Why Canada's single-use plastic ban could help the environment and wildlife
Jun 23, 2019 13:55 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
Canada recently announced a ban on single-use plastics. Items like straws, cotton swabs, drink stirrers and Styrofoam fast-food containers and cups will be banned by 2021. But even as the list of countries that have...
Solar panels all over the Sahara desert? – Imagine newsletter #2
Jun 07, 2019 15:55 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
You may have seen a variant of this meme before. A map of North Africa is shown, with a surprisingly small box somewhere in Libya or Algeria shaded in. An area of the Sahara this size, the caption will say, could power the...
Why there's more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere than you may have realised
Jun 07, 2019 15:53 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
Zoe Loh, Research Scientist, CSIRO This week brought news that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels at the Mauna Loa atmospheric observatory in Hawaii have risen steeply for the seventh year in a row, reaching a May...
There's still so much we don't know about the star-gazing beetle with a tiny brain
May 27, 2019 09:12 am UTC| Insights & Views Nature
Edited extract from The Dance of the Dung Beetles published by Wits University Press. Dung beetles have been ever-present in the history of the West but oddly, less so elsewhere in religion, art, literature, science...
Eastern China pinpointed as source of rogue ozone-depleting emissions
May 25, 2019 06:49 am UTC| Insights & Views Nature
A mysterious rebound in the emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals despite a global ban stretching back almost a decade has been traced to eastern China. Research published by an international team today in Nature...
Snack-sized 'candy' fish explain a coral mystery
May 25, 2019 06:46 am UTC| Insights & Views Nature
Youre swimming over a coral reef. What do you see? Most people will reply: fish. On a coral reef, fish are large, abundant, gaudily coloured and in-your-face impossible to miss. The waters around coral reefs must be...
We've declared a climate emergency – here's what universal basic income could do to help the planet
May 20, 2019 22:28 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
Governments around the world are declaring climate and environmental emergencies to highlight the unsustainable ways in which humans, over a few generations, have transformed the planet. Weve made enough concrete to...
Johannesburg in a time of darkness: Ivan Vladislavić’s new memoir reminds us of the city’s fragility
Economist Chris Richardson on an ‘ugly’ inflation result and the coming budget
Biden administration tells employers to stop shackling workers with ‘noncompete agreements’
IceCube researchers detect a rare type of energetic neutrino sent from powerful astronomical objects