Australia’s fertility rate has fallen to a new record low of 1.5 babies per woman. That’s well below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 needed to sustain a country’s population.
On face value, it might not seem like a big deal. But we can’t afford to ignore this issue. The health of an economy is deeply intertwined with the size and structure of its population.
Australians simply aren’t having as many babies as they used to, raising some serious questions about how we can maintain our country’s workforce, sustain economic growth and fund important services.
So what’s going on with fertility rates here and around the world, and what might it mean for the future of our economy? What can we do about it?
Are lower birth rates always a problem?
Falling fertility rates can actually have some short-term benefits. Having fewer dependent young people in an economy can increase workforce participation, as well as boost savings and wealth.
Smaller populations can also benefit from increased investment per person in education and health.
But the picture gets more complex in the long term, and less rosy. An ageing population can strain pensions, health care and social services. This can hinder economic growth, unless it’s offset by increased productivity.
Other scholars have warned that a falling population could stifle innovation, with fewer young people meaning fewer breakthrough ideas.
In the short term, lower birth rates can mean more is able to be spent per-person on services like education. Jandrie Lombard/Shutterstock
A global phenomenon
The trend towards women having fewer children is not unique to Australia. The global fertility rate has dropped over the past couple of decades, from 2.7 babies per woman in 2000 to 2.4 in 2023.
However, the distribution is not evenly spread. In 2021, 29% of the world’s babies were born in sub-Saharan Africa. This is projected to rise to 54% by 2100.
There’s also a regional-urban divide. Childbearing is often delayed in urban areas and late fertility is more common in cities.
In Australia, we see higher fertility rates in inner and outer regional areas than in metro areas. This could be because of more affordable housing and a better work-life balance.
But it raises questions about whether people are moving out of cities to start families, or if something intrinsic about living in the regions promotes higher birth rates.
Fewer workers, more pressure on services
Changes to the makeup of a population can be just as important as changes to its size. With fewer babies being born and increased life expectancy, the proportion of older Australians who have left the workforce will keep rising.
One way of tracking this is with a metric called the old-age dependency ratio – the number of people aged 65 and over per 100 working-age individuals.
In Australia, this ratio is currently about 27%. But according to the latest Intergenerational Report, it’s expected to rise to 38% by 2063.
An ageing population means greater demand for medical services and aged care. As the working-age population shrinks, the tax base that funds these services will also decline.
An ageing population can mean more pressure on tax-payer funded services like healthcare. Chinnapong/Shutterstock
Unless this is offset by technological advances or policy innovations, it can mean higher taxes, longer working lives, or the government providing fewer public services in general.
What about housing?
It’s tempting to think a falling birth rate might be good news for Australia’s stubborn housing crisis.
The issues are linked – rising real estate prices have made it difficult for many young people to afford homes, with a significant number of people in their 20s still living with their parents.
This can mean delaying starting a family and reducing the number of children they have.
At the same time, if fertility rates stay low, demand for large family homes may decrease, impacting one of Australia’s most significant economic sectors and sources of household wealth.
Governments worldwide, including Australia, have long experimented with policies that encourage families to have more children. Examples include paid parental leave, childcare subsidies and financial incentives, such as Australia’s “baby bonus”.
Many of these efforts have had only limited success. One reason is the rising average age at which women have their first child. In many developed countries, including Australia, the average age for first-time mothers has surpassed 30.
As women delay childbirth, they become less likely to have multiple children, further contributing to declining birth rates. Encouraging women to start a family earlier could be one policy lever, but it must be balanced with women’s growing workforce participation and career goals.
Research has previously highlighted the factors influencing fertility decisions, including levels of paternal involvement and workplace flexibility. Countries that offer part-time work or maternity leave without career penalties have seen a stabilisation or slight increases in fertility rates.
Any solutions to falling fertility rates must balance other important factors such as women’s increased workforce participation. Halfpoint/Shutterstock
The way forward
Historically, one of the ways Australia has countered its low birth rate is through immigration. Bringing in a lot of people – especially skilled people of working age – can help offset the effects of a low fertility rate.
However, relying on immigration alone is not a long-term solution. The global fertility slump means that the pool of young, educated workers from other countries is shrinking, too. This makes it harder for Australia to attract the talent it needs to sustain economic growth.
Australia’s record-low fertility rate presents both challenges and opportunities. On one hand, the shrinking number of young people will place a strain on public services, innovation and the labour market.
On the other hand, advances in technology, particularly in artificial intelligence and robotics, may help ease the challenges of an ageing population.
That’s the optimistic scenario. AI and other tech-driven productivity gains could reduce the need for large workforces. And robotics could assist in aged care, lessening the impact of this demographic shift.
The authors 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Higgins, Professor & Director, Institute of Child Protection Studies, Australian Catholic University
An ABC report on Monday revealed a concerning rise in peer-on-peer sexual abuse within Australian primary schools.
Data on Victorian schools shows hundreds of such incidents were reported in 2022 and 2023, with many involving children under the age of ten.
The Australian Child Maltreatment Study also showed rates of sexual abuse inflicted by peers has been increasing. Overall, 18.2% of participants aged 16 to 24 reported being sexually abused by a peer during their childhood, compared to 12.1% of those aged 45 years and over.
Parents may be wondering how they can protect their children at school.
One of the most effective tools parents have is open, regular and age-appropriate conversations with their kids.
It is crucial for parents to talk with their children about boundaries and consent from an early age. For younger children, this can be as simple as teaching them their body belongs to them and no one else has the right to touch them without permission. Asking if its OK for a hug, and respecting when children say “no” is a great start.
When discussing consent, it is important to highlight consent is not just about saying “no”, but also recognising and respecting others’ boundaries.
Peer relationships and trusted adults play a crucial role in a child’s life. Helping children identify adults they can trust if they need to talk about something is also very important. Peers are often the first to hear of concerns or are often the recipients of disclosures, so fostering healthy friendships and teaching children to report to trusted adults is crucial.
Addressing peer pressure and secrecy
Children may feel pressured by peers or may be told to keep certain behaviours secret.
It is essential for parents to emphasise no matter who asks them to keep a secret, they should always share concerns or things they are unsure about with a trusted adult.
Parents can reinforce the message that if someone tells them not to tell, it is a “red flag”.
Children can often feel unsure or scared of whether what has happened is wrong. This is why encouraging openness and creating a nonjudgmental space for children to share is important.
Discussing online safety
Research shows exposure to harmful material, like pornography, is a contributing factor to inappropriate sexual behaviour among peers.
Being aware of your child’s internet use and educating them on how to keep themselves safe online is crucial.
What else can parents do?
While conversations with your children are vital, parents can also take practical steps to ensure their child’s safety at school. These include:
familiarising yourself with school policies: understand the school’s procedures for reporting bullying, harassment and sexual abuse. Parents should ask about how teachers manage supervision during breaks or other occasions where children may be less well unsupervised
getting involved in your child’s social world: knowing who your child’s friends are and staying connected with teachers can offer insight into troubling dynamics. Create opportunities for your child to talk about their friendships and school experiences regularly. And as they start navigating the digital world, it’s even more important to know who they are engaging with
teach assertiveness and confidence: find ways to empower your child to speak up for themselves when they are unsure, or something feels wrong. Don’t leave this up to a class teacher to deal with in respectful relationship education. At home, you can encourage assertiveness in expressing their preferences and boundaries. You can also model how to stand up to peer pressure. Children can learn and be encouraged to say simple phrases such as, “stop, I don’t like it” or “no, I don’t want to”.
If there is a problem
If you do come across an issue or problem, try and work with your school. Despite your distress, try not to be adversarial – rather pitch your conversation to the teacher or principal as “How can I help us work through this together?”
Prevention requires vigilance, communication and support from both parents and schools. Parents play a crucial role in shaping their child’s understanding of what’s OK, what’s harmful, as well as boundaries, safety and consent.
By having ongoing conversations, staying informed, and working with schools, parents are the first step to creating safety for children – and supporting them if something goes wrong.
Daryl Higgins receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council and a range of government departments, agencies, and service providers, including Bravehearts. He was a Chief Investigator on the Australian Child Maltreatment Study.
Gabrielle works with the Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS) team as part of her PhD Candidature. She has also previously worked for Bravehearts in various roles, including for the Turning Corners program, which provides support to young people who have displayed harmful sexual behaviours.
The Australian National Health and Medical research Council (NHMRC) has today released draft guidelines for acceptable levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in drinking water.
PFAS chemicals are also known as “forever chemicals”, because they don’t break down easily and can persist in the environment, including drinking water supplies.
The new guidelines – which are not mandatory but will inform state and territory policy – are expected to be finalised in April 2025. They propose a reduction in the maximum levels previously considered safe for four key PFAS chemicals: PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS and PFBS.
Continually scrutinising and updating our PFAS regulations is important to ensure Australians’ safety. However, these updated guidelines are unlikely to have a significant impact on Australia’s drinking water. The majority of potable water supplies in Australia either have no detectable PFAS, or have levels already below the new limits.
What are PFAS chemicals?
PFAS are highly fat-soluble compounds that are very slow to break down. They are basically long chains of carbon atoms studded with fluorine molecules.
PFAS chemicals are inert, water-repellent and heat-resistant. These properties make them ideal for industrial usage and they have been used in firefighting foams and fire-retardant material. They have also been used in common household items such as nonstick pans and stain-resistant fabrics.
