News

When it comes to bees, it seems that nothing really does matter. As shown in a paper published today, our research demonstrates that the honeybee can understand the quantitative value of nothing, and place zero in the correct position along a line of sequential numbers. This is the first evidence ...

Plastic waste in the ocean is a global problem; some eight million metric tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean every year. One possible solution – paying a small amount for returned drink containers – has been consistently opposed by the beverage industry for many years. But for the first tim...

Don’t let anyone tell you we’re not a cheerful bunch here on the Environment + Energy desk – even if many of the stories we cover are a little on the gloomy side. From the Great Barrier Reef to the Australian outback, and from Canberra to the White House, it’s been another less than stellar...

The mystery object discovered earlier this year travelling through our Solar system is showing no signs of any alien life, despite plenty of efforts to look and listen for a signal. Perhaps it’s ironic that the object should arrive in a year when we celebrated the 100th anniversary (on December 1...

A Senate Committee report on shark deterrent measures has, in the words of committee member Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, moved the “shark cull debate into the 21st century”. The first recommendation of the inquiry is to “immediately replace lethal drum lines” with so-called SMART drum lines ...

When you think of devastating deforestation and extinction you usually think of the Amazon, Borneo and the Congo. But eastern Australia ranks alongside these in the top 10 of the world’s major deforestation fronts – the only one in a developed nation. Most of the clearing is happening in Queensl...

Since the 1970s, humans have used more resources than the planet can regenerate. This is known as overshoot. The WWF Living Planet Report has reported overshoot every two years since 2000. However, this fact can inspire some confusion. How can it logically be possible for us to use more resources t...

There are those who say the climate has always changed, and that carbon dioxide levels have always fluctuated. That’s true. But it’s also true that since the industrial revolution, CO₂ levels in the atmosphere have climbed to levels that are unprecedented over hundreds of millennia. So here�...

When you think of solar, you probably think of vast fields of black panels at large-scale solar farms, producing enormous quantities of power. But Australia's real solar engine, at least for the time being, is a much more humble sight. It is small collections of solar panels on ordinary homes and ...