Zero

Highlights - Draft report on Mercury Regulation - Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Draft report on Mercury Regulation

Key Points: 
  • Draft report on Mercury Regulation
    On 11 January, ENVI voted on the draft report on the proposal for a revision of the Mercury Regulation.
  • The proposed regulation - in line with the EU Zero Pollution Action Plan - aims to phase out the use of dental amalgam and ban its manufacture and export starting from 1 January 2025.
  • Moreover, it would prohibit the manufacture, import and export of six additional mercury-containing lamps from 31 December 2025 and 31 December 2027.
  • The proposed regulation implements the Minamata Convention, a global treaty adopted in 2013 to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury.

15 literary podcasts to make you laugh, learn and join conversations about books

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, January 3, 2024

But the soaring popularity of podcasts like The Penguin Podcast and NPR’s Book of the Day reveals something more.

Key Points: 
  • But the soaring popularity of podcasts like The Penguin Podcast and NPR’s Book of the Day reveals something more.
  • As writer Tom McCallister points out, while traditional reviews may be in decline, literary podcasts are not just “filling the void”.
  • Like community reviews and the more recent surge of #BookTok and #Bookstagram content on social media, literary podcasts feed the rich social networks that form around books.
  • But literary podcasts invite audiences to engage with books and writing in all kinds of ways.

1. The Garret


If books are divisive, literary podcasts are too. What’s enjoyable for one listener might not work for another. My own listening habits are driven largely by curiosity rather than loyalty: I listen to episodes haphazardly, when a particular guest, topic or title tempts me, dropping down the rabbit hole of whichever book I happen to be reading.

  • That said, I return most often to The Garret, an Australian podcast for “lovers of books and storytelling”.
  • She interviews authors about craft, criticism and some of the stories behind the stories that have found their way to publication.

2. Secrets from the Green Room


Australians are some of the world’s most enthusiastic podcast listeners, so it’s little surprise we produce some of the best bookish podcasts around.
Secrets from the Green Room is dedicated to author stories you “won’t hear anywhere else”. Irma Gold and Karen Viggers publish new episodes every few weeks. They invite guests to candidly share their own experiences navigating the world of publication, landing on topics as varied as ghostwriting, the “creep” of imposter syndrome, and the challenges of teaching writing at university.

3. Read This


The Monthly’s weekly offering, Read This, features interviews with prominent writers from Australia and around the world. Its first episode took host Michael Williams (editor of The Monthly) to Helen Garner’s house for “conversation and cake”. Later guests have included Rebecca Makkai and George Saunders.

4. Beyond the Zero


Beyond the Zero also spotlights new titles through extended conversations with both local and international authors. Each episode is a deep dive into the books and writers that have influenced the guest, so far ranging from Booker winner Paul Lynch to Australian literary authors like Emmett Stinson on Gerald Murnane.

5. The First Time


On The First Time podcast, novelists Katherine Colette and Kate Mildenhall take readers behind the scenes, into the “logistics and feels of writing and publishing a book”. They regularly feature debut authors, as part of their (paid) Featured Book series. There’s also a Masters series, with veteran writers like Richard Flanagan, and episodes that deal with “awkward” conversations, including how book endorsements work.

6 & 7. ABC RN: The Bookshelf and The Book Show

  • On The Bookshelf, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh review newly published fiction, alongside guest reviewers, in hour-long episodes broadcast every Friday.
  • This year, The Book Show also ran a fascinating four-part series on literary fakes and frauds, starting with the John Hughes scandal.

8 & 9. The New Yorker: Fiction and Poetry podcasts

  • Each month, the magazine’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, invites some of the world’s most celebrated authors to read aloud from another author’s work.
  • (And if you’re a fan of the read-aloud format, you might also enjoy The New Yorker’s Poetry podcast.)