Unfortunately, their useful industrial stability means they persist in the environment and can accumulate in the human body. It can take five years for half an ingested dose of PFAS to be removed.
Given PFAS chemicals have the potential to mimic the body’s own fats, there has been concern they could harm our health if sufficient amounts accumulated in the body.
What sorts of health effects are they linked to?
The buildup of a chemical that’s hard to remove from our bodies is always of concern. Despite this, the potential health risks appear to be low. In 2018 the Australian Expert Health Panel for PFAS looked in detail at the evidence.
One of the largest concerns was PFAS chemicals’ ability to increase levels of cholesterol in the blood, potentially increasing heart disease risk. However, studies of people who have been chronically exposed to significant levels of PFOA have not shown statistically significant increases in heart disease.
In 2018, the report from Australia’s expert health panel stated:
Evidence to date does not establish whether PFAS at exposure levels seen in Australia might increase risks of cardiovascular disease… Established risk factors … are likely to be of a much greater magnitude than those potentially caused by PFAS.
Cancer has also been a concern. However the expert panel found no consistent evidence that PFAS chemicals are associated with cancer. One study even found exposure to PFOA decreased the incidence of bowel cancer.
However, the impact of PFAS on human health is continuously reviewed as new evidence comes to light.
Why has Australia revised its drinking water guidelines?
Australia began to phase out PFAS chemicals in the early 2000s. Since then, the levels of PFAS detected in the Australian population have steadily dropped.
Now that industrial use is being phased out, the main way we are exposed to PFAS is through things like persistent environmental contamination. While drinking water is not a major source of PFAS, water can be contaminated from environmental sources, for example, if contaminated dust or ground water makes its way into reservoirs.
Most drinking water levels in Australia either have no detectable PFAS or are already below the new levels. Juergen_Wallstabe/Shutterstock
The NHMRC periodically reviews the health evidence around PFAS used to develop these guidelines, which were last updated in 2018. The latest review looks at additional evidence available since then.
A few developments were of particular interest in this review: studies about the influence of PFAS on thyroid function. Altering thyroid function can be problematic because thyroid hormones regulate our metabolism, growth and development.
The International Agency for Cancer Research’s (IARC) recent ruling on PFAS and cancer also needed to be investigated. The IARC has classified PFOS – one of the four key chemicals Australia is regulating – as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. However the IARC noted there was “inadequate” evidence PFOS directly causes any type of cancer in people.
This agency can rule on the probability that a chemical can cause cancer under any possible exposure, no matter how extreme. But it doesn’t evaluate the risk of cancer from ordinary exposure.
This means the NHMRC needed to reevaluate the evidence that the levels present in drinking water would constitute a risk.
What are the new PFAS limits?
The NHRMC considered evidence about PFAS exposure in animal studies, and by looking at human epidemiology.
In studies involving animals, the NHMRC review paid particular attention to what concentration of PFAS exposure had no effect on their health. This threshold is used to determine limits for humans, by adding a safety buffer usually a hundred times lower than the level that was safe for animals.
The limits are set are carefully considering the evidence about impact on human health, as well as evaluating how much PFAS exposure is likely from sources beyond drinking water, such as food and inhaled dust.
The proposed limits are:
Note: PFOS and PFHxS are now regulated separately. NHMRC
These guidelines are unlikely to have a significant impact on health. As the NHMRC report shows, majority of potable water supplies in Australia have no detectable PFAS, or levels are already below these new limits.
For example, drinking water sampling for WaterNSW found PFOS levels were between 1.2ng/L and undectable. Similar results were found for PFHxS (between 1.4 and 0.1ng/L) and PFOA (basically undetectable).
While the concentration of PFAS in bores near contamination sites are higher, these are typically not used as sources of drinking water.
The Australian guidelines differ from some international guidelines. The draft guidelines note that different jurisdictions place different weighting on animal and human evidence, and this will affect these regulatory levels.
The draft guidelines are now open to public consultation, with submissions closing on November 22 2024. Final guidelines are expected to be released in April 2025.
Ian Musgrave has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council to study adverse reactions to herbal medicines and has previously been funded by the Australian Research Council to study potential natural product treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. He has collaborated with SA Water on studies of cyanobacterial toxins and their implication for drinking water quality.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Austin Kay, Researcher in Sustainable Advanced Materials, Centre for Integrative Semiconductor Materials, Swansea University
As the world races to meet net-zero targets, emissions from all industrial sectors must be reduced more urgently than ever. Agriculture is an important area of focus as it contributes up to 22% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
One approach to decarbonising agriculture involves integrating solar panels – or photovoltaics (PVs) – into fields of crops, greenhouses and livestock areas. Often known as agrivoltaics, this can help farmers reduce their carbon footprint while continuing to produce food.
Agrivoltaics can also mitigate one of the main criticisms often made of solar power – that solar farms “waste” vast tracts of agricultural land that could otherwise be used for food production. In reality, solar farms currently occupy only 0.15% of the UK’s total land – not much compared to the 70% of land devoted to agriculture.
The simplest example of an agrivoltaic system would be conventional, crystalline silicon PVs (the market-leading type of solar panels), installed in fields alongside livestock. This method of farm diversification has become increasingly popular in recent years for three main reasons.
First, it enhances biodiversity as it means the fields are not being used for just one crop (monoculture), undergoing regular crop rotation, or being harvested for silage. Second, it increases production as livestock benefit from the shade and the healthier pasture growth.
Finally, the solar farm has reduced maintenance costs because livestock can keep the grass short. All this is achieved while the solar panels provide locally generated, clean energy.
However, if they’re not set up properly, agrivoltaics may still cause problems. One of the most important challenges, when used in fields where crops are grown, is balancing the need for sunlight between crops and solar panels. Crops need light to grow, and if solar panels block too much sunlight, they can negatively impact crop yields.
This issue varies from place to place. In countries with fewer sunny days like the UK, the panels need to let more sunlight through. But in places like Spain or Italy, some shade can actually help crops by reducing the stress of intense heat during summer months. Finding the right balance is tricky, as it depends on local conditions, the type of crop, and even the needs of pollinators like bees.
The complexity deepens when we consider the type of PV material used. Traditional solar panels aren’t always suitable because they often block the wavelengths (colours) of light needed by plants.
This is where newer materials, like organic semiconductors and perovskites, are ideal as they can be customised to let crops get the light they need while still generating energy. Unlike traditional inorganic semiconductors, which are essentially crystals of metal and metalloid atoms, organic semiconductors are molecules mainly made of carbon and hydrogen. Perovskites, meanwhile, are like a hybrid of organic and inorganic semiconductors.
In fact there are thousands of combinations of these materials to choose from, with scientific literature containing a plethora of options. Figuring out which one works best can be a daunting task.
This is where computational tools can make a big difference. Instead of testing each material in real-world conditions – which would take years and be incredibly expensive – researchers can use simulations to predict their performance. These models can help identify the best materials for specific crops and climates, saving both time and resources.
The tool
We have developed an open-source tool that helps compare various PV materials, making it easier to identify the best options for agrivoltaics. Our tool uses geographical data and realistic simulations of how different PV materials perform.
It considers how light travels through these materials and reflects off them, as well as other important performance measures like voltage and power output. The tool can also take lab-based measurements of PV materials and apply them to real-world scenarios.
Using this tool, we simulated how much power different PV materials could generate per square metre over the course of a year, across various regions. And we calculated how much light passed through these materials to ensure it was enough for crops to thrive.
By running these simulations for multiple materials, we could identify the most suitable options for specific crops and climates.
Tools like ours could play a critical role in decarbonising the agricultural sector by guiding the design of agrivoltaic systems. Future research could combine these simulations with economic and environmental impact analyses. This would help us understand how much energy we can expect from a solar panel over its lifetime compared to the resources and costs involved in producing it.
Ultimately, our tool could help researchers and policymakers in selecting the most efficient, cost-effective and eco-friendly ways to decarbonise agriculture and move us closer to achieving global net-zero emissions.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Austin Kay is a Postgraduate Student at Swansea University and receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through program grant EP/T028513/1 Application Targeted and Integrated Photovoltaics.
In a significant diplomatic manoeuvre that may have far-reaching implications for the international system of alliances, Turkey has submitted a formal request to join Brics, the group of emerging-market economies, signalling its intent to diversify its partnerships beyond the west.
The Brics grouping, named after Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, comprises some of the world’s largest economies. Earlier this year, it welcomed four new members: Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Egypt. Although Saudi Arabia has been invited to join, the official process is yet to take place. Often viewed as an alternative to western-led organisations such as the EU, G7 and Nato, Brics signifies a significant shift in global power dynamics.
Ankara’s decision could be a strategy to strengthen relations with non-western powers as the global economy’s centre continues to shift away from the west, but is also about chasing more trade with Brics members.
Announced ahead of the Brics summit starting on October 22, Turkey’s application has raised questions about the broader implications for its role within Nato. If accepted, Turkey would be the first Nato member of Brics. However, this is not to say that Turkey is entirely turning away from the west. Turkey’s institutional ties with the western world run deep. At most, this move signals Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s intention to increase the government’s flexibility in its foreign relations.
