both introduced predators into account. Many species fall prey to both cats and foxes.

Each day across Australia their combined death toll includes 1.9 million reptiles, 1.4 million birds and 3.9 million mammals.

So What Needs To Change?

The only way to stem these losses, and prevent the extinction of many vulnerable species, is to step up targeted and integrated cat and fox management.

Cat and fox eradication programs have had success in fenced areas and on islands. For example, cat eradication on Dirk Hartog Island is enabling many native animals to be reintroduced.

And long-term broad-scale management programs have enabled the recovery of threatened species in wider landscapes, such as the Bounceback Program helping yellow-footed rock wallabies and other wildlife in SA’s Flinders Ranges.

Our new research highlights the urgent need to increase investment for cat and fox management across Australia. Management will need to be large-scale and strategically coordinated as both species breed like rabbits, so to speak, and travel great distances.

This means patchy, or small-scale lethal programs can allow their numbers to quickly rebound.

We also need to protect and recover habitat for native animals. Evidence shows good habitat supports healthier native animal populations and gives them more places to hide from predators. 

Jaana Dielenberg, University Fellow, Charles Darwin University; Alyson Stobo-Wilson, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Charles Darwin University; Brett Murphy, Associate Professor / ARC Future Fellow, Charles Darwin University; John Woinarski, Professor (conservation biology), Charles Darwin University; Sarah Legge, Professor, Australian National University, and Trish Fleming, Professor, Murdoch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Thinking of buying an electric vehicle for your next car? Here’s the market outlook and what to consider

As petrol prices soar and climate change impacts make themselves felt, many people are likely wondering if their next car should be a fully electric vehicle.

Yes, the upfront costs are generally higher – but what does the future hold? Will prices fall in coming years and what costs do you need to factor into your decision?

The unfortunate truth is unless policy settings in Australia change, we shouldn’t expect a significant increase in the number of electric vehicles (EVs) available to Australians over the coming years.

It’s important we all start to make the switch to this cleaner technology, but unfortunately that choice is not available to many Australian households and businesses due to a lack of local, supportive policy.

Costs To Consider

EVs in Australia are currently A$15,000-20,000 more expensive than petrol or diesel cars. But in some market segments – like some sub-premium sedans priced between $60,000 and $75,000 – they are already at parity.

Several manufacturers have promised to bring more supply to the Australian market in 2022 but many of these vehicles were meant to be here in 2021 (with their arrival pushed back).

If you’re thinking of making the switch to an EV, here’s what to consider:

• don’t focus only on the price tag. With petrol prices now pushing past $2 per litre, many Australians will find themselves paying more than $2,000 in fuel each year for every car they own. Electric vehicles can be charged for the equivalent of around $0.20 per litre, or even cheaper when using your home solar. These savings add up, totalling more than $20,000 over the life of the vehicle.

• EVs are cheaper to maintain, and in some cases have no servicing costs. This equates to thousands of dollars potentially saved over the life of the vehicle.

• what about charging? Anywhere you have access to a standard power point you can charge an EV. With cars parked 90% of the time, and mainly driven fewer than 50 kilometres per day, a couple of hours’ charging is more than enough for most. If you want a quicker charge, you can install a wall charger in your garage. And if you park on the street you can use the growing list of public fast chargers across the country or ask your workplace to install a charger.

The reality, though, is that if there’s no change to policy settings, we can expect the EV market in Australia to stay much the same this year and for many years to come.

This means many Australians won’t have a choice but to continue to pay for expensive imported fuel, instead of using cheap Australian energy to power our vehicles.

Are All EVs Expensive?

There’s a vast range of EV models. It’s just that most of them aren’t sold in Australia.

One of Australia’s disadvantages is we are a market for right-hand-drive vehicles, and many European and American EVs just aren’t built that way. The UK is also a right-hand-drive market, where people have similar average incomes and quality of life compared to Australia. But the EV market there is very different with more than 160 EV models compared with around 50 in Australia.

The key difference is the UK has a (conservative) government that has embraced the technology and understands the broader economic benefits of making EVs easy for people to get and run.

Yes, Australia has boosted EV charging infrastructure but that’s not enough to encourage manufacturers to bring more models to this country (which would help get more affordable EVs on the market).

How would the Australian market look if we did have supportive policy? Well, there are about 80 million cars sold worldwide each year, around 1 million of which are sold in Australia. So we are about 1.3% of the global car market.

There were about 6.6 million EVs sold worldwide in 2021. So 6.6 million x 1.3% equals about 85,000 cars. That’s 85,000 EVs that should have been sold here last year if our market was in line with global trends.

But in fact, the number of EVs sold here was just over 21,000 in 2021. So we are about a quarter of the size we should be.

There’s plenty of demand for EVs in Australia, we just cannot get enough delivered because we haven’t got the right policy settings.

What Policies Could Help?

Policies that would help make EVs more affordable in Australia include:

• incentives to bring down the upfront cost of EVs. Some people say this is subsidising rich people but clever policy would support jobs in the Australian energy market. It’s estimated we spend more than A$30 billion on foreign fuel for our cars every year. Redirecting that money to powering EVs would help keep those billions in the country, and support local Australian energy jobs.

• we don’t have a fuel efficiency standard, putting us in poor company with Russia as two of the last remaining major economies without such standards. That’s why people say Australia is a dumping ground for vehicles that are illegal to sell overseas. The markets that have fuel efficiency standards are getting all of the EV supply.

• having a clear target of EV sales for the next five to 15 years would support achieving net zero by 2050 – in other words, selling the last petrol or diesel car by the mid-2030s.

So What’s The Market Outlook?

Not much will change in Australia unless there’s a change in policy. We are competing with markets that have the right policies to stimulate EV sales. The manufacturers are, of course, going to prioritise supply there.

There will be small increases in EV sales in Australia every year. But it will take a number of years for the supply of these new vehicles to ramp up.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. And I do hope your next vehicle purchase is an EV, after considering all of the costs over the life of the vehicle. It is the right thing to do for the climate and the long-term savings are attractive, especially if fuel prices continue to be so volatile.

Unfortunately, though, Australians should not expect EVs to suddenly become cheap and easy to buy here in the next couple of years – unless policy changes.

Jake Whitehead, Tritum E-Mobility Fellow & Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It may not be cute, but here’s why the humble yabby deserves your love

Am I not pretty enough? This article is part of The Conversation’s series introducing you to Australia’s unloved animals that need our help.

For children growing up in rural areas, going “yabbying” in farm dams is a rite of passage. The common yabby (Cherax destructor) is the most widely distributed Australian crayfish, inhabiting rivers and wetlands across southeast Australia.

And although the humble yabby is not as cute and cuddly as some better-known Australian icons, from an ecosystem perspective, we argue they may be more important.

Yabbies are a staple food for platypus, many waterbird species, and fish such as Murray cod and golden perch. And yabbies’ diet is largely made up of algae, detritus (dead organic material) and small animals. This means they link energy from the very bottom of the food chain to apex predators at the top.

And yet, little is known how their diets influence their growth and alter their quality as a food source. Our recent research starts to fill this critical gap.

We found yabbies in wetlands are better food source for fish than those in rivers, because wetland yabbies eat more foods rich in high-quality fatty acids. While more research is needed, these results show how higher quality yabby diets can increase the total biomass of predators, such as Murray cod, that riverine ecosystems can support.

Untangling The Food Web

Food webs describe what eats what within ecological communities and provide a useful way to illustrate how energy moves through the environment.

But it’s more complex than big fish eats little fish. Within food webs, organisms can be lumped into two groups:

1. autotrophs: organisms that obtain energy from the sun via photosynthesis, such as plants
2. heterotrophs: organisms that obtain energy by eating other organisms, such as bacteria, fungi, and animals.

Algae fall in to the first group, providing a high-quality energy pathway in food webs because they can synthesise so-called “long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids”: omega 3 and omega 6.

If you grew up in the 1980s you’re probably familiar with the term “polyunsaturated fatty acids” from its association with margarine (though few probably understood its relevance back then). Today, we more often hear the term around seafood.

We’re encouraged to eat oily fish because of the omega 3 and omega 6 they provide, which the body needs for brain function and cell growth. We source these fatty acids from fish thanks to algae, which underpins many aquatic food webs. Fatty acids are essential for the growth of all animals, including yabbies.