10. Backlisted


Presented by John Mitchinson and Andy Miller, Backlisted solicits a writerly guest to choose a book they love and wax lyrical about why it deserves a wider audience (like Jennifer Egan and Nell Stevens on Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South). Recently celebrating its 200th episode, Backlisted prides itself on “giving new life to old books” – a refreshing alternative to literary podcasts that focus almost exclusively on recent releases.

11. Overdue

  • Overdue, a podcast “about the books you’ve been meaning to read”, is also sure to add some dog-eared classics to your to-be-read pile.
  • Try the episode about Camus’s The Stranger if – like me – you only pretended to read it in high school.

12. Book Riot


For listeners interested in industry trends, the Book Riot podcast publishes weekly episodes that revolve loosely around “what’s new, cool, and worth talking about in the world of books and reading”. Jeff and Rebecca, who also edit the Book Riot website, serve up a gratifying mix of book-related commentary and news, including reading recommendations, awards chatter and emerging or evolving issues (think book bans and generative AI).

13. If Books Could Kill

  • If Books Could Kill offers a diverting but incisive take on “the airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds”.
  • As a scholar of self-help books, I was primed to regard this podcast with deep suspicion, but the episodes are well researched and thoroughly entertaining.

14. & 15. Reading Glasses and Marlon and Jake Read Dead People

  • Reading Glasses is a podcast about “reading better” that includes an episode on how to get borrowed books back.
  • And in Marlon and Jake Read Dead People, Man Booker Prize winning author Marlon James and his editor, Jake Morrissey, share big opinions on all things books, authors and writing – like our evergreen quandaries around reading good books by terrible people or judging a book by its cover.


Amber Gwynne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Five Big Questions (and Zero Predictions) for the U.S. State Privacy Landscape in 2024

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Entering 2024, the United States now stands alone as the sole G20 nation without a comprehensive, national framework governing the collection and use of personal data. With bipartisan efforts to enact federal privacy legislation once again languishing in Congress, state-level activity on privacy dramatically accelerated in 2023. As the dust from this year settles, we [?]

Key Points: 


Entering 2024, the United States now stands alone as the sole G20 nation without a comprehensive, national framework governing the collection and use of personal data. With bipartisan efforts to enact federal privacy legislation once again languishing in Congress, state-level activity on privacy dramatically accelerated in 2023. As the dust from this year settles, we [?]

The world has lost a dissenting voice: Australian journalist John Pilger has died, age 84

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, January 2, 2024

John Pilger, a giant of journalism born in Australia in 1939, has died at the age of 84, according to a statement released online by his family.

Key Points: 
  • John Pilger, a giant of journalism born in Australia in 1939, has died at the age of 84, according to a statement released online by his family.
  • His numerous books and especially his documentaries opened the world’s eyes to the failings, and worse, of governments in many countries – including his birthplace.

‘I am, by inclination, anti-authoritarian’

  • Whatever the merits of Waugh’s criticism, they are, in my view, outweighed by the breadth and depth of Pilger’s disclosures in the public interest.
  • It is my duty, surely, to tell people when they’re being conned or told lies.
  • I am, by inclination, anti-authoritarian and forever sceptical of anything the agents of power want to tell us.

Telling the stories of ordinary people

  • Like many of his generation, he moved to the UK in the early 1960s and worked for The Daily Mirror, Reuters and ITV’s investigative program World in Action.
  • He reported on conflicts in Bangladesh, Biafra, Cambodia and Vietnam and was named newspaper journalist of the year in Britain in 1967 and 1979.
  • He made more than 50 documentaries.
  • He did this by telling the stories of ordinary people he had encountered, whether miners in Durham, England, refugees from Vietnam, or American soldiers returning from the Vietnam War – not to parades, but to lives dislocated by the silence and shame surrounding the war’s end.