Erdoğan said on September 1 that this move shows Ankara’s aims to cultivate ties with all sides simultaneously to “become a strong, prosperous, prestigious and effective country if it improves its relations with the east and the west simultaneously”.
Turkey’s acceptance into the group could be discussed during the upcoming 16th Brics summit, in Kazan, Russia. Malaysia, Thailand and Azerbaijan are among other countries expecting to join.
Between east and west
Turkey’s balancing act between east and west is not a recent phenomenon but a continuation of its policies since the end of the cold war, and is in line with its geographical position at the edge of Europe and Asia.
This strategy has been central to Turkey’s intricate, at times conflicting, approach to international relations and remains pertinent in an increasingly complex world. The shift from a unipolar world – the idea that the world is dominated by one super power – to one with more global powers has led all governments to reassess their foreign policies, and Ankara is no different.
Turkey’s longstanding commitment to Nato makes it highly unlikely that its willingness to join the Brics group signifies a move away from its western allies. Since 2016, Turkey has strengthened its economic, political, and military ties with Russia and China, and its recent application to the Brics group reflects this trend. According to some experts in Turkish foreign policy, while this development may raise concerns in western capitals, there is no pressing reason for the west to be alarmed about Turkey making concessions to Russia or acting independently of Nato.
There are two incentives driving Turkey’s application. According to Sinan Ülgen, director of the Istanbul-based Centre for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies: “The first is Turkey’s aspiration to enhance its strategic autonomy in foreign policy which essentially involves improving ties with non-western powers like Russia and China in a way to balance the relationship with the west. The second is the accumulated frustrations over the relationship with the west. For example, the EU has not even been able to decide on the start of negotiations on the updating of the customs union, its trade deal with Turkey that dates back to 1996.”
Turkey has been keen on joining the Brics group since 2018. Putin, during a meeting with Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan in Moscow in June this year, welcomed Ankara’s interest and promised that Moscow “will support this desire to be together with the countries of this alliance [Brics], to be together, closer, to solve common problems”.
Since the war in Ukraine, Russia has been making extra efforts to gain the support of more countries. Turkey holds a particular significance in this effort due to its strategic location, and its control of the Black Sea straits, an essential trade route for both Ukraine and Russia. The Black Sea has played an important part in the Ukraine war, and Turkey has been part of an alliance that has stymied Russia’s attempts to fully control the waters, and allowed Ukraine to continue to use the waters.
The Montreux Convention regulates maritime traffic through the Turkish Straits. The convention distinguishes between Black Sea and non-Black Sea powers, acknowledging specific advantages for the former, which includes Ukraine and Russia.
In March 2022, Erdoğan indicated that the convention allows Turkey to restrict the passage of naval vessels belonging to warring parties. Putin may be hoping that with Turkey on board as a Brics ally he may be able to persuade Ankara to give him more leeway. Currently Russia’s inability to control the Black Sea and cargo ships within it are seriously weakening its ability to constrain Ukraine’s economy.
Turkey anticipates that Brics membership will enhance its geopolitical standing and expand its economic influence, especially in non-western markets. Most importantly, leveraging its geopolitical position to influence global affairs and pursuing a more balanced and diversified foreign policy.
It is evident that Turkey aims to maintain its connections with the west while also desiring the flexibility to engage with other regions. It is highly improbable that this would lead to a significant overhaul of Turkey’s ties with western countries. It may, however, cause concern among fellow Nato members about how much they can rely on Turkey in the future.
Bulent Gökay 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.
There is a city nearby that we hide from view. Its people are of all ages, ethnicities and classes. What unites them is a disease: all are diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME.
We hide them there because we don’t know where else to put them. Like a plague village, we have no plans to treat them, to study their disease or to trial possible drugs for them. We could choose to draw up such plans, to give the residents hope for their future health. But our country’s choice is to turn away and forget about these 250,000-plus inhabitants altogether. A city the size of Brighton that we deliberately ignore.
Worse, when we don’t ignore them, we blame them, telling them that they are all free to rise from their beds and wheelchairs, to walk away from the city. Doctors tell them they can free themselves of the disease by changing their belief systems. Make the effort, they say, and you will regain your health and previous lives.
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Outwardly, the city is quiet: its clocks have stopped, the streets are empty and house blinds are drawn. Inwardly, some lie still in their darkened rooms, masks on to protect them from their light sensitivity, keeping within their limited energy level, unable to tolerate sound, food and touch – lives spent in the shadows, barely lived. Inside, they feel like they have life-sapping toxins coursing through their veins. They say it feels like being on the verge of death; some even call it a “pseudo dying syndrome”.
A brief conversation with a friend, or washing their hair, or a sudden movement causes their symptoms to flare. This intensifies a fatigue that sleep cannot alleviate, and heightens their muscle or joint pain, headaches, or sensitivities to food, light or sound.
Simon McGrath, a close friend of mine who has lived with ME and written about it for 20 years, tells me:
I never know how much it is safe for me to do. It’s like I’m surrounded by an electric fence that will trigger a bad day if I touch it. But the fence is invisible, and moves every day.
A ‘scandal’ so much more than chronic fatigue
Fatigue does not begin to describe this disease, despite its other name being chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS. “A bad day is like a very bad hangover lasting 24 hours or more: the morning after, without the night before,” Simon explains. “But with much more pain, much more fatigue and very bad brain fog. I feel as if all the neurons in my skull have collapsed and disconnected from each other.” By spotlighting fatigue, ME’s other name fails to convey its many debilitating symptoms.
Simon – or, rather, his illness – is why I am a ME researcher. At university, where we met, he graduated with a biochemistry degree, fizzing with energy and talent. His ME soon dimmed his bright future but would not stop him making a difference to the ME community through his writing, and in helping me understand this horrible disease.
The Times journalist, Sean O’Neill, says that ME is “routinely stigmatised and ignored by the NHS” and calls it “a scandal waiting for its Post Office moment”. O’Neill and his family had to endure the inquest into the death of his daughter, Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who died from natural causes because of severe ME.
Maeve’s ME left her unable to move, communicate or tolerate light, sound or touch. She did not want to go to hospital because, according to her GP, she “always gets worse when [she] goes in”.
Why is it that we give the least or worst treatments to those who are most in need?
Exile and misogyny
ME exiles people from their family, friends, and hoped-for futures. For most, this banishment is for life because nine in ten will never recover, and also because we expend too little effort to end this wicked disease.
That’s the irony – it’s society’s lack of effort to understand this illness and its treatment; our societal inertia; our failure to accept patients’ symptoms that perpetuate their exile.
So let’s attempt to diagnose what causes our apathy towards this cruel disease. The chief cause is misogyny, an ingrained prejudice born of the disease’s strong female bias: for every five women living with ME, there is only one man. It also has a strong age bias – young men are ten times less likely to be diagnosed with it than older women.
Another female-dominant disease is endometriosis. Like ME, the medical establishment is only just starting to appreciate the full nature of this debilitating condition.
In her memoir, Giving up the Ghost, the prize-winning novelist Hilary Mantel said of her endometriosis: “The more I said that I had a physical illness, the more they said I had a mental illness. The more I questioned the nature, the reality of the mental illness, the more I was found to be in denial, deluded.”
ME patients also report feeling that their concerns and symptoms are all too often dismissed.
Women with ME have spoken about their experiences of medical misogyny. For example, I talked to the Vikings actress Jennie Jacques who has spoken openly about her experiences of ME. She said that “Medical misogyny [is] at the heart of it. ME was psychologised when it most definitely shouldn’t have been”.
When later asked by ME specialistByron Hyde MD “why had he written up the Free Hospital epidemics as hysteria without any careful exploration of the basis of his thesis?”, McEvedy responded devastatingly, saying: “It was an easy PhD, why not?”
In the US, female-biased conditions attract less funding than male-biased ones. Funding for ME is 400-times less than for HIV/Aids, a male-biased disease, once their different disease burdens are accounted for.
In 2021, the previous UK government acknowledged the problem stating: “Studies suggest gender biases in clinical trials and research are contributing to worse health outcomes for women.”
COVID empathy?
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic should have woken us up from our collective lethargy, and should have turned apathy into empathy. For then there were times when we all became housebound, often sick with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and moreover so many of us – a million people, more than Liverpool and Manchester combined – came down with Long COVID.
Long COVID and ME share so many symptoms: post-exertional malaise, fatigue, widespread pain, disordered sleep, and brain fog. This overlap should never have surprised us – after all, two-thirds of people with ME report having had a triggering infection, such as glandular fever, just prior to their initial symptoms. Around 10% of people with glandular fever go on to develop ME symptoms.
It is as if we have our own brain fog, obscuring everyone with ME, forgetting how we – if fortune had been different – might have been them.
If we do not act to reduce the spread of infection, through immunisation and better ventilation, then numbers of people with long COVID – and other ME-like illnesses – will continue to rise, as infections so often trigger these conditions.
Going back to Simon, ME made him housebound, then bedbound. The NHS treated him with therapies based on increasing activity levels (Graded Exercise Therapy, or GET). This involves “gradually increasing physical activity to improve fitness and get the body used to activity again”.
The other NHS treatment approach, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), is about changing “illness beliefs”. Here, patients are asked to examine “how thoughts, behaviour and CFS/ME symptoms interact with each other”.