The other primary energy source in freshwater comes from detritus – organic debris and decomposing material. In wetlands and rivers, detritus accumulates from falling leaves and branches along banks, which can be washed into rivers during high flows.

But while detritus is often abundant, it’s considered poorer quality because it’s difficult to digest and has low concentrations of some important fatty acids. And in food webs, poor quality food provides less bounce for the ounce, so to speak.

The yabby is an omniovore - algae, detritus and other animals are its food, but we know little about how these different energy sources affect yabby growth and survival – or how it might affect animals that rely on yabbies for food.

You Are What You Eat

Our research investigated how different quality fatty acid diets affected yabby growth, and how this might influence other animals up the food chain.

We found yabbies fed poor quality diets in the laboratory, made up of only dead plant matter, barely grew at all. These yabbies also represented a poor-quality food resource for predators.

In contrast, yabbies fed mixed diets rich in high quality polyunsaturated fatty acids grew the most – more than doubling in mass over a 70-day trial. They also retained higher concentrations of these fatty acids in their body tissue, making them a good food resource for other animals.

Yabbies are tough. They’re well adapted to Australia’s extremes, capable of surviving dry conditions by lying dormant in burrows dug in dried waterways. During wetter periods, they can travel long distances in search of a new home – usually wetlands or rivers.

So how might their environment affect their diet? We found wild yabbies that live in wetland habitats ate foods with higher concentrations of these fatty acids compared to yabbies that live in rivers.

And as with our laboratory fed yabbies, wild wetland yabbies eating high quality foods also represented a better food option for fish than riverine yabbies. This is likely due to wetlands containing a higher proportion of diatoms (single-celled algae) and green algae, which both synthesise long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids.

What Does This Mean For Freshwater Ecosystems?

Australia’s floodplain rivers are dynamic. Wet periods with high flows connect rivers to wetlands that lie on the floodplain. In dry periods with low flows, this connection is interrupted, leaving wetlands on floodplains isolated, sometimes even drying out completely.

Connectivity between rivers and their floodplain is important for many reasons. It provides habitat and breeding opportunities for birds and fish, revitalises plants, and an exchange of nutrients.

Water in the Murray-Darling Basin is shared between irrigators, municipal water supply and the environment, and is largley regulated with infrastructure such as dams and weirs.

Our research is an example of the many benefits that come with ensuring we have adequate water for the environment. Our work shows that an important aspect of connection is to allow riverine predators access to high quality food resources – yabbies – in floodplain wetlands.

If yabbies are thriving and passing essential fatty acids up the food chain, populations of popular recreational fish, such as Murray cod and golden perch, will benefit accordingly.

It’s critical we improve our understanding of these complex relationships. This includes recognising other drivers of riverine population success such as competition, habitat, life history traits and spawning cues, to ensure Australia’s riverine animals can thrive. 

Paul McInerney, Research Scientist, CSIRO and Gavin Rees, Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Thanks to heavy rain, Australia’s environment scores a 7 out of 10 – but the future remains bleak

After the devastating floods, it’s hard to imagine only two years earlier many hard-hit communities suffered extreme heat, drought and unprecedented bushfires. Yet our report, released today, shows Australia’s environment has recovered dramatically since then.

Every year we use a supercomputer to analyse vast amounts of measurements from satellites and field stations to give the condition of Australia’s environment a score out of ten. For 2021, we score it 6.9 – four points higher than the year before.

The improvement is largely thanks to two years of plentiful rains that helped Australia’s forests, pastures and farmland recover well.

But as the rains only increased in 2022, inundating many parts of southeast Australia, you may well be wondering: can there be too much rain for our environment? And what might this all mean for the coming bushfire seasons?

First, Let’s Look Back At 2021

We assessed Australia’s environment using 15 key indicators, such as water availability, bushfire, population pressures and vegetation health. Combined, these help determine the overall “environmental condition score”.

On our website, you can also find regional scores for your state or territory, local government area, catchment and electorate. Unusually, scores improved almost everywhere.

We confirmed that rainfall was near or above average nearly everywhere, thanks to back-to-back La Niña events – a natural climate phenomenon over the Pacific Ocean associated with wetter weather.

What’s more, in the winter and spring of 2021, parts of Australia also felt the effects of a “negative Indian Ocean Dipole” – a little like the Indian Ocean’s version of La Niña that also brings rainier weather.

Here are a few ways all this rain benefited Australia’s environment:

• it replenished parched soils that missed rainfall in 2020, and improved growing conditions in both natural and managed landscapes such as farms and plantation forests.

• compared to 2020, drought conditions eased across previously drought-ravaged areas of inland northern Australia

• river flows across Australia increased by 75% on 2020 figures, and urban water supplies increased for all capital cities

• wetlands swelled to their greatest total extent since 2016 (although still 9% below the 20-year average), with no major algal blooms or fish kills

• growth conditions in Australia’s cropping, grazing and irrigation lands were well above average and the best since 2000 in all major regions except South Australia and inland Western Australia.

Australia also experienced less population growth and carbon emissions in 2021, mainly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, translating to a slower increase of the pressure on our environment.

Dark Clouds On The Horizon

Unfortunately, some troubling trends did not get better in 2021. Biodiversity continued to decline. Twelve species were declared extinct, although ten of those probably went extinct more than 60 years ago. A more recent extinction was the Christmas Island pipistrelle, a tiny bat last seen in 2009.

Another 34 species were added to Australia’s list of threatened species, eight of which are birds from Kangaroo Island, which suffered extensive and severe bushfires in early 2020.

While the number of threatened species fluctuate with the condition of their habitat, their long-term decline continues unabated. This is largely driven by invasive species such as feral cats and foxes, logging, urban development, river water extraction and an increasingly hot climate.

For example, despite the good rains and increased wetland extent, researchers counted fewer birds in Eastern Australia than in the previous four years.

Favourable conditions in the Great Barrier Reef led to the rapid, but fragile, recovery of hard corals after three bleaching events in five years. However, a recent heatwave in northern Queensland means a fourth coral bleaching event is on the cards for 2022.

And of course, despite the relatively benign weather conditions in 2021, the spectre of climate change on a global level has not lifted.

World economies recovering from the pandemic saw atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increase by 2.5 parts per million, 6% faster than in 2020 and 11% faster than the average growth rate since 2000.

Because of La Niña, more of the excess heat went into the Pacific Ocean in 2021 than normal, rather than into the atmosphere. So while the atmosphere was 0.14 degrees cooler than in 2021, it was still almost one degree above the 2000-20 average and the sixth-warmest year on record.

Can There Ever Be Too Much Rain?

Above-average rain already led to major flooding in Queensland and NSW in 2021, even before the more recent deluge. Indeed, the recent, record-breaking rains added more water to soils, catchments, rivers and dams already replenished in 2021.

Does Australia’s environment still benefit from so much rain? Mostly, it can.

Our ecosystems are generally better adapted to wild climate swings, shedding excess water efficiently and recovering quickly from damage.

In normally dry regions, more rain means more vegetation growth and uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – although much of it will be released again during droughts or fires.

River flooding is a source of life in inland Australia, which may mitigate some of the damage done by the diversion and over-extraction of floodwaters.

The consequences of extreme rainfall for invasive plants and animals are poorly understood but probably very diverse. Invasive species less adapted to drought may spread faster.

But the biggest environmental impacts are where natural vegetation was cleared for farming, housing or mining. Unprotected, bare soil soaks up less excess rainfall, and the rain and runoff can loosen up more sediment.

This erosion degrades farmland, cuts away riverbanks and the washed-out sediment and nutrients end up in rivers and the sea, where it can smother marine life and encourages outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish that attack coral reefs.

What Does This Mean For Bushfires?

The Bureau of Meteorology expects that La Niña conditions reached their peak and rainfall conditions may normalise soon. Some of the excess heat stored in the ocean will be released, causing air temperatures to quickly resume their warming trend.

Combined with the booming growth of vegetation, the extent of bushfires will likely pick up again next fire season: more vegetation means more fuel for fire. And it only takes a few hot and dry weeks for these conditions to increase fire activity.

Unfortunately, the pressures of vegetation destruction, invasive species and climate change will degrade our agriculture and ecosystems for decades to come. Incisive reductions in carbon emissions and more careful ecosystem management can avoid these impacts worsening.

Both are within reach, but require the sort of consensus and resolve shown in response to COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion. Our environmental crisis is no less severe.

Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University and Shoshana Rapley, Research assistant, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Trees: why they’re our greatest allies against floods – but also tragic victims

As the floodwaters recede, mountains of debris are left behind – sheets of plaster, loose clothes, mattresses and, of course, trees. Some debris I’ve seen in floods includes massive tree trunks weighing 5 tonnes of more, bobbing along like corks in the rapidly flowing waters.

The trees that line our creeks, rivers and floodplains are on the front line when major flooding occurs, and bear the brunt of the flood’s mighty forces. But while they are often victims of floods, trees are also our greatest allies.

From stabilising river banks with the strong grip of their roots to changing the course of floodwater, here’s how trees influence floods – and how floods can kill them.

How Trees Influence Floods

The large and fine roots of trees, such as river red gums, bind and consolidate soil, stabilising river banks and reducing erosion. This reduces the amount of sediment entering waterways, and prevents waters down-stream becoming muddied and clogged with silt.

Large trees can also protect smaller plants such as shrubs by acting as a physical barrier, shielding other vegetation from the forceful momentum of floodwater. This is because the presence of trees slows the floodwaters’ speed, as their trunks, roots and branches block and deflect water, and change the direction of flow.

However, slowing floodwaters can also cause the flood front to widen, inundating areas further away from the usual river course. This is a major consideration when creek and river banks are being revegetated – we want to capture the benefits trees provide, but also ensure that if floodwaters slow down there’s no greater risk to property or life.

Another different but related role is that trees can prevent landslides or landslips. Indeed, landslides have occurred across flood-affected regions such as Illawarra and Kangaroo Valley in NSW, and continue to threaten people and homes.

On slopes, tree root systems consolidate soils and help prevent the movement of super saturated soil, which can flow like a liquid down hill. So it can be a problem when people remove trees from around their homes or along roads as a part of bushfire prevention programs, without thinking that cleared sites and roadside verges might be prone to landslides.

Sometimes a compromise might be a better management option. Rather than removing all trees on a slope or verge, leave some of those with large roots systems and plant trees that might slow fires or resist them. Also consider planting species that resprout after fires such as tree ferns, so their roots systems aren’t lost and the soil doesn’t erode.

Trees Are Also Flood Victims

Some trees won’t survive major floods as the water’s brute force undermines their root systems, bringing them down.

In other cases, the debris, including whole trees and large branches, acts as a battering ram on large trunks. Most big trees will survive this, but some will be repeatedly battered until the trunk, major branches or root systems fail.

These then become part of the debris that damages infrastructure, such as bridges and other trees downstream.

For most trees, floods are a fleeting event that lasts a few days or perhaps a couple of weeks. Many tree species cope well with this situation, but what happens to those that might be inundated for weeks or even months in the wake of floods?

Soils can remain very wet for a long time after flooding. Some trees, such as river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) and swamp gum (Eucalyptus ovata), can tolerate inundation for many weeks. We’ve seen populations of river red gum, for example, cope with up to nine months of inundation.

Others may not do so well if they remain under water for long periods of time. This includes older and stressed trees, some fruit trees like citrus and stone fruit species, or some conifers.

Water-logged soils have low levels of oxygen, which means roots struggle to maintain their normal metabolism, health and function. This also affects the fungi associated with healthy roots. The longer low oxygen levels persist, the less suitable conditions are.

Low oxygen in soils lead to anaerobic respiration – when cells break down sugars to generate energy without oxygen, producing alcohol and lactic acid. Both alcohol and lactic acid are only mild poisons, but as their level rises, root and fungal cells can be killed.

Water-logged soils also mean roots are deprived of their usual sources of energy and die of starvation. And once the roots start to go, there’s a rapid downward spiral in the tree’s condition.

Trees can die very quickly, over a matter of days, and such rapid deaths are much more likely in older, stressed trees. Little can be done to help trees survive under these conditions.

Take Care Around Trees After Floods

When trees that survived the flood die in its aftermath, they can cause riverbanks to collapse. This creates a danger for those who approach at the wrong time.

And as roots die, the trees are less stable. This means if winds pick up speed, the compromised root system in soggy soil can lead to windthrow, which is where whole trees are blown over.

This can happen weeks or even months after a flood, so take care on these sites on windy days.

The major floods inundating NSW and Queensland are not the first – and will certainly not be the last – many of us will experience in our lifetimes.

For those of us who have been acutely aware of the prediction of major flooding events as part of climate change, these events haven’t come as a surprise. They were inevitable, just as fiercer bushfires and ferocious storms are inevitable.

In this land of extremes, trees have always been part of floods and flood prone ecosystems. Yet trees are disappearing at an alarming rate along many waterways.

While climate change poses new threats to trees, it also creates new opportunities for us to work with trees as allies in dealing with climate change and its consequences. We must not work against them. 

Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Today’s disappointing federal court decision undoes 20 years of climate litigation progress in Australia

The federal court today unanimously decided Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley does not have a duty of care to protect young people from the harms of climate change.

The ruling overturns a previous landmark win by eight high school students, who sought to stop Ley approving a coal mine expansion in New South Wales. While the judge did not prevent the mine expansion, he agreed the minister did indeed have a duty of care to children in the face of the climate crisis.

Ley’s successful appeal is disappointing. As legal scholars, we believe the judgment sets back the cause of climate litigation in Australia by two decades, at a time when we urgently need climate action to accelerate.

So why was Ley successful? The federal court’s 282-page judgment offers myriad reasons for why no duty should be imposed on the minister. But what emerges most clearly is the court’s view that it’s not their place to set policies on climate change. Instead, they say, it’s the job of our elected representatives in the federal government.

What Did The Judges Say?

In the original class action case filed in 2020, a single federal court judge decided Ley owed Australian children a common law duty of care when considering and approving the coal mine extension, under Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

This required the minister to take reasonable care when exercising her powers to avoid causing Australian children under 18 personal injury or death from carbon dioxide emissions.

Ley appealed this decision in July last year. She also approved the coal mine extension, arguing her decision wouldn’t contribute to global warming because even if the mine was refused, other sources would step in to meet the coal demand.

And today, in a live-streamed proceeding, the full bench of the federal court ruled in her favour: the stated duty should not be imposed on the minister. While the outcome was unanimous, the three judges had separate reasoning.

One judge saw climate change as a matter for government, not the courts, to address, saying the duty would be an issue “involving questions of policy (scientific, economic, social, industrial and political) […] unsuitable for the Judicial branch to resolve”.

Another said there was insufficient “closeness” and “directness” between the minister’s power to approve the coal mine and the effect this would have on the children. But he left open the possibility of a future claim if any of the children in the class action suffered damage.

The third judge had three main reasons. First, the EPBC Act doesn’t create a duty-of-care relationship between the minister and children. Second, establishing a standard of care isn’t feasible as it would result in “incoherence” between the duty and the minister’s functions. Third, it’s not currently foreseeable that approving the coal mine extension would cause the children personal injury, as the law is understood.

The Good News: Climate Science Remains Undisputed

In the original case, the judge made landmark rulings about the dangers of climate change, marking a significant moment in Australian climate litigation.

He found one million of today’s Australian children are expected to be hospitalised due to heat stress, they’ll experience substantial economic loss, and when they grow up the Great Barrier Reef and most eucalypt forests won’t exist.

According to the judge, this harm was “reasonably foreseeable”. This is important from a legal point of view, as courts have previously considered climate change to be speculative, and a future problem.

As part of her appeal, Sussan Ley argued that these findings, based on presented evidence, were incorrect and went beyond what was submitted to the court. Today, these arguments were unanimously rejected.

The federal court found all the minister’s criticisms on the evidence of climate change were unfounded and all of the primary judge’s findings were appropriate to be made. As Chief Justice Allsop concluded:

[B]y and large, the nature of the risks and the dangers from global warming, including the possible catastrophe that may engulf the world and humanity was not in dispute.

But while this reaffirms acceptance that climate science is unequivocal, it does nothing to prevent mounting climate change harms, most recently made clear by the devastating floods across NSW and Queensland.

Indeed, it only turns this responsibility back to the current federal government, which has policies increasingly at odds with what the science and concerned citizens say is needed.

Bucking The Trend

This was a test case in Australian law, as it explored a novel legal argument. Its failure will likely put a dampener on innovative climate litigation in Australia.

Today’s judgment asserts that the courts are limited in what they can do to address climate change. It goes against the trend of successful climate change court rulings overseas, and the widespread mobilisation across community groups, business and local governments for action.