The world has lost a resolutely dissenting voice

  • In Welcome to Australia [Pilger’s 1999 film], he concentrated on the bad things that were happening but not the good.
  • He’s a polemicist and, if you want to arouse people’s passions and anger, the stronger the polemic, the better.
  • Whatever flaws there are in Pilger’s journalism, it feels dispiriting that on the first day of a new year clouded by wars, inaction on climate change and a presidential election in the US where democracy itself is on the ballot, the world has lost another resolutely dissenting voice in the media.


Matthew Ricketson is the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s representative on the Australian Press Council.

Politics with Michelle Grattan: Former climate minister Greg Combet on Australia's mission to reach net-zero

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, November 8, 2023

As climate minister in the former Labor government, Greg Combet has endured the rigours of the “climate wars”.

Key Points: 
  • As climate minister in the former Labor government, Greg Combet has endured the rigours of the “climate wars”.
  • He oversaw the highly contentious move to put a price on carbon, which ultimately came to grief under the Abbott government.
  • Fast forward a decade: now Combet has been appointed by Anthony Albanese to chair the government’s new Net-Zero Economy Agency.
  • Combet has previously referred to Australia’s transition to renewable energy as “akin to post-war reconstruction”.

Making money green: Australia takes its first steps towards a net zero finance strategy

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, November 8, 2023

This article is part of a series by The Conversation, Getting to Zero, examining Australia’s energy transition.

Key Points: 
  • This article is part of a series by The Conversation, Getting to Zero, examining Australia’s energy transition.
  • Just north of Jamestown in South Australia, 70 kilometres east of the Spencer Gulf and next to a wind farm of nearly 100 turbines, stands the world’s first big battery.
  • Australia aspires not only to transition its economy to net zero emissions, but to become a green energy superpower.

The size of the green finance challenge

  • These financial flows need to grow by 21% a year, on average.
  • Without this enormous increase, the economic transition will not happen in time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
  • Successive Australian governments have been slow to grasp this reality, and we are now playing catch-up with many other countries.

Australia releases its strategy

  • The Australian government’s Sustainable Finance Strategy, released by Treasurer Jim Chalmers last Thursday, lays solid foundations for this recovery.
  • Yet more needs to be done if Australia is to achieve the strategy’s stated ambition to be a global sustainability finance leader.
  • The strategy is arranged around three core pillars.
  • Read more:
    How to beat 'rollout rage': the environment-versus-climate battle dividing regional Australia

    Large companies will also be required to disclose their net zero transition plan, if they have one.

Fighting greenwashing

  • ASIC Deputy Chair Karen Chester believes the economic cost and loss of investor confidence caused by greenwashing “cannot be overstated”.
  • Her organisation has set out guidelines to help financial institutions identify it.
  • These bonds are designed to establish standards for lending and borrowing for all green finance; they will also help the government to fund projects such as electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

What’s missing from the strategy?

  • And Australia ranks only 30th in a list of countries on its share of talent for green finance.
  • If the financing of the transition were a bicycle race, Australia has now caught up to the global peloton.


Alison Atherton is a member of the Australian Sustainable Finance Institute's Capability Reference Group Gordon Noble does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Beyond Juukan Gorge: how First Nations people are taking charge of clean energy projects on their land

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, October 26, 2023

Many of the big wind and solar farms planned to help Australia achieve net zero emissions by 2050 will be built on the lands and waters of First Nations peoples.

Key Points: 
  • Many of the big wind and solar farms planned to help Australia achieve net zero emissions by 2050 will be built on the lands and waters of First Nations peoples.
  • More than half of the projects that will extract critical minerals to drive the global clean energy transition overlap with Indigenous-held lands.
  • Australia’s Pilbara and Kimberley regions have high rates of Indigenous land tenure, while hosting some of world’s best co-located solar and wind energy resources.

The long but hopeful journey back from Juukan Gorge

  • First, the furore and subsequent parliamentary inquiry following the Juukan Gorge incident forced the resignation of Rio Tinto boss Jean-Sebastien Jacques.
  • Companies were put on notice that they can no longer run roughshod over First Nations communities.
  • Third, there is a question whether the Native Title Act allows large-scale clean energy developments to go ahead without native title holders’ permission.
  • Because these agreements are voluntary, native title holders can refuse to allow large wind and solar farms on their Country.