But these treatments are ineffective as cures. And worse still, for the majority of 11,000 people with ME on one survey, GET did more harm then good.
In a different online survey, of 542 ME patients, 81% responded that their symptoms worsened because of GET treatment. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines, revised in 2021, say that CBT is not curative and that GET should not be offered to people with ME. Yet this new guidance has been implemented by only 28% of English NHS Trusts and Integrated Care Boards.
So, despite GET being described by patients as causing harm, and CBT as being ineffective as a cure, they are still being offered as a treatment. Over decades, very little has changed for Simon and hundreds of thousands of others with ME.
As we grew older together, Simon watched as I changed scientific career from physics into biology. I watched as his health might begin to rebuild, before suddenly collapsing, setting him back months or years. His ME has cost so much, he told me:
It’s so isolating and there’s so much loss. I got ill in the prime of life. It cost me relationships, my social life, my career, the chance of a family, the chance to contribute. Everything. Plenty of people seem to think it’s a lifestyle choice. Nobody would choose this.
As if his ME burden was not heavy enough, he started to carry other long-term health conditions, which each alone would bring me to my knees. Even though he does not feel it, I see his strength and resolution in adversity. At a time when biomedical evidence was rarely championed, he began his ME blog, and together with co-authors re-analysed clinical trial data. They concluded that the “recovery rates in the CBT and GET groups were not significantly higher than those in the control, no-therapy group”.
His own experience of ME, and his scientific eye-for-detail, make him a go-to person for people in the ME community.
In contrast, by 2013, and despite my decades of scientific training and academic privileges, I had done nothing for ME research. Why did I hesitate? “It’s not my scientific area,” I told myself. I trusted other researchers to identify effective and potentially curative treatments soon.
I was unprepared for the shock of my first ME research meetings. When studying other diseases, I had become used to vast conference halls brimming with celebrated scientists, enthusiastic PhD students, science prize winners, funders, and journal editors, all on the hunt for the next big breakthrough, grant or career opportunity.
For ME, however, the rooms were small and half-empty, funders and journal editors were nowhere to be seen, and researchers were talking at cross-purposes, showing sparse data from small-scale studies. These meetings were also empty of robust evidence for what physiologically had gone wrong for so many. At each meeting, a single word came to my mind: “forsaken” – those who others shun, neglect and abandon, whose existence is denied. I could not then, in all conscience, turn my back and walk away.
Not once have I regretted this decision. Its professional cost – measured in traditional markers of esteem, such as “glamour” publications, international conference and seminar invitations – has been more than offset by the fulfilment from working in this long-neglected field.
The extent of scientific disinterest in ME is clear: so far this year, there have been 17-times more publications mentioning “multiple sclerosis” than those mentioning ME or CFS, despite MS being rarer.
New study
My privilege now is to walk ME’s city of stolen futures alongside many people – like Simon – whose lost decades have been spent searching for their disease’s root causes. Together, for two-and-a-half years our team went back-and-forth with the Medical Research Council MRC and the National Institute for Health and Care Research NIHR. Eventually, we managed to secure a £3.2m award for DecodeME, a hunt for ME’s genetic causes.
DecodeME is not just the world’s largest study of the genetic causes of ME, but it was the first to place people with experience of ME at its heart. A total of 27,000 people with ME in the UK took part. We will report the study’s results as soon as we can. When we do, we will give them back first to the ME community whose data and samples we hold in trust.
The UK government has pledged to publish its delivery plan on ME in 2025. Andrew Gwynne MP, parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department of Health and Social Care, has said that it “will focus on boosting research, improving attitudes and education and bettering the lives of people with this debilitating disease”.
This delivery plan will need to be radical.
Today, we urgently need more people to move through this city of lost hope to hear and to listen.
We need scientists to develop new vaccines against infections that trigger ME.
We need researchers, clinical specialists, hospital managers, and politicians to give deserved priority to this long-forsaken community and help lead these long-lost inhabitants back into the land of the well.
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Chris Ponting’s research has been funded by MRC, NIHR, Action for M.E. and ME Research UK.
The Guardian and anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate have revealed the existence of a new network of far-right intellectuals and activists in an undercover investigation. Called the Human Diversity Foundation (HDF), this group advocates scientific racism and eugenics. Although it presents itself as having a scientific purpose, some of its figureheads have political ambitions in Germany and elsewhere.
Research shows these kinds of groups are nothing new and are linked to eugenics groups that have been active since the second world war. Defending the scientific legitimacy of eugenics, these organisations worked to keep a discredited intellectual tradition alive.
First coined by Francis Galton, a prominent Victorian statistician and evolutionary theorist, the term eugenics refers to the study of what Galton considered favourable and unfavourable genetic patterns within the population. Galton believed that the principles of evolutionary theory could be applied to the human species and used to intervene in its genetic fitness.
Galton and other early eugenicists advocated policies that would ensure that groups they believed held “desirable” traits, such as high intelligence, creative ability, or productivity, could reproduce in greater numbers than groups with less favourable genetics. Some even believed that “undesirable” groups should be prevented from reproducing, through forced sterilisation or abortion.
In the 1930s these ideas came to form the bedrock of Nazi race doctrine. Eugenics was a key component of Nazism and shaped both formal fascist ideology and how the Nazi regime treated its victims.
Before the second world war, many researchers regarded eugenics as a legitimate science. But in the aftermath of the war came a shift in attitudes, and scientists and society came to view eugenics as scientifically false and morally objectionable.
Instead of disappearing from academia, however, eugenics merely retreated into the
margins. Racial research became the focus of a handful of groups intent on keeping
the eugenics tradition alive.
Though they operated on the fringes of academia, these groups received financial support from private donors. The most prominent of these donors was the Pioneer Fund, a charity established in 1937 to support race science and white supremacy in the US and elsewhere.
These groups were close-knit. United by a shared sense of exclusion from the
academic mainstream, the people involved were prolific writers and together
generated a large body of work. They inflated their own citation counts by frequently referencing each other’s work and, in this way, established the impression of scientific rigour.
Pseudoscientific journals
Seeking to salvage the reputation of eugenics as a legitimate science, these groups
tended to cluster around journals and periodicals.
Chief among these was Mankind Quarterly, established in 1961 by a group called the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE). Some decades later ownership of the journal was transferred to the Ulster Institute for Social Research, a eugenicist think tank founded and directed by Richard Lynn. Lynn is widely considered the intellectual figurehead of 21st-century eugenics.
The Mankind Quarterly quickly became known as a bastion of scientific racism. It published work by notorious pseudoscientists, neo-fascists, and such controversial political figures as former British MP Enoch Powell, remembered for appealing to racial hatred in his speeches.
Other similar journals emerged in the following decades. In France, Nouvelle École (“New School”) was established in 1967 by a white nationalist group. In Germany, Neue Anthropologie (“New Anthropology”) was first published in 1973.
Reported to have developed out of the Pioneer Fund and to have taken ownership of Mankind Quarterly, the HDF is the successor to earlier groups like the IAAEE and the Ulster Institute.
Today, the eugenics movement is experiencing a period of uncertainty following the
death of Richard Lynn in July 2023. When he died, Lynn was the director of the Pioneer Fund and the editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly. Organisations like HDF, led by people who have worked closely with Lynn, are trying to fill that void.
Whether the HDF will survive public scrutiny remains to be seen. But the broader networks from which it emerged are arguably stronger than at any previous moment in post-war history, facilitated by the rise of the far right and online extremism. All of which means it has never been more important to remember the tradition’s history.
Lars Cornelissen 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.
The first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the beginning of conflict in Gaza left UK schools with a dilemma: how to mark the event. It has affected many around the world, including school children and their families in the UK.
Earlier in 2024, government adviser on social cohesion, Sara Khan, suggested that schools were not supporting reasonable debate about the Israel-Gaza conflict because teachers are nervous about handling such a sensitive topic in the classroom.
But if schools shut down the topic they risk encouraging mistrust, anger, hate and polarisation. Not least because students will instead seek out information online – and are quite likely to stumble upon fake news and conspiracy theories.
The leader of the UK’s biggest education union, Daniel Kebede, recently noted that there simply isn’t enough space in the curriculum for students to discuss such difficult issues. He claims the solution is to embed philosophy as a subject across England’s school curriculum.
The subject of philosophy is specifically set up to promote critical thinking skills and teach people how to have difficult conversations about controversial issues.
Teaching controversial topics
Controversial and sensitive topics are unavoidable. We encounter them discussed in the media, on the news, in the street and in our homes. Yet we are not always sure what to think, especially when the issue is complex, or how to talk to people we disagree with. And the skills of reasonable dialogue can be even harder when emotions are running high.
Young people need to learn how to discuss controversial issues like the Israel-Gaza war. The best way to do this is by including philosophy on the curriculum. Philosophy has an excellent toolkit designed to explore various points of view in a critically engaged way and, when taught dialogically – through discussion between students and teachers – students become seekers of shared knowledge and wisdom.
A key aspect of a democracy involves welcoming different ideas. Such diversity is a strength because it allows for many claims to be scrutinised, with only the best arguments gaining traction. Yet this process of sharing ideas requires our citizens to be able to hold reasoned discussions and to think critically.
The ability to hold reasoned, critical discussion is a valuable skill. fizkes/Shutterstock
To avoid aggression or chaos, people need to engage charitably with one another, being respectful of various experiences and perspectives while also being critical of the ideas presented.