Just last year, for example, we saw a court in The Hague order oil and gas giant Shell to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 45% by 2030, relative to 2019 levels, and a German court ruling that the government’s climate goals were not strong enough.

Today’s federal court finding that dealing with coal mine emissions is for governments alone seemingly reimposes barriers to climate litigation in Australia, carefully dismantled by the previous two decades of climate change cases.

We’ve seen a number of landmark climate cases in Australia. This includes the Rocky Hill verdict where a judge rejected a new coal mine on climate grounds, and the Bushfire Survivors case where the court found the NSW government had a legal obligation to take meaningful action on climate change.

These brought the glimmer of hope that where the federal government fails to act, the courts will step in. Today’s ruling suggests this is no longer the case.

In the lead up to the Australian federal election, the appeal outcome emphasises the importance of changing government policy if we’re going to get better outcomes on climate change in this country. Climate change certainly will not wait – the fight for a safe climate future continues.

Jacqueline Peel, Director, Melbourne Climate Futures, The University of Melbourne and Rebekkah Markey-Towler, Research fellow, Melbourne Climate Futures, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

After the floods, the distressing but necessary case for managed retreat

From Brisbane to Sydney, many thousands of Australians have been reliving a devastating experience they hoped – in 2021, 2020, 2017, 2015, 2013, 2012 or 2010/11 – would never happen to them again.

For some suburbs built on the flood plains of the Nepean River in western Sydney, for example, these floods are their third in two years.

Flooding is a part of life in parts of Australia. But as climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of floods, fires and other disasters, and recovery costs soar, two big questions arise.

As a society, should we be setting up individuals and families for ruin by allowing them to build back in areas where they can’t afford insurance? And is it fair for taxpayers to carry the huge burden of paying for future rescue and relief costs?

Considering ‘Managed Retreat’

Doing something about escalating disaster risks require multiple responses. One is making insurance as cheap as possible. Another is investing in mitigation infrastructure, such as flood levees. Yet another is about making buildings more disaster-resistant.

The most controversial response is the policy of “managed retreat” – abandoning buildings in high-risk areas.

In Australia this policy has been mostly discussed as something to consider some time in the future, and mostly for coastal communities, for homes that can’t be saved from rising sea levels and storm surges.

It’s a sensitive subject because it uproots families, potentially hollows outs communities and also affects house prices – an unsettling prospect when economic security is tied to home ownership.

But managed retreat may also be better than the chaotic consequences of letting the market alone try to work out the risks to individuals and communities.

Grand Forks: A Case Study

The strategy is already being implemented in parts of western Europe and North America. An example from Canada is the town of Grand Forks, a community of about 4,000 people 300 kilometres east of Vancouver.

The town is located where two rivers meet. In May 2018 it experienced its worst flooding in seven decades, after days of extreme rain attributed to higher than normal winter snowfall melting quickly in hotter spring temperatures. Deforestation has been blamed for exacerbating the flood.

The flood damaged about 500 buildings in Grand Forks, with lowest-income neighbourhoods in low-lying areas the worst-affected.

In the aftermath the local council received C$53 million from the federal and provincial governments for flood mitigation. This included work to reinforce river banks and build dikes. About a quarter of the money was allocated to acquire about 80 homes in the most flood-prone areas.

The decision to demolish these homes – about 5% of the town’s housing – and return the area to flood plain has been contentious.

Some residents simply didn’t want to sell. Adding to the pain was owners being paid the post-flood market value of their homes (saving the council about C$6 million). There were also long delays, with residents stuck in limbo for more than year while authorities finalised transactions.

A Sensitive Subject

Grand Forks shares similarities to Lismore, the epicentre of the disaster affecting northern NSW and southern Queensland.

Lismore is also built on a flood plain where two rivers meet. Floods are a regular occurrence, with the last major disaster being in 2017. Insuring properties in town’s most flood-prone areas was already unaffordable for some. In the future it may be impossible.

Last week NSW premier Dominic Perrottet said about 2,000 of the town’s 19,000 homes would need to be demolished and rebuilt, a statement the local council general manager downplayed, saying in the majority of cases “people will not have to worry”.

For a community traumatised by loss, overwhelmed by the recovery effort and angry at the perceived tardiness of government relief efforts, discussing any form of managed retreat is naturally emotionally charged.

But there’s never an ideal time to talk about bulldozing homes and relocating households.

Uprooting Communities

Managed retreat has far-reaching financial ramifications. As in Grand Forks, the first questions are what homes are targeted, who pays, and how much.

Some residents may be grateful to sell up and move to safe ground. Others may not, disputing the valuation offered or being reluctant to leave at any price.

Managed retreat policies also affect many more than just those whose homes are being acquired. Demolishing a block or suburb can push down values in neighbouring areas, due to fears these homes may be next. Those households are also customers for local businesses. Their loss can potentially send a town economy into decline.

No wonder many people want no mention of managed retreat in their communities.

Pricing In Climate Change

Markets, however, are already starting to “price in” rising climate risks.

Insurance premiums are going up. The value of homes in high-risk areas will drop as buyers look elsewhere, particularly in the wake of increasingly frequent disasters.

The economic fallout, both for individual households and local communities, could be disastrous.

The Reserve Bank of Australia warned in September 2021 that climate-related disasters could rapidly drive house prices down, particularly in areas that have previously experienced rapid house price growth.

These disasters are also amplifying inequality, with poorer households more likely to live in high-risk locations and also to be uninsured.

In Lismore, for example, more than 80% of households flooded in 2017 were in the lowest 20% of incomes. These trends will intensify as growing climate risks translate into higher insurance premiums and lower house prices.

A deliberate strategy of managed retreat, though distressing and difficult, can help to minimise the upheaval in housing markets as climate risks become increasingly apparent.

We can do better than leaving the most socially and economically vulnerable households to live in high-risk areas, while those with enough money can move away to better, safer futures. Managed retreat can play a key role.

Antonia Settle, Academic (McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellow), The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Red dirt, yellow sun, green steel: how Australia could benefit from a global shift to emissions-free steel

Australia is the world’s number one exporter of both iron ore and metallurgical coal, the key ingredients of traditional steel making. Together, these materials make up a very large part of Australia’s export income.

But as the world moves towards net-zero emissions by 2050, the conventional way of making steel, using coal to power a blast furnace, will come under question.

Iron and steel production, in total, account for close to 7% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. This is incompatible with a net-zero world economy, where residual emissions would need to be compensated through carbon dioxide uptake from the atmosphere. The mature technology of coal-fired blast furnaces currently dominates the steel industry, generating 90% of its emissions.

For years, decarbonising steel production has been seen as particularly challenging. But now, alternatives to the centuries-old practice of using coal to produce iron and steel are emerging. Researchers have been working on a number of new pathways to make steel with little or no emissions. The most promising process relying on the use of hydrogen.

Our new research shows the steel industry can develop and implement green steel production processes to contribute to the great decarbonisation effort needed. For Australia, this presents an enormous new opportunity to future-proof and expand our steel industry as the world acts on climate change.

How Can We Produce Green Steel?

To eliminate emissions from this sector, several things are needed. First, we must use steel efficiently in well-designed structures. Second, we must recover and recycle steel after use. Thirdly, we must find the best and most scalable processes to reduce and eventually eliminate the emissions produced when making new steel.

In Australia, there have been several recent efforts to improve steel production processes. Rio Tinto developed the HIsarna technology, which can cut emissions by up to 80% – as long as the carbon is captured and stored. Other emission reduction technologies have also been developed here, such as dry slag granulation, polymer injection technology and charcoal-based reduction. However these technologies cannot scale up to decarbonise all steel produced globally.

Are there other options? Yes. We’re beginning to see real world trials of advanced green steel technologies which can make emissions-free steel.

These techniques rely on hydrogen to strip oxygen molecules from iron ore to produce metallic iron. Frontrunners include hydrogen shaft furnaces like HYBRIT and fluidised-bed systems such as HYFOR. Both of these processes are undergoing testing in Europe.

We could even see the direct electrolysis of steel, using electric currents to strip off the oxygen, and avoid the need for hydrogen.

How Quickly Do We Need Green Steel?

Australia has recently pledged a 2050 net-zero target. Over the last two years, many of Australia’s major trading partners also made ambitious emission reduction pledges, including major iron ore buyers China, Japan and South Korea.

