This is an open letter calling on parliamentarians to commit to zero carbon pollution in Australia by 2050.
Jun 16, 2015
Dear Australian Parliamentarians,
We are a diverse group of 51 leading civil society organisations, representing a broad cross section of Australians. We encourage our leaders to take on the responsibility to do more to cut Australia's carbon pollution and do our fair share to limit global warming.
Climate change brings grave risks for the health and wellbeing of Australians, our environment, jobs, our economy, our prosperity, our poorer neighbours and ultimately our children’s future.
Cutting carbon pollution not only helps prevent further dangerous climate change but puts us on a pathway to create a clean economy and better future for the people and places we love.
As world governments prepare to commit to new pollution reduction targets at the United Nations meeting in Paris, December 2015, we call on you to commit to carbon pollution reduction targets for Australia that:
• are in line with limiting global warming to the globally agreed upon goal of less than 1.5-2°C above pre-industrial levels.
• reduce emissions by at least 40 per cent below 2000 levels by 2025 , at least 60 per cent by 2030, and to lay out a clear pathway for Australia to achieve net zero carbon pollution as soon as possible, by mid-century at the latest.
A net zero carbon pollution pathway to 2050 is achievable, affordable and desirable.
Australia is one of the most vulnerable developed countries to climate change: The world is currently on track for a 4 degree temperature rise. This will result in more severe and frequent extreme weather such as droughts, floods, heatwaves, storms, as well as higher sea level rise . Climate change poses significant risks to human health, lives, food production, the environment, infrastructure, business, regional stability, rural and remote communities, and our economy. The impacts of climate change are exacerbating existing inequalities in Australian communities as low-income households and disadvantaged communities are disproportionately impacted. Climate change presents many health risks to Australians. The impacts of heatwaves, droughts, fires and floods include death, injury and illness, displacement, trauma and mental ill-health. Climate change also heightens international inequities. It is a major threat in the fight against poverty and hunger and is jeopardising hard‐won development gains worldwide.
Reducing carbon pollution will modernise the economy: A pathway to net zero carbon pollution is an opportunity to modernise the Australian economy and build a sustainable, prosperous future. Economic modelling shows that under a low carbon pathway the economy will continue to grow to 2.5 times its current size by 2050 , and not only will all industries continue to grow, some like agriculture will actually do better. Emissions reductions are becoming cheaper due to advances in technology. But if we delay action it will cost the economy more to transition through the lock-in of carbon intensive infrastructure and less competitive industries, shifting the burden to the next generation and jeopardizing our future international competitiveness.
Australia has a responsibility to do our fair share to solve the global problem: Australia is the 13th largest emitter globally and is one of the highest per capita emitters in the world. Australia is also a wealthy country with enormous capacity to cut our carbon pollution and help other countries. But Australia is currently not doing enough to cut carbon pollution and is not lifting our weight globally. We cannot expect poorer nations to do more of the heavy lifting; this is not the Australian way.
Australia and Australian people stand to lose so much from the impacts of climate change; it is in our national interest to be among the leading nations to ensure the world limits warming to well below 2 degrees. A zero carbon pollution future is possible, and it is all of our responsibility to make that future a reality for our children, and their children.
Signatories to the letter include: 1 Million Women, Australian Fire Fighters Climate Alliance, Australian Nursing and Midwifery Foundation, ACOSS, the Australian Conservation Foundation, 350.org, the Australian Marine Conservation Society, the Australia Wind Alliance, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Ballarat Renewable Energy And Zero Emissions, Curtain's CASE, Climate Change Australia, Climate Action Monaro, Climate Change Balmain-Rozelle, the Conservation Council of Western Australia, Environmental Defenders' Office – ACT, Environment Tasmania, Edmund Rice Centre, Friends of the Earth Australia, Environment Victoria, Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Lighter footprints, National Parks Association of NSW, National Toxics Network, Nature Conservation NSW, Pacific Calling Partnership, Queensland Conservation Council, South Australian Conservation Council, The Climate Institute, Wodonga Albury Towards Climate Health, Wilderness Society, WWF, ACFID, Care Australia, Caritas Australia, Oxfam Australia, Plan, Save the Children, Environmental Farmers Network, Australian Religious Response to Climate Change (ARRCC), Common Grace, Quakers Australia, the Australian Health Promotion Association, Australian Institute of Health Innovation (AIHI) at Macquarie University, the Australian Medical Students Association, Australian Physiotherapy Association, Australian Women's Health Network, the Climate and Health Alliance, Doctors Reform Society, Public Health Association of Australia, Services for Australian Rural and Remote Allied Health (SARRAH), Melbourne City Mission.
Restoring natural immunity against cancers
Fossil of huge 'walking' bat discovered in New Zealand
16 million years ago, giant bats walked on four limbs
June 17, 2015 - Fossilised remains of a new bat species, which lived 16 million years ago, walked on four limbs and was three times larger than today's average bat, have been discovered in New Zealand.
The fossils were found near Central Otago on South Island, in sediment left over from a vast prehistoric body of water known as Lake Manuherikia, which was part of warmer subtropical rainforest during the early Miocene era, between 16 and 19-million-years-ago.
The new species, Mystacina miocenalis, was described today in the journalPLOS ONE, and is related to another bat, Mystacina tuberculata, which still lives in New Zealand's old growth forests.
"Our discovery shows for the first time that Mystacina bats have been present in New Zealand for upwards of 16 million years, residing in habitats with very similar plant life and food sources," says lead author and vertebrate palaeontologist, Associate Professor Suzanne Hand from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia.
