Planet Watch

War is probably as old as humanity. The natural world is much older, of course, but it's been damaged and affected by human conflicts since we first started killing each other.

Living off grid can teach an individual about living within the limits of their immediate environment – a lesson we need to learn as individuals and as a species. We are well on the way to tipping the Earth beyond its ability to support the myriad lifeforms, including us, that are here.

Over the last few decades, modern industrialised agriculture has wrought havoc on natural systems. It has razed forests, decimated biodiversity, and has done immense damage to soils.

The people of the Northern Rivers of NSW breathed a big sigh of relief when they stopped the unconventional gas industry at Bentley. But the industry didn't stop when it hit resistance – it simply went around us, and left the region in a false bubble of security.

Conserving primary forest and its biodiversity will reduce the likelihood of future disease outbreaks including pandemics like COVID-19, Ebola.

There's been a lot of hot air in the media recently about hydrogen. The problem is that there's hydrogen and then there's hydrogen.

The North Coast region of NSW has already experienced significant climate change: average temperatures on the east coast of Australia have increased by around 0.7 °C compared to pre-industrial levels, and this warming trend is expected to continue.

One hidden gift of this pandemic is time to reflect. As the meme goes, 'It's like the Earth just sent us all to our rooms to think about what we've done'.

As we find ourselves in the midst of a one-in-100-year global pandemic, now is the time to reflect on the way in which human activities help bring about the creation of new diseases and the spread of existing diseases.

The Australian political response to the COVID-19 pandemic has proved that governments can act quickly if conditions demand it, even if that means overturning longstanding ideological obstacles.

The knowledge of both anthropogenic climate change and the term ‘biodiversity’ have profoundly reshaped both our behaviour and the way in which humans see ourselves in relation to our environment.

Australians have now experienced some of the devastating impacts of what a global heating of just one degree looks like. We must decarbonise our economy, and the earlier we do this, the less painful and costly it is going to be.

This month Planet Watch explores how climate change will affect the oceans and its creatures.

Farmers, forests and climate change: The way that humans use and change the land and its vegetation can have a profound effect on the climate, and can either counteract or exacerbate climate change.