So how can the steel industry help? We examine five different decarbonisation scenarios in our recent paper. We found the only scenario compatible with keeping global warming to under 2℃ includes the aggressive development and adoption of green steel technologies.

This would mean ending the use of blast furnaces by 2060, maximising recycling of steel, as well as some transitional use of gas in direct-reduced iron making. Under this zero-carbon scenario, green steel technologies would take over by 2060.

In creating our scenarios, we relied only on existing technologies, rather than promising but still unproven technologies such as direct air capture and storage of carbon dioxide.

Here’s How Australia Could Benefit

Australia need not lose from the transition away from metallurgical coal.

More than 95% of all our iron ore comes from Western Australia’s Pilbara region, which also happens to have excellent solar resources. Our modelling suggests we could produce electricity from solar panels almost a third cheaper than some overseas industrial hubs.

So Australia could be well positioned to become a green steel producer, adding significant value to our exports.

The Pilbara could become a region where iron ore is mined, smelted into iron and possibly into steel without producing carbon dioxide, and shipped overseas. We could export intermediate products, such as pellets or hot-briquetted iron, or perhaps even finished steel.

Even if no green steel industrial operations develop in Australia, we will come up against a world shifting away from metallurgical coal.

Not only that, but we’ll have to make sure future green steel technologies can use Australian ores, or we risk losing market share. That’s because other major exporters have iron ores with different purity and chemistry, and it’s not clear yet how green steel processes will drive demand for different ores. It looks likely that low emissions steel will require high grade ore, but this is still an evolving area of research.

Change is coming, like it or not. We need good policies in place now to ensure Australia can keep its major role in the global iron and steel supply chain.

We’ll need local research and development, international partnerships with leading technology producing and steel-consuming nations and government backing for the major investments required to establish a green iron or steel industry in Australia.

The world is changing rapidly. If we want to grasp the major opportunity presented by green steel, we must act now to explore the benefits of having iron ore mines, solar resources and ports close to each other.

John Pye, Associate Professor, School of Engineering, ANU, Australian National University; Alireza Rahbari, Research fellow, School of Engineering, ANU, Australian National University; Emma Aisbett, Fellow, Australian National University; Frank Jotzo, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy and Head of Energy, Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solutions, Australian National University, and Zsuzsanna Csereklyei, Senior Lecturer in Economics, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Is there such a thing as the perfect alarm tone? We think so (and this is what it might sound like)

With the return to office work – and no longer being able to roll out of bed and straight into a Zoom meeting – many of us will be waking up earlier to beat the morning rush. So it’s important to ensure we’re on top of our alarm game.

But what type of alarm provides peak alertness upon waking? Pythagoras posited this same question in around 500 BCE. He believed specific songs – melodies that roused the energies – had the ability to counteract the drowsiness waking may bring.

And he appears to have had a point. Research has now shown certain alarm sounds can indeed enhance our alertness upon waking.

In particular, alarms that have the qualities of “tunefulness” (think ABC by The Jackson 5) have melodies that energise the listener, and are great for effective waking.

But to understand why this is the case, we first need to understand how our brains respond to complex stimuli when moving out of the sleep state.

Waking Up Right Is Important

Waking up groggy never feels right. And how we wake up can not only affect our mood and the day’s outlook, but also our cognition and mental performance.

In some instances, grogginess after waking has the potential to be dangerous several hours later, by reducing our performance in critical decision-making (such as in health settings, emergency responses, security or while driving).

This cognitive state of reduced alertness is referred to as “sleep inertia”. It’s a growing concern as it can have serious consequences while performing high-risk tasks, including driving.

How Does The Brain Wake Up?

Transitioning from sleep to alertness does not follow an on/off switch-like system, as brain imaging techniques have revealed.

Waking relies on complex biological processes, including increased blood flow allocation to the brain. Studies show the brain regions important for alert performance (the prefrontal cortical regions) take longer to “start-up” than other areas (such as the basal ganglia) which are important for arousal. This means you can be awake, but not quite with it.

Research has also shown blood flow activity within the brain to be diminished after waking, in comparison to the pre-sleep state. Thus, alert wakefulness may in part require mechanisms that encourage a redistribution of blood flow to the brain – something certain types of sound and music can do.

Another factor that influences alertness upon waking is the stage of sleep at the time. You’re less likely to feel groggy if you wake up from a light sleep, compared to a deeper slow-wave or REM sleep.

A light sleep stage is characterised by Theta wave frequencies (as measured from the brain’s electrical activity) and can be associated with feeling drowsy. In this sleep stage, arousal from external stimuli such as an alarm can quickly draw a person out of sleep.

Conversely, deep sleep or slow-wave sleep consists of Delta wave frequencies, which are associated with unconsciousness. This is the more challenging sleep stage to fully wake up from.

Alarm effectiveness also depends on age. Young adults aged 18 to 25 need louder alarms than older people, and preteens need an even greater threshold than young adults. You may require an alarm as much as 20 decibels louder at 18 than you would at 80.

Is Sound Frequency And Tune Important?

But when it comes to choosing an alarm, what exactly is the best choice? A growing body of evidence suggests different alarm sounds can positively influence human performance after waking.

Our systematic review published in 2020 showed temporal frequencies (the pitch of the sound as measured in Hertz) around 500 Hz are better at arousing young children than 2000+ Hz varieties.

We lack research to say whether this also applies to adults, but it’s assumed the same alarm types would be beneficial.

Voice notifications such as a person yelling “wake up!” work better than higher frequencies. However, they are not as effective as 500 Hz tonal beeping alarms – similar to those preinstalled in most mobile phones.

Our research also explores how qualities of music, and specifically melody, play a role in encouraging alert wakefulness. We found that the way in which people interpret their alarms “tunefulness” also reflects how groggy they feel after waking.

Here, people who use alarms that carry a tune they will readily hum along to will experience less grogginess than those with a standard “beeping” alarm.

With this in mind, we developed a custom rhythmic melody that led to significantly better performance upon and after waking, when compared to standard beeping alarms.

Other studies have also found popular music (which can be interpreted as being melodic) is good to counteract sleep inertia after a short nap, and even more yet if it is music the listener personally enjoys.

What Can I Do To Improve My Waking Alarm?

What does all this mean for the day-to-day? Well, given all of the above, we believe the perfect alarm must sound something like this:

• it has a a melody you can easily sing or hum along to
• it has a dominant frequency around 500 Hz, or in the key of C5 and
• it is not too fast or too slow (100 – 120 beats per minute is ideal).

Also remember the alarm must be louder for younger people (or for particularly deep sleepers).

If we consider the default alarms available on our devices, much more work is needed – especially since research in this area is relatively new. Hence, we suspect the availability of custom alarm downloads will increase with time.

Most pre-loaded alarms at the appropriate loudness will wake you, but specific designs (such as the one above) have been modelled on the latest research to not only encourage arousal, but also provide increased alertness. 

Stuart McFarlane, Researcher, Auditory Perception and Cognition, RMIT University and Adrian Dyer, Associate Professor, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ladies to the front: the hidden history of women in Australian airforce bands

Military bands, with their shiny instruments, formal uniforms and precision marching are one of the most instantly recognisable symbols of a nation’s defence forces. As such, throughout much of history, their membership as been limited to men: Australian defence force bands only formally welcomed women into their ranks after the introduction of the Sex Discrimination act in 1984.

Despite this, during World War II, a groundbreaking group of women serving in the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) performed alongside their male Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) counterparts to form some of the earliest documented mixed-gender defence force bands in the world.

At the beginning of World War II women were only allowed to serve in the defence force as nurses. As the war progressed, women’s auxiliary services were formed by the army, navy and air force to fill non-combat positions left vacant by men serving overseas.

I first became aware of the existence of WAAAF performers in supposedly all-male RAAF bands while I was conducting research on the history of Australia’s defence force bands. I was contacted by Olive Jardine (née McNeil), who had joined the WAAAF during World War II and who had played with her local RAAF band during that time.

I was so sure that these bandsmen had, indeed, all been bandsmen that I almost dismissed her, politely informing Olive the parameters of my study meant I couldn’t include women’s auxiliary bands.

But Olive was resolute.

She assured me that although she had served with the WAAAF, she had been invited to join her base’s RAAF band due to a shortage of male musicians during the war.

I was soon to discover she was just one of many such women: up to a quarter of RAAF bands had at least one female member during World War II.

