A teenager whose family home was destroyed in bushfires has delivered an impassioned plea to the Prime Minister to take action on climate change, saying “thoughts and prayers are not enough”. Shiann Broderick, 18, who lost her home in Nymboida in northern NSW, gathered along with about 500 protesters outside Liberal Party headquarters in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo. …

The UN’s climate summit has closed amidst cautious praise for its achievements, and bitter condemnation for its failures. On the plus side, more than 60 nations announced they were working on or exploring plans to reduce greenhouse gas to virtually zero. And a similar number said they would definitely boost their climate change ambitions by next year. On the minus …

Teenage activist Greta Thunberg angrily denounced world leaders on Monday for failing to tackle climate change, unleashing the outrage felt by millions of her peers in the heart of the United Nations by demanding: “How dare you?” The Swedish campaigner’s brief address electrified the start of a summit aimed at mobilising government and business to break international paralysis over carbon …

  For the first time, the long-term outlook for the Great Barrier Reef has been downgraded from “poor” to “very poor” by the federal government’s five-year reef report. The evidence-based report is written by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, and reviewed and released by the federal Environment Minister. The report said climate change is escalating and is the …

Labor will set a national electric vehicles target of 50% new car sales by 2030, and 50% for the government fleet by 2025, as well as allowing business to deduct a 20% depreciation for private fleet EVs valued at more than $20,000, as part of its climate change policy to be unveiled on Monday. Bill Shorten will also flag a …

The Japanese Government has confirmed it will restart commercial whaling in July, exiting the International Whaling Commission (IWC). It will stop its so-called scientific whaling in the Antarctic Ocean, and only fish in seas near Japan and the country’s exclusive economic zone. Japan has long been fed up with the deadlock at the IWC, with pro- and anti-whaling nations unable …

Sir David Attenborough says the “collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon” unless urgent action is taken against global warming. The 92-year-old famed British naturalist and BBC presenter blamed humans for the, “man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years”. “The world’s people have spoken, their …

Global efforts to tackle climate change are way off track says the UN, as it details the first rise in CO2 emissions in four years. The emissions gap report says that economic growth is responsible for a rise in 2017 while national efforts to cut carbon have faltered. To meet the goals of the Paris climate pact, the study says …

Prolonged ocean warming events, known as marine heatwaves, take a significant toll on the complex ecosystem of the Great Barrier Reef. This is according to a new study on the impacts of the 2016 marine heatwave, published in Nature. In surveying the 3,863 individual reefs that make up the system off Australia’s north-east coast, scientists found that 29% of communities …

When Mandelena became a mother, she was only 16 years old. During the prolonged dry season in Gwor County, South Sudan over the last two years, Mandelena and her family have been able to eat only one meal per day. In her community, crops are failing, cattle are dying and children are dropping out of school because of hunger. Women …