New Zealand's only native terrestrial mammals are three species of bat, including two belonging to the Mystacina genus -- one of which was last sighted in the 1960s. They are known as burrowing bats because they forage on the ground under leaf-litter and snow, as well as in the air, scuttling on their wrists and backward-facing feet, while keeping their wings tightly furled.
These bats were believed to have an ancient history in New Zealand, but until now, the oldest fossil of a Mystacina bat in New Zealand was from a cave in South Island, dating to 17,500 years ago. This latest discovery forces a rethink of when these peculiar, walking bats first crossed the ditch, arriving from what is present-day Australia.
"This helps us understand the capacity of bats to establish populations on islands and the climatic conditions required for this to happen," says Associate Professor Hand.
"Bats are important pollinators and seed dispersers that keep forests healthy. Understanding the connectivity between the bat faunas of different landmasses is important for evaluating biosecurity threats and conservation priorities for fragile island ecosystems."
The new species has similar teeth to its contemporary relative, suggesting a broad diet that included nectar, pollen and fruit, as well as insects and spiders. Limb bones found in the deposit also showed similar structures specialised for walking.
Where they differ is body size: at an estimated 40 grams, the fossil bat is roughly three times heavier than its living cousin, and the average weight of more than 900 living bat species.
"The size of bats is physically constrained by the demands of flight and echolocation, as you need to be small, quick and accurate to chase insects in the dark," explains Associate Professor Hand. "The unusually large size of this bat suggests it was doing less in-flight hunting and was taking heavier prey from the ground, and larger fruit than even its living cousin."
The team also found a diverse array of plant, animal and insect fossils at the site, which shows that the 16-million-year-old subtropical ecosystem bore resemblance to the more temperate one that exists today.
"Remarkably, the Miocene ecosystems associated with the fossil bat contain the kinds of trees used today by Mystacina for its colonial roosts," says Associate Professor Hand. "Most of its food plants are also represented, as are terrestrial arthropods including a variety of beetles, ants and spiders, which these bats continue to hunt on the ground."
The Lake Manuherikia site has been a treasure trove for palaeontologists over the years, producing New Zealand's oldest frogs, lizards and land birds, as well as its only crocodiles and terrestrial turtles.
Associate Professor Hand led the research along with Associate Professor Daphne Lee from the University of Otago, and Dr Trevor Worthy from Flinders University in South Australia.
Suzanne J. Hand, Daphne E. Lee, Trevor H. Worthy, Michael Archer, Jennifer P. Worthy, Alan J. D. Tennyson, Steven W. Salisbury, R. Paul Scofield, Dallas C. Mildenhall, Elizabeth M. Kennedy, Jon K. Lindqvist.Miocene Fossils Reveal Ancient Roots for New Zealand’s Endemic Mystacina (Chiroptera) and Its Rainforest Habitat. PLOS ONE, 17 Jun 2015 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0128871
Top: Mystacina tuberculata foraging on South Island, New Zealand. Picture Credit: Rod Morris
Scale-free gives humans a competitive edge
17 June 2015
Right: Professor Mahendra Piraveenan and Dharshana Kasthuriratne work has advanced knowledge of scale free networks
Humans arrange themselves into scale-free networks to give themselves a competitive edge according to research published this month in Nature: Scientific Report. The work conducted by University of Sydney researchers expands on the work done by famous game theorist John Nash by considering the limitations to human logical thinking and modelling human societies as networks.
Dr Mahendra Piraveenan, senior author on the paper "Emergence of scale-free characteristics in socio-ecological systems with bounded rationality" says scientists have known for a decade that human interact in patterns, both online and offline resembling scale-free networks, but researchers are just now asking why and how.
"Understanding why scale-free networks evolved in human societies is important to understanding how to affect better decision making processes at community level " says Dr Piraveenan a complex systems scholar.
Being arranged in scale-free networks has given societies a competitive advantage in situations like war, competition for food and other resources, or natural disasters, and the like.
It makes the society relatively more rational, and is so doing more robust and sustainable. This may be an explanation why so many scale-free structures are found in social systems," Piraveenan states.
"Scale-free networks include many "well-connected" nodes, hubs of connectivity that shape the way a network operates. The nodes within this network aren't necessarily random or evenly connected. But the ratio of well-connected nodes to the number of nodes in the rest of the network remains the same regardless, even if the network changes in size " he explains.
"Humans may have evolved into scale-free structures to provide more rational responses to emergencies such as infection epidemics or natural disasters. When a society is structured as a scale-free network it responds more rationally to threats even when individuals in the society have not had time to gather information about a disease or disaster," Dr Piraveenan explains.
The paper 's co-authored by Ph.D. candidate Dharshana Kasthuriratne says scientists have discovered that networks of human interactions, whether in online forums such as Facebook or LinkedIn, or offline networks such as friends in a school, or a network of people in a certain business show this 'scale-free' feature.
Piraveenan and Kasthuriratne 's study simulated the decision making process of communities of thousands of people inside large distributed computing systems, such as computing clusters.
" We applied 'evolutionary pressure ' to these initially random interaction networks, by rewarding participating communities if they showed higher systemic rationality, and the random interaction networks were allowed to re-wire while keeping the total number of links constant, " says Piraveenan.
"Results of the simulation showed scale-free networks emerging from initially random networks of people, Dharshana says.
"Scientists know that many real-world socio-ecological systems display the 'scale-free ' feature, and our work provides an explanation of why these networks are so prevalent."
"We believe that humans organise themselves into free-scale networks so they can interact more effectively.
It has been vital to our survival as a species. It is possible to argue that those human societies which organise themselves into scale-free structures have had an advantage over the societies which did not," suggests Dharshana.