Volunteer-Led Bands

World War II saw a rapid increase in the number of all-female bands and orchestras, and in Australia the army, navy and air force all formed women-only auxiliary bands. While women-only bands were becoming a more familiar sight, mixed-gender military bands were much rarer.

In the USA, a couple of bands featured visiting women – but RAAF bands are the only defence force bands known to regularly feature men and women playing together at this time.

Australia’s army and navy were well established by World War II, and so had more ingrained traditions, including professional bands. But as a newer division of the defence force, only formed in 1921, RAAF bands were still volunteer bands made up of any interested members serving on base.

In the army and navy, musicians served together as a unit and the different regulations for members of women’s auxiliary forces made it impossible for them to join these bands.

However RAAF bands worked more like the many volunteer sports clubs on bases, with little (if any) oversight from air force hierarchy, opening the door for members of the WAAAF to join.

Ladies To The Front

Olive’s story is typical of the young women joining these bands.

Keen to help with the war effort, she signed up to the WAAAF as an accounts clerk and was stationed at Uranquinty in New South Wales. An experienced piano teacher, she volunteered to play organ at church services where she was approached by members of the base band who were looking for new musicians. They offered to teach her to play tenor horn, and she became the band’s only female member.

It wasn’t always a case of the odd-woman out. The Mallala band in South Australia had as many as six female members at any one time.

Other women even held leadership positions in their bands. In Perth, Hannah Colley, whose father was a bandsmen in World War I, was given the prestigious role of playing the bugle calls at Perth’s 1944 Armistice Day ceremony, a role usually given to the most skilled bugler in the band.

She would go on to post-war career playing in concert parties as a musician in the Army’s Entertainment Unit.

Meanwhile, Mary Palmer stood in as acting Drum Major in her band in Ascot Vale, Victoria, after learning to swing a mace by practising with a broom.

The Loss – And Return – Of Women

The pioneering women serving in RAAF bands during World War II performed proudly, and even held leadership positions alongside men.

After the war, the RAAF introduced its first professional band service. Entry was now restricted to men who had auditioned and who were employed by the air force solely for their musical skills. The WAAAF was discontinued in 1947 and reformed as the Womens Royal Australian Air Force (WRAAF) in 1950, however, women were not eligible to join the band corps until the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act some 40 years later.

Perhaps one of the most refreshing aspects of these stories is the way these ground-breaking women were supported by their communities. Olive’s male bandmates taught her to play tenor horn, local newspapers proudly reported on the performances of their local WAAAF members and Hannah chose to follow in her father’s footsteps to become a defence force musician.

The musicians of the WAAAF proved to the Australian public that women could work as equals alongside men, both on the parade ground and on stage, paving the way for the generations who came after them.

Anthea Skinner, Postdoctoral research associate, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘May you always taste the sweetest fruit’: uncovering the history and hidden delights of your neighbourhood

Sydney’s Green Square is one of Australia’s biggest urban renewal projects. But it’s much more than a construction site. First Nations people know it by another name: nadunga gurad, or sand dune Country.

For millenia, the area has been known for its nattai bamalmarray: freshwater wetlands and seasonal ponds. This Country has always been an important refuge along the Songline routes that connect War'ran (Sydney Cove) to Gamay (Botany Bay).

To existing residents, Green Square is home. It’s also a place to walk, visit parks, shop, and talk to neighbours, shopkeepers and tradies.

But it can be hard to see the “green” in Green Square. It’s a disrupted place punctuated by huge pits in the ground, roadworks, scaffoldings, barriers and cranes.

We’ve been working on connecting residents, workers and visitors to the local environment. We hope our project becomes a template to help anyone engage more deeply with their neighbourhood.

An Atlas For Change

Green Square spans the inner east Sydney suburbs of Zetland, Beaconsfield, Rosebery, Alexandria and Waterloo. In 2020, the site was home to 34,000 people and this number is growing rapidly.

During lockdowns last year, we and the charity 107 Projects sought to connect residents, workers and visitors to nature and people in their suburb. It involved workshops, walks and a map for self-guided tours. We also collected stories in a book, just released. It includes stories about:

• a community garden group

• beekeepers and honeymakers

• public art and verge gardeners

• artists

• Australia’s leading food rescue organisation.

Atlases have historically been, and continue to be, tools of colonisation – cataloguing and archiving the status quo.

But done right, they can also help us understand places in new ways. In Australia, this includes recognising we are always on Indigenous Country.

In that vein, our atlas includes an important contribution by Shannon Foster, a registered Sydney Traditional Owner and local D’harawal eora Knowledge Keeper.

Ngeeyinee Dingan Duruwan Bata

Foster tells how, amid dense urban development at Green Square, unique plants from ancient ecosystems still emerge from undeveloped gullies.

These include paperbark trees, casuarina groves, clumps of kangaroo grass and lomandra, and regenerated areas of Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub.

As Foster says in this edited extract:

One of my earliest memories of learning culture from my D’harawal eora father was about understanding plants and what you could and couldn’t eat. I was always amazed to realise that you could actually live off the gardens and earth around you.

Today, one of my favourite edible plants is bamuru (kangaroo grass), not just because you can make a delicious, gluten-free, light and tasty bread from it, but because it represents the un-forgetting of knowledges and stories that have been silenced and, sometimes, erased from our lives.

There are places across Sydney Country, especially on abandoned and neglected land, that bamuru and other edible crops like bundago (native daisy yam) flourish again. These plants begin to grow in vast fields, echoing their ancient, agricultural past and the careful management of Country by local custodians like my D’harawal eora family.

The awakening of these remnant crops is a reminder that Country is its own archive, holding seeds and stories as evidence that we do indeed exist and that we have long and complex relationships with Country that can never be erased.

Now, as I walk the streets of Green Square, I look for signs of old Country breaking through the centuries of colonial development.

I dream of this place as it was, sand dunes and wetlands, galumban gurad (sacred Country), and I marvel at the fragile seedlings who, against all odds, break through the oppressive concrete and pavers to stand tall, once again, with Country.

I also honour the same spirit in my elders and ancestors who have raised me to understand that it doesn’t matter how much concrete is laid down, Country is still here and is still nurturing and sheltering us, just as it always has been and always will be.

– Ngeeyinee dingan duruwan bata (May you always taste the sweetest fruit).

Always Was, Always Will Be

Foster reminds us no matter how much we build on Country, it has always been – and remains – vital to life and culture for local custodians.

More broadly, the atlas aims to show we can improve city life and the urban environment – just by how we interact with one another, and treat the plants, animals and insects around us.

If this idea appeals to you, download a free copy of the atlas and try these activities to help you “tune in” to your local area:

• find out whose Country are you on

• save and exchange seeds from native plants and heirloom food varieties

• get to know your local plant species, especially the endangered ones

• make and maintain a verge garden

• start or join a community garden

• forage for wild foods, such as edible weeds

• conserve water

• create habitat for urban wildlife

• spend time at nearby natural places such as ponds and parks

• cut waste, to reduce pressure on city services and the planet

• look for trees providing shelter on hot days.

These small, slow actions help create connections to nature and place, and opportunities to meet and share with people in your community. These connections are vital to overcoming the downsides of urban renewal.

And as we remake urban places, we must remember: our neighbourhood always was, and always will be, unceded Aboriginal land.

Shannon Foster, D'harawal Knowledge Keeper PhD Candidate and Lecturer UTS, University of Technology Sydney; Alexandra Crosby, Associate Professor, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney, and Ilaria Vanni, Associate Professor, International Studies and Global Societies, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Wearing shoes in the house is just plain gross. The verdict from scientists who study indoor contaminants

You probably clean your shoes if you step in something muddy or disgusting (please pick up after your dog!). But when you get home, do you always de-shoe at the door?

Plenty of Australians don’t. For many, what you drag in on the bottom of your shoes is the last thing on the mind as one gets home.

We are environmental chemists who have spent a decade examining the indoor environment and the contaminants people are exposed to in their own homes. Although our examination of the indoor environment, via our DustSafe program, is far from complete, on the question of whether to shoe or de-shoe in the home, the science leans toward the latter.

It is best to leave your filth outside the door.

What Contaminants Are In Your Home, And How Did They Get There?

People spend up to 90% of their time indoors, so the question of whether or not to wear shoes in the house is not a trivial one.

The policy focus is typically on the outdoor environment for soil, air quality and environmental public health risks. However, there is growing regulatory interest in the question of indoor air quality.