The dialogical skills of philosophy
Philosophy, more than any other subject, encourages students to think about the reasons why they think something, and entertain the possibility that there are other points of view.
Philosophy is inherently dialogical. The most common teaching approach is to think about the steps in an argument, and then to consider the weaknesses in each of these.
Philosophy does this by teaching students to check: What assumptions am I making? Are the premises of my position sound? Does the conclusion logically follow from my starting point? What is a counterargument or counterexample to which I need to reply? Could I be wrong about this? What additional information do I need to draw a conclusion?
These kinds of questions encourage intellectual humility: the idea that I, like anyone else, could be wrong. Intellectual humility goes hand in hand with open-mindedness, ensuring we remain open to relevant new information.
Such skills of critical thinking and respectful disagreement are vital in a time of disinformation and fake news. Not only do we need young people to learn how to fact check and be critical of what they see and hear, but we also need them to learn that it is OK to disagree.
Being open-minded
The influential American philosopher Daniel Dennett, who died earlier this year, wrote about the importance of criticising with kindness and seeking the most charitable version of your opponent’s position. This is so important when discussing controversial topics, because reasonable people will disagree.
Criticising with kindness means staying humble and open to different points of view when having difficult conversations. And it means creating space for the airing of diverse arguments and examples. In this way, teachers who are trained in philosophy are able to remain politically neutral while helping students converse with one another about important issues that affect them and those they care about.
Philosophy is about learning to be respectful of others whose views differ from one’s own and to accept reasonable disagreement. It also teaches us to be comfortable with unsettled questions and complex answers. Teaching philosophy in the classroom leads to students engaging with ideas charitably and critically, encouraging open-mindedness and intellectual humility.
It is the skills of dialogue that we need as our society faces increasing polarisation and violent disagreement. These skills are some of the defining characteristics of a democracy. Happily, teachers are uniquely positioned to embrace the subject of philosophy and the skills it has to offer.
Laura D’Olimpio is co-founding editor of the open access Journal of Philosophy in Schools.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lisa Magdalena Engström, Senior lecturer in Library and information science, Lund University
Shutterstock/Bezbod
Drag story hour is “nothing other than indoctrination and sexualisation of children”, claimed Sweden Democrats politician Jonathan Sager during a session of the local parliament in Kalmar, southern Sweden, in 2022. He was reacting to plans to organise a drag story hour event at the local library, where drag queens would read to children, challenging norms of gender and sexuality. He called (unsuccessfully) for the event to be cancelled.
For someone not familiar with recent political trends in Sweden, Sager’s view may seem out of character for a country known for its tolerance and progressive approach towards sexual minorities. But just like other countries, Sweden is experiencing a backlash against drag story hour events. Public libraries have repeatedly been the target of hatred and threats from radical right actors, including politicians. Culture wars, often associated with the polarised political climate of the US, have now firmly taken root in Scandinavia.
In the US, objections against drag queen story hour form part of a larger wave of protests against LGBTQ+ content in libraries, also manifested in attempts to have certain books banned. Although book bans are not as common in Sweden, tensions have arisen over what children read and who reads to them.
As a result, public libraries, and especially their reading promotion activities for children, are now at the centre of polarising conflicts between the radical right and its opponents.
Sweden is far from immune to the global growth of far-right influence. Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna or SD), became the second largest party in the national parliament following the most recent election in 2022. The current government depends on their support to function. The party has neo-nazi roots and, despite cleaning up appearances, its representatives still push overtly anti-immigration, white supremacist viewpoints.
Like many parties of the radical right, SD promotes a conservative view on culture, gender and family, so its opposition to drag story hour is not surprising. However, there is a deeper conflict over the future of Swedish society at play here, too.
We looked at five instances of political conflict around drag events at libraries in Sweden, finding common themes of dispute over culture and what constitutes a good society.
‘Defending’ our children
In Kalmar, as well as in Trelleborg, another municipality in southern Sweden, local Sweden Democrats have (unsuccessfully) tried to block drag story hours at libraries by arguing that they were “defending” children. In Kalmar, the organiser was accused of “sexualising children”, as though there is something inherently sexual about a drag queen wearing a dress. Sager argued that material that is “gender creative, gender critical or norm critical” should not be used for events involving children.
Historically, reading promotion activities are part of this fear of harmful influence. For instance, certain types of fiction have been portrayed as having a demoralising effect, leading to initiatives that encourage children to read “quality literature” instead. In Sweden, there is less of a debate around the content of children’s literature, so there aren’t US-style arguments about banning books. But there are heated conversations around the act of reading, especially with children.
Reading together teaches children to support democratic values, such as by fostering empathy and understanding. Drag story hour fits well with this perspective because it promotes values of acceptance, diversity and positive self-identification. These are values that are expressions of the characteristic emphasis on equity and pluralism in Swedish cultural policy.
But by ticking these boxes, drag story hour clashes with the politics of the radical right, making the conflict emblematic of a larger tussle over the direction of Nordic cultural policy.
The dilemma of the safe space
The dispute around drag story hour has also inflamed arguments about the meaning of safety in a modern society. Is the safest option to bring security into a library or does that very security compromise the library as a safe space?
In the municipalities of Älmhult and Olofström, in southern Sweden, libraries decided against holding drag story hours because of safety concerns. They felt that bringing in guards was not an option because that would be “completely at odds” with the openness of the library. Visible security measures were seen as incompatible with being a safe space.
In Malmö, drag story times went ahead with security guards in place. Here, a decision had been made that security measures enabled the library to be a safe space via drag story hour.
The controversies over drag queen story telling events at public libraries in Sweden continues. Recently, a drag queen story group filed a charge against 106 people – including five SD politicians – for hate crimes. At the same time, public libraries in many parts of Sweden continue to report successful story telling arrangements in the face of opposition from the radical right.
Fredrik Hanell has received research funding from the Crafoord Foundation (ref. no. 20210680). He is affiliated with the Swedish Green Party.
Hanna Carlsson and Lisa Magdalena Engström 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.
Participation in extreme sports has surged since COVID-19, with 490 million people estimated to be taking part globally. This may have been fuelled by a desire to break free from lockdown-induced monotony and an explosion of media coverage showcasing the allure of high-adrenaline activities.
Extreme sports, like Base jumping, free solo climbing, big wave surfing and downhill mountain biking, once reserved for a small percentage of people, are now becoming more mainstream.
But why are people willing to take such risks? As a climber myself, I was keen to find out. While the popular image of extreme sports participants often revolves around thrill seeking and adrenaline addiction, research from my colleagues and I shows there are far more complex reasons for why people participate.
An extreme sport is defined as one in which a mismanaged mistake or accident would result in serious injury or death.
Research has started to explore the reasons behind extreme sports participation, but there’s still a lot to uncover. Several studies have identified factors like personality, motivation, and even neurobiology as playing a role. But it remains unclear which of these consistently drives people to take part in high-risk sports.
We started our work by conducting a systematic review to consolidate existing research on what drives people to participate in extreme sports. The studies we looked at provided important insights into the various psychological and emotional factors that motivate people to engage in high-risk activities. This helped us build a more complete understanding of the extreme sports mindset. We uncovered five motivational factors.
Red Bull’s international marketing campaign largely revolves around extreme sports.
1. Connection
Participants often describe feeling at one with nature and free from the constraints of everyday life. Many also find a deep sense of belonging in the extreme sports community and are driven by the desire to push their personal boundaries.
2. Personality
While some people are indeed drawn to thrill seeking, many use extreme sports as a tool to regulate difficult emotions. This is particularly true for those with alexithymia, which is when people struggle to identify and express their feelings.
3. Goals
The drive to succeed plays a big role in why people take part in extreme sports. Of course, many athletes are motivated by setting clear goals, whether it’s winning competitions or improving their performance. In this sense, participation in extreme sport is no different from that of more traditional sport.
For many of the respondents in the studies we analysed, goal setting boosts confidence and helps them persist through challenges. Participants also often feel a strong sense of control over their activities and find a sense of community with like-minded people.
4. Managing risk
Far from being reckless, participants are often highly calculated about the risks they take. They thrive on managing risk, finding excitement in navigating dangerous situations rather than avoiding them.
5. Addiction-like urges
Some participants exhibit behaviour resembling addiction, experiencing mood disturbances when not engaging in their chosen extreme sport. This can create a powerful urge to return, a bit like withdrawal symptoms.
People who take part in extreme sport often thrive on managing risk. PhotoFires/Shutterstock
Our findings have broader implications. They challenge the traditional view of extreme sports enthusiasts as mere “adrenaline junkies”. The research suggests that extreme sports could potentially offer therapeutic benefits, particularly for people struggling with emotional regulation.
Far from just being about thrill seeking, these types of activities could provide an outlet for experiencing emotions that might otherwise be hard for some people to access. It opens new avenues for exploring how high-risk activities may be used to support mental health and wellbeing.
My own work in this field is ongoing. Recently, I’ve conducted interviews with elite extreme sport participants to explore their motivations in greater depth. This new research will examine how these motivations shift over time – before, during and after participation. I’m also expanding my studies to compare the motivations driving extreme sport enthusiasts with those of non-extreme sport participants, aiming to uncover what, if anything, truly sets them apart.
