Despite a clever comms strategy, there are significant credibility issues around the assumptions on which the cost estimates are based
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The Coalition has moved a considerable way on climate and energy since Scott Morrisson brought a lump of coal into the parliament and told us not to be afraid. On Friday, the Coalition finally released the long-awaited details of the nuclear plan it will take to the election and, once again, asks us not to be afraid – of the price tag, the higher climate pollution and a range of other variables.
However, despite a clever comms strategy, there are significant credibility issues around the assumptions on which the cost estimates are based, and there are other critical issues that have been left unanswered. Australians have a right to consider all the issues they are being asked to vote on, with facts rather than political rhetoric. These issues can be broadly listed under three headings: the economics, the environment and the law.
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Nicki Hutley is an independent economist and councillor with the Climate Council
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
12/14/2024 - 14:00
12/14/2024 - 14:00
I’ve seen full bags tied to low-hanging branches and kids’ play equipment. It’s all deeply weird
This is about dog shit.
Dog shit and antisocial behaviour.
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12/14/2024 - 12:26
Unpasteurised milk, seen as both anti-government and anti-corporate, soars in popularity among conspiracy theorists and new agers
It’s 8am, and Redmond, an 11-year-old Brown Swiss dairy cow and designated matriarch of the Churchtown Dairy herd, has been milked in her designated stall. She is concentrating on munching hay; her seventh calf is hovering nearby.
The herd’s production of milk, sold unpasteurised in half-gallon and quart glass bottles in an adjacent farm store, sells out each week. It has become so popular that the store has had to limit sales.
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12/14/2024 - 10:00
Disproportionate placement of devices leaves communities of color less protected from dangerous pollutants
The Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality monitors are disproportionately positioned in whiter neighborhoods in the US, leaving communities of color less protected from dangerous pollutants like particulate matter, ozone, nitrous dioxide and lead, among others, new research finds.
Policy and actions the EPA takes to reduce pollution are developed from the monitors’ readings, and communities of color are broadly more likely to be near major polluters. The findings raise questions about whether the agency has enough monitors installed, is properly placing them, and whether conclusions about the safety of the air in some areas are sound.
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12/14/2024 - 08:43
US industry ready to drop demand to export chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef in move set to anger British farmers
The United States is expected to push Britain to allow tariff-free access to high-quality American meat as part of any trade deal signed under the incoming Trump administration, amid interest from the president-elect’s trade chief.
Previous attempts to forge an agreement with the US have failed. Demands to allow the import of chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef – produced in the US but illegal in the UK – have proved too unpalatable for British ministers.
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12/14/2024 - 02:00
From a futuristic home in London to a barn conversion in the heart of the country
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12/13/2024 - 18:39
State has exemptions under Clean Air Act to set vehicle emissions standards higher than federal limits
The US supreme court agreed on Friday to hear a bid by fuel producers to challenge California’s standards for vehicle emissions and electric cars under a federal air-pollution law in a major case testing the Democrat-governed state’s power to fight greenhouse gases.
The justices took up an appeal by a Valero Energy subsidiary and fuel industry groups over a lower court’s rejection of their challenge to a decision by Joe Biden’s administration to allow California to set its own regulations.
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12/13/2024 - 12:52
A new database of African hippo populations has revealed huge gaps in our knowledge of where the megaherbivores live and thrive, with populations fragmented and reliant on protected areas.
12/13/2024 - 09:00
‘No one really has the foggiest idea of what it will cost to develop nuclear in Australia,’ one expert says
The Coalition claims its nuclear policy is ‘visionary’ – but it needs to stand up to scrutiny
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The Coalition’s nuclear energy plan creates “a significant risk” for the stability of the nation’s grid, according to the peak body representing power generators and retailers.
Responding to the Friday release of modelling by Frontier Economics of the Coalition’s scheme to build seven nuclear power plants from the mid-2030s, the Australian Energy Council warned the estimates assumed a slower build out of renewable energy.
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12/13/2024 - 09:00
Experts and agencies have overwhelmingly deemed the plan not to be credible. And burning more coal and gas in the medium term only leads one way
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Let’s not waste time with niceties: the Coalition’s nuclear plan is a fantasy. The vision laid out on Friday by a quartet of opposition frontbenchers is not going to eventuate, regardless of the result of the next election.
That’s not because nuclear energy is necessarily a terrible idea, in a global sense. While waste is an issue, nuclear plants offer zero-emissions power and will be needed in places with fewer energy options. But the claims put forward by the opposition – that Australia needs nuclear, or could have it in the way the Coalition describes – do not stand up to scrutiny.
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