The matter building up inside your home includes not just dust and dirt from people and pets shedding hair and skin.

About a third of it is from outside, either blown in or tramped in on those offensive shoe bottoms.

Some of the microorganisms present on shoes and floors are drug-resistant pathogens, including hospital-associated infectious agents (germs) that are very difficult to treat.

Add in cancer-causing toxins from asphalt road residue and endocrine-disrupting lawn chemicals, and you might view the filth on your shoes in a new light.

A Roll-Call Of Indoor Nasties

Our work has involved the measurement and assessment of exposure to a range of harmful substances found inside homes including:

• antibiotic-resistant genes (genes that make bacteria resistant to antibiotics)

• disinfectant chemicals in the home environment

• microplastics

• the perfluorinated chemicals (also known as PFAS or “forever chemicals” because of their tendency to remain in the body and not break down) used ubiquitously in a multitude of industrial, domestic and food packaging products

• radioactive elements.

A strong focus of our work has involved assessing levels of potentially toxic metals (such as arsenic, cadmium and lead) inside homes across 35 nations (including Australia).

These contaminants – and most importantly the dangerous neurotoxin lead – are odourless and colourless. So there is no way of knowing whether the dangers of lead exposure are only in your soils or your water pipes, or if they are also on your living room floor.

The science suggests a very strong connection between the lead inside your home and that in your yard soil.

The most likely reason for this connection is dirt blown in from your yard or trodden in on your shoes, and on the furry paws of your adorable pets.

This connection speaks to the priority of making sure matter from your outdoor environment stays exactly there (we have tips here).

A recent Wall Street Journal article argued shoes in the home aren’t so bad. The author made the point that E. coli – dangerous bacteria that develop in the intestines of many mammals, including humans – is so widely distributed that it’s pretty much everywhere. So it should be no surprise it can be swabbed on shoe bottoms (96% of shoe bottoms, as the article pointed out).

But let’s be clear. Although it’s nice to be scientific and stick with the term E. coli, this stuff is, put more simply, the bacteria associated with poo.

Whether it is ours or Fido’s, it has the potential to make us very sick if we are exposed at high levels. And let’s face it – it is just plain gross.

Why walk it around inside your house if you have a very simple alternative – to take your shoes off at the door?

On Balance, Shoeless Wins

So are there disadvantages to having a shoe-free household?

Beyond the occasional stubbed toe, from an environmental health standpoint there aren’t many downsides to having a shoe-free house. Leaving your shoes at the entry mat also leaves potentially harmful pathogens there as well.

We all know prevention is far better than treatment and taking shoes off at the door is a basic and easy prevention activity for many of us.

Need shoes for foot support? Easy – just have some “indoor shoes” that never get worn outside.

There remains the issue of the “sterile house syndrome,” which refers to increased rates of allergies among children. Some argue it’s related to overly sterile households.

Indeed, some dirt is probably beneficial as studies have indicated it helps develop your immune system and reduce allergy risk.

But there are better and less gross ways to do that than walking around inside with your filthy shoes on. Get outside, go for a bushwalk, enjoy the great outdoors.

Just don’t bring the muckier parts of it inside to build up and contaminate our homes.

Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, Macquarie University and Gabriel Filippelli, Chancellor's Professor of Earth Sciences and Executive Director, Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute, IUPUI

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

An excess of empathy can be bad for your mental health

Have you found yourself irritable, sad or close to tears when watching the news lately? If so, you are not alone.

Experiencing empathy has its benefits, but there are also many downsides to it, which is why we must learn to practise healthy empathy.

Empathy is an ability to sync emotionally and cognitively with another person; it is a capacity to perceive a world from their perspective or share their emotional experiences. It is essential for building and maintaining relationships, as it helps us connect with others at a deeper level. It is also associated with higher self-esteem and life purpose.

There are broadly two types of empathy: cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. Emotional empathy is about sharing feelings with others to the extent that you may experience pain when watching someone in pain, or experience distress when watching someone in distress. This is what happens to many people when they watch upsetting news on TV, especially when they relate to specific people and their lives.

But emotional empathy isn’t just about experiencing negative emotions. Empathetic people may experience an abundance of positivity when watching other people’s joy, happiness, excitement, or serenity and can get more out of music and other daily pleasures.

While this emotional contagion is suitable for positive states, having too much empathy when watching people suffer can be very upsetting and even lead to mental health problems. Too much empathy towards others, especially when we prioritise other people’s emotions over our own, may result in experiences of anxiety and depression, which explains why so many of us feel bad when watching the news about the war in Ukraine.

The other type of empathy – cognitive empathy – refers to seeing the world through other people’s eyes, seeing it from their perspective, putting ourselves into their shoes without necessarily experiencing the associated emotions and, for example, watching the news and understanding at a cognitive level why people feel despair, distress or anger. This process may lead to emotional empathy or even somatic empathy, where empathy has a physiological effect (somatic being from the ancient Greek word “soma” meaning body).

The effect of empathy on the body has been well documented. For example, parents experiencing high levels of empathy towards their children tend to have chronic low-grade inflammation, leading to lower immunity. Also, our heart beats to the same rhythm when we empathise with others. So the impact of empathy when watching the news is both psychological and physiological. In some circumstances, it may result in what some refer to as “compassion fatigue”.

Misnomer

The burnout experienced by excessive empathy has traditionally been termed compassion fatigue. But more recently, using MRI studies, neuroscientists have argued that this is a misnomer, and that compassion does not cause fatigue. The distinction is important because it turns out that compassion is the antidote to the distress we feel when we empathise with people who are suffering. We need less empathy and more compassion.

Empathy and compassion are distinct events in the brain. Empathy for another person’s pain activates areas in the brain associated with negative emotions. Because we feel the other person’s pain, the boundary between the self and others can become blurred if we do not have good boundaries or self-regulation skills and we experience “emotional contagion”.

We get entangled in the distress and find it hard to soothe our emotions. We want to depersonalise, become numb, and look away. In contrast, compassion is associated with activity in areas of the brain associated with positive emotions and action.

Compassion can be defined simply as empathy plus action to alleviate another person’s pain. The action part of compassion helps us decouple our emotional system from others and see that we are separate individuals. We do not have to feel their pain when we witness it. Instead, we have the feeling of wanting to help. And we have a rewarding, positive emotional experience when we feel compassion towards another.

Here are three ways to practice compassion while watching the news.

1. Practice loving-kindness meditation

When you are overwhelmed by the news, practice loving-kindness mediation, where you focus on sending love to yourself, people you know, and those you don’t know who are suffering.

If we can create a buffer of positive emotions with compassion, we can think about how to practically help and act in overwhelming situations. Training your “compassion muscles” provides a buffer against the negative emotions so that you can be better motivated to help and not get overwhelmed by the distressing emotions.

Loving-kindness meditation does not reduce negative emotions. Instead, it increases activation in areas of the brain associated with positive emotions like love, hope, connection and reward.

2. Practice self-compassion

Are you beating yourself up for not being able to help? Or feeling guilty about your life while other people suffer? Try being kind to yourself. Remember that while our suffering is always specific to us, it is not uncommon. We share a common humanity of all experiencing some kind of suffering. While being mindful of your suffering, also try to not over-identify with it. These acts of self-compassion help reduce the distress experienced in empathic burnout and improves feelings of wellbeing

3. Take action

Empathic distress evokes negative feelings, such as stress, and prompts us to withdraw and be unsociable. In contrast, compassion produces positive feelings of love for another. It prompts us to take action. Most specifically compassion helps motivate sociability. One way to [counter empathic distress] is to get involved: donate, volunteer, organise.

4. Stop doomscrolling

Understandably, we look for information in times of crisis. It helps us be prepared. However, doomscrolling – continually scrolling through and reading depressing or worrying content on a social media or news site, especially on a phone – is not helpful.

Research on social media engagement during the pandemic showed that we need to be mindful of our news consumption to avoid increases in stress and negative emotions. To avoid the news altogether is unrealistic, but limiting our consumption is helpful. Another suggestion is to balance our media consumption by seeking out stories of acts of kindness (kindscrolling?), which can lift our mood.

Trudy Meehan, Lecturer, Centre for Positive Psychology and Health, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences and Jolanta Burke, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Positive Psychology and Health, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The James Webb Space Telescope has taken its first aligned image of a star. Here’s how it was done

In a huge milestone, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has finally been aligned to produce the first unified image of a single star.