Odette Hornby 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.
While many people in the creative industries are worrying that AI is about to steal their jobs, Oscar-winning film director James Cameron is embracing the technology. Cameron is famous for making the Avatar and Terminator movies, as well as Titanic. Now he has joined the board of Stability.AI, a leading player in the world of Generative AI.
In Cameron’s Terminator films, Skynet is an artificial general intelligence that has become self-aware and is determined to destroy the humans who are trying to deactivate it. Forty years after the first of those movies, its director appears to be changing sides and allying himself with AI. So what’s behind this?
Valued at around a billion dollars, Stability.AI was, until recently at least, headquartered above a chicken shop in Notting Hill. It is famous for Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image tool that creates hyperreal pictures from text requests (or prompts) by its users. Now it is moving into AI-created video.
Cameron appears to see their work as a potential game changer in film visual effects: “I was at the forefront of CGI over three decades ago, and I’ve stayed on the cutting edge since. Now, the intersection of generative AI and CGI image creation is the next wave,” he commented in a media release from Stability.AI.
Filmmakers supplement the live action reality that they shoot with two kinds of effects: special effects (SFX) and visual effects (VFX). They come at two different stages of film production. During the shoot, SFX are all the physical effects used to create spectacle – explosions, blood squibs, vehicle crashes, prosthetics, mechanical movement of sets.
During postproduction, VFX are the digital systems that add new elements to live-action filmed images – computer-generated imagery (CGI), compositing, motion capture rendering. They also combine separately shot images together.
A recent development of film technology, Virtual Production, has brought some VFX techniques into the film shoot. This process uses what are known as “games engines” – a technology developed for the creation of video games. Actors are filmed in front of sophisticated LED walls, which screen dynamic, pre-produced virtual worlds around the performer.
The real-world physicality of SFX means that artificial intelligence will have very limited impact here. It is in VFX where AI may have a transformative effect. I’ll be talking about the subject of deepfakes and AI in film at a public lecture on October 30, 2024: ‘Deepfakes and AI in film and media: seeing is not believing’.
We are also investigating the subject through the Synthetic Media Research Network, a group that I co-lead which brings together film creatives, academic researchers and AI developers. I spoke to a member of this collective, Christian Darkin, a VFX artist who now works as Head of Creative AI for Deep Fusion Films.
He sees the impact of generative AI on VFX as creating infinite choice in post-production. In future, filming the actors will be just the beginning. “You’ll put in the background later, you’ll change the camera angles, you’ll change the expressions, you’ll ramp up the emotion in the acting, you’ll change the voices, the costumes, the people’s faces, everything,” Christian told me.
One key motive for the film industry’s incorporation of AI into VFX is simple: the expense of traditional VFX. If you have watched the end credits of a blockbuster movie, you’ll have seen the number of VFX technicians that they employ. Generative AI offers a cheaper way to achieve spectacular screen images, potentially with no loss of quality.
The implication is that a lot of VFX technicians will lose their jobs as a result. However, in conversations that I have had with people working in these roles there’s a sense that, being highly skilled and technologically savvy, they will probably move into new roles in emerging areas of tech.
The ethics of AI technology
Media creatives are now presented with a huge selection of generative AI Tools that offer new ways of creating images, text, voices and music. However, a key problem related to the technology still needs to be addressed: have these AI tools been created ethically?
Each generative AI tool, from ChatGPT to Midjourney to Runway, rests on a foundation model that has been exposed to vast amounts of data, often from the internet, in order to help it improve at what it does. This process is called “training”.
AI developers build huge reservoirs of training data by using “crawlers”, bots that scour the internet for useful material and download trillions of files for their own use. This can include books, music, images, the spoken word and videos, created by artists who retain copyright over their material.
Stability.ai has been involved in a legal action over copyright in the UK courts. Getty Images, holder of a huge collection of pictures and photographs, is currently suing the company.
A former executive at Stability.ai, Ed Newton-Rex, resigned in November 2023 over the company scraping for creative content to train the model, without payment and claiming it is “fair use”.
Perhaps Cameron thinks that the AI developers will win the court cases against them and continue their technological trajectory. I asked Stability.ai if, before Cameron joined the company, they had scraped any of his creative material from the internet to use as training data for their foundation models – and did they ask his permission?
Their response was: “We’re not able to comment on the source of Stability
AI’s training data.”
Cameron’s Terminator films warned about the potential catastrophic effects of rogue AI. Yet the director now clearly thinks that he is now sitting on a winning horse.
Dominic Lees receives funding from the AHRC Impact Acceleration Account (University of Reading).
Coal workers suing their government over job losses. Indigenous people using the courts to block wind farms or anti-deforestation policies that violate their cultural rights. What these cases have in common is they challenge the fairness of climate policies and projects themselves.
Our new study, carried out with researchers from 16 universities and published in Nature Sustainability, finds that cases like these are increasingly being filed all over the world.
We coined the term “just transition litigation” to describe these cases. This term captures a focus on ensuring that climate action balances the transition to a low-carbon economy with social justice and the protection of vulnerable communities.
This phenomenon must be kept distinct from that of climate litigation, which tends to focus on holding governments and companies accountable for failing to reduce emissions or adapt to climate change.
Our research began in 2020, when we started noticing a growing number of cases that didn’t fit the conventional model of climate litigation. For example, in Chile, union workers sued the government, arguing that they had been excluded from discussions regarding the phase-out of coal plants. The Chilean Supreme Court ruled in favour of the workers, emphasising that a just transition strategy — one that includes consultation with affected communities — is essential for achieving carbon neutrality.
Similarly, in Norway, the Sami Indigenous people successfully challenged wind farm licenses, which the country’s Supreme Court found to have violated their cultural rights to herd reindeer. In Colombia, Indigenous people argued that projects aimed at reducing deforestation on their land violated their rights to self-determination and cultural integrity.
Just transition litigation seeks to ensure that the shift toward a greener economy is fair and inclusive, particularly for those who may be disadvantaged by the rapid changes it brings. The applicants in these cases often include regular workers, Indigenous people, women, children, minorities and other groups who are typically underrepresented in legislative and decision-making processes. (Our concept of just transition litigation excludes lawsuits brought by corporations seeking to protect their own interests at the expense of broader societal fairness.)
At the core of this litigation is the pursuit of justice. As countries shift to low-carbon economies, these policies inevitably produce both winners and losers. Oil and gas workers lose their jobs. Indigenous people are displaced or see the world around them changed by new wind or solar farms. All these people lament being treated unjustly.
To ensure widespread support for climate policies, their grievances should not be dismissed as mere nimbyism. Rather, they should be recognised as carrying precious insights into the fairness, equity, and social impacts of climate policies and projects.
The litigation we looked at calls upon courts to assess climate action against various different legal frameworks, ranging from constitutional and human rights law to corporate accountability standards. Some lawsuits use arguments of distributive justice, which focus on the allocation of resources and burdens. Some look at procedural justice, such as inclusive decision-making. Others want what is termed recognition justice, which focuses on respect for marginalised groups.
Why this matters
All this reflects a growing recognition that climate action may come at a cost to certain groups, especially those already on the margins of society. It also underscores the need to address the social justice of climate action and ensure it does not make the world even less equal.
The core issue is that, while much attention is given to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, less emphasis has been placed on ensuring we do so equitably. This is especially the case at a time when governments in the EU , the UK and the US are announcing plans to cut the red tape and expedite the transition.
As more communities turn to courts to seek justice, our study highlights an urgent need for policymakers to embrace inclusive, transparent and equitable processes. Decisions over who owns land, or what jobs people can do, should involve those most affected. Ensuring that climate policies are fair and just will not only protect vulnerable groups but also foster broader public support.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Joana Setzer receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Foundation for International Law for the Environment, and the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment
Annalisa Savaresi 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mari Ellis Dunning, Associate Lecturer at the School of Languages and Literature and PhD Candidate, Aberystwyth University
For centuries, midway between the autumn equinox and winter solstice, the Welsh people have celebrated Calan Gaeaf on November 1. Nos Galan Gaeaf or “the evening before the first day of winter”, falls a day before, which the western world now recognises as Halloween.
A time of year filled with monsters and ghouls, here are five spooky winter customs and beliefs unique to Wales and its people.
1. Hwch Ddu Gwta
On Nos Galan Gaeaf, the horrifying hwch ddu gwta, or “tailess black sow”, would make its annual appearance. Usually a man draped in cloth or animal hide rising from dwindling fire embers, the hwch ddu would chase the village children home.
As the fire died and the children anticipated the materialisation of the black sow, they would often chant a spooky verse, like: “Adref, adref am y cynta’, Hwch Ddu Gwta a gipio’r ola,” (“Home, home, at once, the tailess black sow shall snatch the last one.”)
Juliette Wood, scholar of Celtic folklore, says the macabre ritual has its roots in beliefs about the souls of the dead, people and animals. But on a practical level, it was probably just an effective way of getting children to bed and teaching them about the dangers of straying from the group.
2. Fortune telling
Fortune telling would have been rife at this time of year. Questions over who was next to be married, and who may meet an untimely death, were particularly popular. Women looking for love may have wandered around the bounds of a church, chanting “here is the sheath, where is the knife”, hoping to hear the name of the person they would marry as a response.