Promising partnerships on the road to net zero

  • Many significant proposed projects announced in the last few years show huge promise in terms of First Nations ownership and control.
  • Still, much more needs to happen to provide Indigenous communities with proper consent and control.
  • And much needed reforms to cultural heritage laws in WA were scrapped following a backlash from farmers.

Why free, prior and informed consent is crucial

  • So long as governments can compulsorily acquire native title to expedite a renewable energy project and miners are allowed to mine critical minerals (or any mineral) without native title holders’ consent, the net zero transition will transgress this internationally recognised right.
  • Communities must decide the forms participation takes – full or part ownership, leasing and so on – after they have properly assessed their options.
  • Rapid electrification through wind and solar developments cannot come at the expense of land clearing and loss of biodiversity.


Ganur Maynard was formerly a member of the steering committee of the First Nations Clean Energy Network. Brad Riley, Janet Hunt, and Lily O'Neill do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Press release - MEPs back plans to boost Europe's Net-Zero technology production

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, October 26, 2023

In their amendments, MEPs broadened the scope of the draft legislation to encompass the entire supply chain, including components, materials, and machinery for producing net-zero technologies.

Key Points: 
  • In their amendments, MEPs broadened the scope of the draft legislation to encompass the entire supply chain, including components, materials, and machinery for producing net-zero technologies.
  • Notably, MEPs included nuclear fission and fusion technologies, sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs), and specific industrial technologies.
  • Net-zero industry valleys
    The law retains two project classifications: net-zero technology manufacturing projects and net-zero strategic projects.
  • Quote
    "With the adoption of this proposal, MEPs are showing they are serious about making Europe fit for industrial manufacturing.

How smaller businesses can become net-zero influencers and enablers

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Cafes and restaurants are also addressing food-related emissions with carbon labelling schemes and more sustainable menu choices.

Key Points: 
  • Cafes and restaurants are also addressing food-related emissions with carbon labelling schemes and more sustainable menu choices.
  • Recruiting smaller businesses to support the drive for net zero makes a lot of sense.
  • But the decarbonisation of smaller firms has only recently attracted serious attention from policymakers, through initiatives such as the UK Business Climate Hub.
  • However, as highlighted in a recent study I worked on with colleagues at Oxford and Sheffield Hallam universities, smaller businesses can also help cut emissions as behavioural “influencers” and “enablers” of change.

Persistent challenges and hopeful signs

    • But all businesses could benefit from a more joined-up support framework to help them achieve their goals.
    • By contrast, smaller businesses in England have not had access to a national funding programme for building energy efficiency.
    • This generates cost and confusion for many smaller businesses as they struggle to find the right support.

Taking SMEs more seriously

    • But while Skidmore mentions SMEs, there are three key areas where more radical change is needed to help them make a real impact on the UK’s decarbonisation goals: 1.
    • Information and signposting The review proposed a “Help to Grow Green” campaign, offering information, resources and vouchers for SMEs to plan and invest in the net-zero transition.
    • The UK government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is piloting a new digital energy advice service to help SMEs navigate the maze of competing information sources.
    • Energy efficiency Skidmore also called for SMEs to be included in tax reforms to accelerate uptake of energy-efficient technologies.

Browser check - Consilium

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, October 12, 2023

The proposal extends the scope of the directive and asks member states to set up plans for large cities to handle urban runoff from rainwater.

Key Points: 
  • The proposal extends the scope of the directive and asks member states to set up plans for large cities to handle urban runoff from rainwater.
  • NDCs are an integral part of the Paris Agreement, which requires each party to the convention to communicate their post-2020 climate actions.
  • NDCs set out the efforts made by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
  • Poland will inform the ministers on the impact of the EU carbon market on different EU policies.