Most traditional telescopes these days (like one you might have in your backyard) have a single primary mirror that collects distant light from stars. But the JWST has 18 mirrors! These had to be aligned extremely precisely to capture the image NASA released today.

The Challenge With JWST

The JWST is the largest telescope humans have ever sent into space. It’s so big that none of our rockets can carry it when fully extended. As such, it was designed to be neatly folded to fit inside the cargo hold atop an Ariane 5 launch vehicle.

The telescope uses segmented mirror technology. This technology has been in use for a few decades now, by some of the largest optical telescopes in the world, including the Keck Observatory in Hawaii (which has two 10m-diameter mirrors, each made of 36 hexagonal segments).

The main challenge with the JWST was being able to unfold it to its fully extended form in space, under extreme conditions of heat and cold, and with no human assistance.

This process began in January. Once the mirror segments were unfolded, they had to be aligned so all 18 combined to form a single 6.5m-diameter curved mirror.

The JWST has now completed this alignment process, giving us the first unified image. The image was taken using the near infrared camera (NIRCam), one of the telescope’s four key science instruments.

But How Was This Done?

There are seven small motors fixed behind each of the JWST’s 18 slightly curved hexagonal mirrors. Their purpose is to move and reshape the curvature of each segment so that all 18 can act as a single large mirror.

Six of these motors are grouped in pairs, equally distanced and located around each mirror segment. These are used to move the mirror.

The seventh motor is at the centre and is connected to the mirror’s six corners with struts. This motor can adjust the tension of the struts to optimise the curvature of that mirror segment.

The motors can move the mirrors very precisely, to within about 1/10,000th of the diameter of a human hair. This precision (to within a fraction of a wavelength of light) is important for obtaining high quality images from the telescope.

NASA scientists used a mathematical analysis called “phase retrieval” to study how the movement of each individual segment changed the sharpness of the final image.

Once they had this information, there were two crucial tasks to complete before the segments could function as a single, monolithic mirror: coarse alignment and fine alignment.

Coarse And Fine Alignment

In coarse alignment, the mirror segments were moved vertically (up and down) until they aligned to form one giant mirror. However, there were still minute alignment errors that needed to be corrected to obtain the best possible image.

This is where the fine alignment happens. In this process, rather than moving the mirror segments, the small optics inside NIRCam are moved instead.

When the telescope is pointed at a star, the light from the star first hits the primary mirror, in which the individual segments are now aligned reasonably well.

The light then continues its path through the secondary and tertiary mirrors inside the telescope and enters the NIRCam instrument. During the fine alignment, the optics inside NIRCam are very carefully adjusted until the star is completely in focus.

The coarse and fine alignment steps are both repeated until the sharpest image can be obtained. The image released by NASA this week shows how a star looks when these steps are completed.

Prior to this, NASA released a “stacked” image (likely of the same star) back in February.

For this, each of the individual mirror segments were fine-tuned to create 18 sharp images of the star, but each from a slightly different vantage point. The 18 images were then stacked to produce the image below.

The Next Steps

While the successful testing of the NIRCam is a breakthrough for the JWST, there are many more steps to be completed before it can fulfil its potential.

Next NASA will look at how the other instruments perform with images of stars, and do further fine tuning to the optics in those instruments. After this, the instrument commissioning phase will start. Apart from NIRCam, there are three other instruments on board the JWST: NIRSpec, NIRISS, and MIRI.

While NIRCam will primarily provide images of the Universe over the near-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, NIRSpec can split that light to study different signatures (variations in the properties of the incoming light).

NIRISS will provide similar functionality to NIRCam, while MIRI will look at the Universe at much higher wavelengths (reaching the mid infrared range).

All the instruments will be brought to their working temperatures and tested. Some initial steps have already begun and all indications so far are good. Many of the steps also have redundancies built into them, which means if a system should fail, there will be another way to achieve the same objective.

You can keep up to date with the JWST’s activities online.

Themiya Nanayakkara, Chief Astronomer at the James Webb Australian Data Centre, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Forget Patrick: March 17 is also St Gertrude’s Day, commemorating the patron saint of cats

These days many celebrate St Patrick’s Day, even if they’re not Irish.

Happily, the Catholic Church has a range of options for every day of its liturgical calendar so there’s an alternative celebration today for those who would forsake their Guinness, day drinking, and neon-green shamrocks.

Gertrude of Nivelles, daughter of Pippin the Elder, power behind the Merovingian throne, was both Patrick’s near contemporary and his pioneering equal.

Born around 628, she died on this day in 659 but in that short life had time to found a monastery and rule as its abbess. Her remarkable story provides as valuable record of events during a dark time deep in the European past as that of Olga of Kyiv.

And her abbey still stands today, having survived attack by the forces of Revolutionary France in 1794 and bombing by the German Luftwaffe in 1940.

Gertrude’s posthumous legacy also reveals something quirky about the Catholic Church: its unquenchable enthusiasm for having a saint for everything.

Yes, Gertrude is now an unofficial patron saint for cats.

A Princess Bride

Gertrude was born into what was to become the most illustrious dynasty of early medieval Europe. Her father was Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia (no, that’s not a typo). The mayor was the highest ranking official in the service of the Frankish King Dagobert. But the mayors soon usurped the kings to take the throne for themselves.

Gertrude’s great-great-great-nephew was Charlemagne, who became the first Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day 800.

Gertrude was only a minor player in this game of thrones, but her anonymous biographer tells us that as a 10-year-old girl she refused King Dagobert’s offer to find her a nice duke to marry. Indeed, she “lost her temper and flatly rejected him with an oath, saying that she would have… no any earthly spouse but Christ the Lord”.

Normally, such medieval powerbrokers took no notice of a child’s wishes when they had political alliances to arrange. But Gertrude struck it lucky or miraculous. King Dagobert died the following year with her own father following just months later.

The 640s were a perilous time to be a teenage girl or a widowed wife, but Gertrude and her mother Itta, liberated, managed to chart their own course in life.

Gertrude’s biographer tells us that Itta shaved her daughter’s hair, so that violent abductors could not tear her away by force. What was left behind looked suspiciously like a tonsure - the outward sign that pious men were already using to show their devotion to a celibate religious life.

And so, in due course, Gertrude and her mother established their monastery. After Itta died in 652 Gertrude became the sisters’ unchallenged abbess. She “obtained through her envoy’s men of good reputation, relics of saints and holy books from Rome, and from regions across the sea, experienced men for the teaching of the divine law and to practice the chants for herself and her people.”

She welcomed foreigners, lay or religious, in particular monks from Ireland whose flourishing communities represented the ongoing fruits of Patrick’s recent efforts.

From Nuns To Cats

Gertrude’s path to feline favour has been a circuitous one. In truth, little in the medieval version of her legend justifies it. Rather the association itself speaks to a particular pathology in certain forms of Christianity.

Catholics, Anglicans, and Eastern Orthodox all recognise patron saints: special figures among the avowedly blessed whom, by choice or by venerable tradition, particular groups have taken on as their primary intercessor with God.

The idea for such patron saints first emerged in the Middle Ages when certain saints became particularly associated with places where they lived (like Patrick in Ireland) or where they were said to work their miracles (like Thomas à Becket at Canterbury). Some saints were also recognised for particular efficacy when interceding to cure particular conditions.

Gertrude seems to have acquired a reputation of this latter kind after the time of the Black Death. In the Low Countries and Western Germany, she was said to protect against rats and the diseases they brought with them.

From there it was only a short leap to making her patron of the creatures that 15th-century folk used to keep those rats in check. And yet, there is no clear evidence that Gertrude was depicted in such a role until well into the 20th century.

Her elevation to celestial guardian of the mousers speaks to a curious development in which popes themselves have encouraged the idea that there ought to be a saint for everything.

Pope Pius XII making Clare of Assisi patron saint of television in 1958 could be said to have been the unlikely event which sparked all that off.

Saints Come In All Shapes And Sizes

Gertrude is by no means the Middle Ages’ strangest or most obscure saint. That honour surely still goes to St Guinefort, the “Holy Greyhound” - an actual dog - who gave his life to save a baby boy from a snake and whose local veneration in 13th-century France scandalised Church leaders in Paris and Rome.

Yet Gertrude’s example underlines the sheer quantity and variety of those whom Catholics claim to have reached Heaven.

There’s a medieval saint out there for everything and everyone: so why not go and find yours?

Miles Pattenden, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.