In some parts of the country, stwmp naw rhyw, a mash made of nine different root vegetables with milk, butter, salt and pepper, would have a wedding ring placed at the centre. Whoever found the ring in their serving would be the next to be married.
Though these particular practices were performed at Calan Gaeaf, the widespread belief in fortune telling certainly wasn’t unique to this time of year, nor Wales, of course.
But Wales does have a long history of reliance on wise-women and soothsayers. Many Welsh people even regularly turned to the church for charms and curses.
3. Y Ladi Wen and other apparitions
Regarded as a seasonal boundary, Nos Galan Gaeaf was considered the most ominous of the three spirit nights. The others were Nos Galan Mai, which heralds the beginning of summer, and Noswyl Ifan, known also as the summer solstice.
As Nos Galan Gaeaf was a time to say goodbye to the recently deceased, the spirits were said to roam freely. Ghosts of the dead were believed to be seen at midnight on every stile, for example. And it makes sense that ghosts were to be found atop stiles. The fact that unbaptised children used to be buried at boundary fences suggests that these lines were liminal places and therefore the favourite perches of ghosts and apparitions.
Perhaps the most well known of these ghosts was Y Ladi Wen (the White Lady). Y Ladi Wen was an apparition who could be found haunting locations where violent deaths had occurred. She was also said to warn children about their bad behaviour.
4. Mari Lwyd
The Mari Lwyd is traditionally a Christmas and New Year wassailing folk custom popular in south Wales. It dates back to the 18th century and involves a horse’s skull placed on a pole, draped in ribbons.
A person hiding beneath a white sheet would carry the pole and snap the horse’s jaw open and shut. A procession led by Mari would go from house to house, where the group would sing verses asking to be let inside, prompting the hosts to improvise a rebuttal in verse.
The Mari Lwyd’s weird and somewhat terrifying appearance has led to her appearing earlier in the season, and adopted in different parts of Wales and as far afield as the US and Australia.
5. Gwrachod Powys
Perhaps the most sinister and spooky custom is one that could be found in Powys, mid-Wales.
Men would wander around in gangs wearing sheep skin, old ragged clothes and masks, drinking heavily and demanding gifts. They were called “gwrachod” (meaning hags or witches), probably in allusion to the Celtic belief that fiends, witches and faeries carried out their harmful and destructive tasks at night.
In the north, the name “gwrachod” was also used to describe men and women who went about their neighbours’ houses dressed in each other’s clothes and wearing masks.
During this Christmas tradition, which could be seen as a combination of the Mari Lwyd and the gwrachod, members of the party would dance, cheer and perform “antic diversions” in exchange for good cheer, ale, apples and nuts.
As October draws to a close and we creep towards the darkest days of midwinter, keep your wits about you. You might just end up face to face with a horrifying sow covered in fire ash, or confronted by a ghostly lady draped in white.
Mari Ellis Dunning 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.
Donald Trump loves tariffs. Making things more expensive if they come from foreign countries is at the heart of his bid for a second term in the White House.
“Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,” he said in September 2024 at a town hall event in Michigan. And he has promised that if he becomes US president again, he will impose an across-the-board tariff of up to 20% on imports – and even 200% on cars from Mexico – in a bid to encourage American manufacturing.
This is familiar ground for Trump, who showed he was fond of tariffs during his 2017-2021 presidency. Back then, he claimed his policy would address the trade imbalance with China, bring manufacturing jobs back to the US and raise revenues.
Tariffs were then imposed on a wide range of goods, from imported steel and aluminium, to solar panels and washing machines.
In fact, we found that imposing tariffs actually made the US even more reliant on foreign suppliers – and failed to stimulate the domestic job market. They also raised costs for US consumers and provoked retaliatory tariffs from trading partners including China, the EU, Canada, Mexico, India and Turkey.
China for example, responded by trebling tariffs on American cars. The EU filed a dispute with the World Trade Organisation and substantially raised tariffs on US exports including Harley Davidson motorcycles, jeans and bourbon whiskey.
And Trump’s tariffs did not lead to a boost for US manufacturing either. After tariffs were imposed, our research shows US manufacturing supply chains evolved to have fewer suppliers – but it was often US firms that got forced out of those supply chains, not their competitors from overseas.
We found that US manufacturers appeared to reduce their global reach, while actually increasing their dependence on a select few foreign companies – further evidence that Trump’s tariffs failed to produce the intended outcome.
Our research also suggests that “reshoring” – bringing production and manufacturing back to a company’s home country – is not feasible without an established ecosystem of suppliers, intermediaries and customers. So introducing trade barriers without adequate support for the development of regional supply chains is unlikely to result in stronger local economies or more jobs.
Essentially, for reshoring to work, the domestic economy needs to have the capacity to match demand. But the US (like the UK) has lost manufacturing capability in many areas, and rebuilding it is not going to happen overnight.
Establishing a new industry requires buildings, skilled staff and supply chains – and a very specific approach is required for each industry. Getting the right skills and labour is often the trickiest part and may require immigration.
However, even this may not work in the most complex industries. In the case of computer chips, for example, there are generous incentives in the US under the Biden administration to encourage chip manufacturing. Yet Taiwan still massively dominates the market, raising questions over whether the US could ever really compete.
Other industries that can use automation and robotics in manufacturing (such as chemicals and transportation equipment) might be easier to reboot, but they may not generate the expected number and range of jobs. And often reshoring strategies involve higher investment in automation, machinery and robotics, rather than jobs. Trump’s focus may have been bringing back manufacturing jobs back to the US, but the truth is that many of these jobs may be gone forever.
Trading places
Overall then, imposing tariffs without adequate domestic support mechanisms in place has led to US manufacturers increasing their dependence on foreign suppliers and reducing their dependence on local ones.
Yet tariffs are not exclusively favoured by Trump – or even right-wing politics. And there seems to be a fairly common view among politicians in the west that some tariffs can be an effective economic tool.
Trade barriers against China for instance, have continued under Joe Biden’s administration (although he has somewhat relaxed tariffs for imports from the EU, Canada and Mexico). And recently, Canada imposed 100% tariffs on Chinese cars and 25% on Chinese steel and aluminium, while the EU has also imposed tariffs on Chinese goods.
One of the few voices speaking out against tariffs belongs to former US vice-president Mike Pence. He recently proposed scrapping tariffs, saying they just made products more expensive for consumers – and failed to improve prosperity.
His old boss clearly disagrees. And if Trump does win a second term in office, it seems certain that imposing international tariffs will be high up on his “to do” list. But if their impact is anything like the last time, they will be of little benefit to the US economy or the voters who depend upon it.
The authors 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.
Policy and luck have bought Europe a reprieve from the heights gas prices reached between the winters of 2022 and 2023, but prices are climbing again and the global gas market remains precariously balanced.
Rising tensions in the Middle East could upend it. If conflict spills into the Persian Gulf, it could disrupt shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Qatar that equal 20% of global exports.
We believe this winter will be the final act of the gas crisis. Here’s what we should expect.
Dangerously underprepared
The case for Britain to rapidly phase out natural gas in heating and power generation is overwhelming. It would unburden household bills of expensive gas imports and leave the country less vulnerable to energy supply crunches, while also cutting carbon emissions. Doing so will take time: as of today, the UK relies on gas for 37% of all energy consumption.
Since the beginning of the recent crisis, the UK government has done little to change these facts. The end of the winter fuel payment to pensioners adds fresh concern. The Energy Crisis Commission recently found that the UK remains “dangerously underprepared” for a repeat of the gas price explosion of 2022-23.
All told, the UK cannot be oblivious to developments in the global gas market.
A crisis in the making
Resurgent gas demand after the lifting of COVID restrictions led to a quadrupling of UK gas prices in 2021. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin throttled pipeline gas exports to Europe.
Europe turned to its greatest source of flexible gas supply: seaborne LNG. A price war for cargoes followed. The spending power of European economies pulled shipments away from low-income countries in Asia, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which caused crippling blackouts and a pivot to coal-fired generation.
Energy bills for an average household in the UK hit £4,279 in January 2023. The government protected consumers from the very worst at a cost of £51 billion in 2022-23, but the average household lost 8% of its budget to energy costs in 2022, rising to 18% for the poorest tenth of households. Roughly 2 million households on pre-payment meters were being cut off from their energy supply at least once a month at the height of the crisis.
Clement winters, moderate gas demand in Asia and successful measures to curb European gas demand saw UK gas prices fall from mid-2023. But they are still relatively high – at 48% above the average in the three years before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
One more winter
Could things get worse? Back in 2022, experts spoke of a “three-winter crisis” because significant new LNG export capacity (primarily in the US and Qatar) wasn’t expected until 2025. That has held true, and supply and demand in the global LNG market remains taut.
Several disturbances could destabilise this balance. The International Energy Agency expects that over 2024, global growth in gas demand will exceed the rate of growth in new LNG supply. Attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea by the Houthi militia in Yemen, in response to Israel’s invasion of Gaza, have rerouted LNG shipping routes. Cargoes that would have passed through the Suez Canal must now take the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope.
At the end of 2024, a major five-year agreement governing the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine will expire, and there is no prospect of renewal. Russian gas supplies to Europe will fall by around 5% of the EU’s total gas imports, or 65% of all gas imports into Austria, Hungary and Slovakia.
