Carbon

• The regulation, addressing emissions from new trucks, buses and trailers, was endorsed by MEPs with 341 votes in favour, 268 against and 14 abstentions.
• CO2 emissions from large trucks (including vocational vehicles, such as garbage trucks, tippers or concrete mixers) and buses will have to be reduced by 45% for the period 2030-2034, 65% for 2035-2039 and 90% as of 2040.
• By 2030, new urban buses will need to reduce their emissions by 90% and become zero-emission vehicles by 2035.
• Emissions reduction targets are also set for trailers (7.5%) and semi-trailers (10%), starting from 2030.

• In 2022, America launched its mammoth Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act.
• China, of course, moved first, and dominates the market for most clean energy products, from solar panels to wind turbines and batteries.
• For Australia, efforts to reshore manufacturing and stimulate new industries should focus on supporting and stimulating regions.
• If they becomes reality, these plans present a rare chance to make our regions into sustainable economic powerhouses.

Boosting the regions

• The developer could employ locals, and – if efforts to bring back manufacturing pay off – locally made components could be used wherever possible.
• This is why the proposed Future Made In Australia Act is a very real opportunity to deliver energy justice for our regions and rural communities.
• Queensland might be a first mover here by legally defining social license and requiring renewable energy developers to engage with communities.
• Read more:
  Made in America: how Biden's climate package is fuelling the global drive to net zero

Could Australian-made really work?

• There’s a low chance we will go directly head-to-head with green energy giants such as China.
• For instance, we’re already one of the world’s top per capita users of solar, and our food exports are highly regarded.
• Australia has world-leading solar photovoltaic expertise, which we could tap into to create custom-designed agrivoltaics solutions, co-designed with farmers.

• The timing is good – the World Economic Forum earlier this year called for better financing and development of these types of technologies.
• Like agrivoltaics, these kinds of inventions offer double benefits – cut carbon emissions, boost farm productivity.

We should use our comparative advantages

• But what is clear is it represents a real chance for our regional and rural communities to lead the energy transition.
• And we can do it while uplifting the regional and rural communities which will play home to this transition.

Madeline Taylor is a Clean Energy Council Chloe Munro Scholar, is a Fellow at the Climate Council, and is on the Board of REAlliance,

• A strange and enormous jawbone was discovered on the English coastline eight years ago, but my team was hesitant to identify it as a new species until more specimens came to light.
• Now, with the discovery of a second giant jawbone several years later, we have named a new species of ichthyosaur, an ancient marine reptile.
• In 2016, prolific fossil hunter Paul de la Salle, unearthed a giant jawbone on the beach at Lilstock in Somerset.
• My team, including De la Salle, studied this discovery and published our findings in 2018 in the journal PLOS One.

• The preservation and fine detail provided new information that also helped us to better reinterpret De la Salle’s original bone.
• We therefore erected a new genus (taxonomic rank) and species of giant ichthyosaur that we called Ichthyotitan severnensis, meaning “giant fish lizard of the Severn”.

Blue whale-sized giants

• Using a basic formula called a simple scaling factor, we can estimate that our ichthyosaur was up to 26 metres long, about the size of a blue whale.
• Comparisons with the same bone in other ichthyosaurs suggests that Ichthyotitan was between 20 and 26 metres in length.
• We have to be careful with such estimations due to differences among species, such as those with long or short snouts.
• At 202 million years old, the fossils narrowly predate a global extinction event that eradicated these giants – and marine reptiles would never reach such a size again.

Anyone can make a contribution

• I asked them whether they would like to join my team to study this fossil and they agreed.
• Ruby Reynolds is now a published scientist who not only found but also helped to name a gigantic prehistoric reptile.
• Palaeontology is one of those sciences where anybody can make a significant contribution.

Dean Lomax worked with Paul de la Salle, Marcello Perillo, Justin and Ruby Reynolds and Jimmy Waldron of the Dinosaurs Will Always Be Awesome Museum on the referenced research. He dedicates the work to Paul de la Salle who found the first surangular in 2016.

• Canada’s oil and gas sector is in the throes of profound change driven by shifting consumer demand and global commitments to dramatically lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
• But are industry and politicians sincere in their affection for oil and gas workers?
• Or, are energy workers merely a convenient vehicle to shield the industry from change that many Canadians believe is inevitable?

Picket lines

• We found the company used expanding pipeline capacity and Canada’s emission reduction policies to justify its push to force workers to take concessions.
• The lockout came to an end in June 2020 when Local 594 members ratified an agreement with FCL.

“Just” transition?

• Just this month federal Conservatives, conservative provincial governments and protesters came out strong against the increase to the Trudeau government’s signature climate policy — the price on carbon.
• The Liberal government has faced significant backlash against its other climate policies as well, including the oil and gas emissions cap.
• Conservatives position themselves as the voice of fossil fuel workers, who they cast as victims of carbon pricing and other federal environmental policies.
• Shuttered factories and their laid-off employees are victims of Liberal anti-oil policies, industry proponents insist.

Questions unanswered

• Time and again governments, local police and courts advanced the interests of industry over those of unionized workers.
• Or, will the inevitable winding down of extractive fossil fuel industries lead to acrimonious labour relations and social injustice?
• The path designed by powerful oil and gas interests is not one that puts workers or communities first.

• Emily Eaton receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
• Andrew Stevens receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the University of Regina (U of R fund: Unifor Scholar in Labour Relations).