While Europe has been saved by mild winters over the last two years, this luck could break in 2024-25 according to some forecasts. Temperature – and the demand it creates for heating – will probably decide winter gas prices in Europe.
Geopolitical blowback
How might the worst-case scenario of conflict in the Persian Gulf happen?
Israel’s escalating military assaults on Hezbollah since September 17 have coincided with a 17% rise in UK gas prices. After Iran’s missile and drone strikes against Israel on October 1, European gas prices hit a new high for the year. This saw three LNG tankers destined for Asia change course mid-journey and head for Europe.
Israel has vowed retribution for the Iranian strike. Having obliterated Gaza and decapitated Hezbollah’s leadership, and with resolute material support from the US, Israel may now see Iran as vulnerable.
A severe response by Israel, targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities or oil infrastructure, would further up the ante. Wishing to avoid direct conflict, Iran could decide to target not Israel, but the flow of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz on which its western backers depend. Qatari LNG shipments through the strait account for 20% of global supply on their own.
Any interruption would also block Iran’s oil exports, afflict Iran’s friends as much as its foes, and kill Iran’s current reconciliation with the Gulf states. It is unlikely, but one would hope that the warning signs in the global gas market would remind western decision-makers that the conflict in the Middle East can continue to blow back on them.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Michael Bradshaw receives funding from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) that is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). He also advises the government, thinktanks and companies on energy matters.
Louis Fletcher receives funding from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), which is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
Nobody Wants This presents viewers with a mix of classic stereotypes of both Jewish women and men, and the contemporary issue of intermarriage — marriage of two partners who are members of different religions — in Jewish communities.
It revolves around a young, ambitious rabbi, Noah (Adam Brody), who falls in love with a non-Jewish woman, Joanne (Kristen Bell).
Joanne and her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) produce a podcast that features frank, spontaneous talk about sex and relationships, a discursive foil for Rabbi Noah’s carefully composed and tame sermons.
The show is loosely inspired by creator Erin Foster’s own life as an agnostic woman who fell in love with her husband, Simon Tikhman, a Jewish man. Tikhman, although not a rabbi, wanted to marry a Jewish woman, leading Foster to convert to Judaism. Her conversion and involvement in her Jewish family led to the creation of Nobody Wants This.
Foster has said she wanted to shed positive light on Jewish culture and her experiences of being brought into it.
From my perspective as a scholar who has examined aspects of Jewish life and practice in North America, the problem is that Foster’s good intentions fall flat at best, and at worst, could hurt the very people Foster has joined.
The character Joanne and her sister Morgan produce a podcast which features frank, spontaneous talk about sex and relationships. (Netflix)
Stereotypes of women
Quickly following the accolades, criticism of the show has particularly focused on its problematic stereotypes of Jewish women. Jessica Radloff wrote in Glamour that after watching two episodes she called her mom and said (speaking of Jewish women), “we come off as controlling, marriage-hungry women who want to plan dinner parties and alienate anyone who doesn’t share those same dreams.” Jessica Grose in the New York Times argues that nearly all the Jewish women in Nobody Wants This are “manipulative, spoiled and selfish.”
Nobody Wants This reflects long-standing and popular Jewish stereotypes consistently featured in American films – the meddling matriarch, pampered princess and neurotic nebbish – stereotypes that have proven to be widely appealing and thus quite profitable.
Rabbi Noah’s mother, Bina, is not only the meddling matriarch extreme version, but also a hypocrite who refuses to accept Joanne’s hostess gift when they first meet — a lovely charcuterie tray — because it contains pork (prosciutto). Joanne later discovers Bina secretly stuffing the prosciutto into her mouth.
While Rabbi Noah might be called “hot rabbi” at his Jewish summer camp by teen girls, he works to appease his mother’s demands, he can’t (really) play basketball and he won’t commit to his long-term Jewish girlfriend (who eventually finds his hidden engagement ring and gives it to herself).
Perhaps there is some room for comedy here, but the timing is less than ideal. Antisemitism is at a new level of ferocity in the United States and around the world.
And what of intermarriage, the seemingly most pressing issue standing between Rabbi Noah and Joanne?
Is intermarriage so unimaginable, impractical and undesirable for rabbis and their congregants to navigate? There are rabbis who work within liberal streams of Judaism who are not only not opposed to intermarriage, but also in intermarriages themselves.
Rabbi Gershon Winkler, a formerly Orthodox rabbi who left Orthodoxy and now identifies as independent, points to Jewish precedent for such marriages: the Biblical and Talmudic figures of Moses, Eliezer the High Priest, Joshua, Boaz and Rabbi Akiva who were all married to non-Jews.
Intermarried rabbis exist within Humanist, Reform (Rabbi Noah’s most likely affiliation), Jewish Renewal and Reconstructionist Jewish movements, although not within Conservative and Orthodox streams.
Statistics about intermarriage in the U.S. demonstrate quite a varied portrait of Jewish life: overall, 42 per cent of American Jewish adults have a non-Jewish spouse; among those who married after 2010, intermarriage rates reach 61 per cent. Of non-Orthodox Jews, 72 per cent are intermarried, while 98 per cent of Orthodox Jews report their spouse is Jewish.
In real life, harmful stereotypes of Jews persist, while intermarriage in Jewish communities, lived by many couples and families in the U.S. and beyond, is a nuanced and rich reality reflecting many factors.
Nobody Wants This makes for a successful and profitable rom-com that hurts some while others laugh.
Celia E. Rothenberg 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.
For instance, a cheap fish like tilapia may be given the name of a more expensive fish, like red snapper, or an endangered species might be passed off as a better-faring alternative.
Seafood mislabelling not only threatens vulnerable marine populations, but makes it harder for people to make informed, ethical choices about the food they eat.
Searching for mislabelling in Calgary
To investigate this issue in Canada, our recent research paper examined mislabelling and ambiguous market names in invertebrate and finfish products — fish with fins, like cod, salmon and tuna — in Calgary between 2014 and 2020. This was the first study of its kind in Canada to compare shellfish to finfish.
University students sampled 347 finfish product and 109 shellfish — including shrimp, octopus and oysters — from Calgary restaurants and grocery stores. These samples were then genetically tested using a species-specific marker called a DNA barcode.
A seafood product was considered mislabelled if it was sold using a name not found on the Fish List for the DNA-identified species. For instance, there is only one species that can be sold under the name salmon: Atlantic salmon. If sockeye salmon was sold as salmon without any other qualifier, it was considered mislabelled.
Seafood mislabelling not only threatens vulnerable marine populations, but makes it harder for people to make informed, ethical choices about the food they eat. (Shutterstock)
It was not difficult for students to stumble upon examples of mislabelling. Notable findings include:
100 per cent of snapper and red snapper products were mislabelled. They were either tilapia (79 per cent) or a species of rockfish or snapper that cannot be sold under those names (21 per cent).
Nine salmon products were determined to be rainbow trout, which are cheaper.
Cuttlefish, squid and octopus were often mislabelled as one another.
Some products, however, fared better than others. All Atlantic salmon, basa, halibut, mackerel, sockeye salmon and Pacific white shrimp were as advertised.
Mislabelling hurts
Calgary’s mislabelled seafoods has far-reaching and well-documented implications for public health, conservation and the economy.
Several examples of mislabelling involved substituting an expensive product for a cheaper species: tilapia for snapper, rainbow trout for Atlantic salmon. While companies in places like Miamiand Mississippi have faced fines for such fraudulent practices, the global nature of fisheries makes legal action difficult.
The situation is even murkier when it comes to invertebrates like shrimp, squid and octopus. Unfortunately, so little is known about their conservation status that we couldn’t assess their risks.
The study found that 100 per cent of snapper and red snapper products were mislabelled. (Shutterstock)
What you can do
If you eat seafood, there is a chance you could be misled as a consumer and end up eating threatened species. You can reduce these possibilities by doing the following:
Purchase whole, head-on finfish whenever possible, as they are harder to mislabel.
Purchase seafood products that are certified sustainable, as these have been shown to have lower rates of mislabelling.
Purchase products that clearly name the exact species being purchased.
This will require that you brush up on your fish identification skills, but it’s a small price to pay for protecting our fish, saving on groceries and limiting unexpected and urgent trips to the restroom.
We noticed that seafood products with ambiguous names were just as likely to be mislabelled as those with precise names. We wondered: which is worse for conservation, mislabelling or ambiguous names? After all, tuna could legally include yellowfin tuna (least concern) or southern bluefin tuna (endangered).
A statistical test found that ambiguous names were more important than mislabelling in hiding threatened species. This is a good thing, because it suggests there is a way consumers can help.
Just as you wouldn’t go to a restaurant and order a “mammal sandwich,” why settle for “fish and chips?” If we as consumers can vote with our wallets by buying Pacific cod instead of cod, or yellowfin tuna instead of tuna, we can be more confident that we aren’t eating the ocean’s equivalent of the giant panda.
Matthew R. J. Morris received funding from Internationalization at Home in Science Education (i@Home) for this research.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mona Krewel, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
Getty Images
Companies and shareholders associated with the government’s fast-track projects gave more than $500,000 in donations to National, ACT and New Zealand First, according to a recent analysis by RNZ.
While it is impossible to say whether these companies were listed for consideration because of their donations, allegations of possible “undue influence” are inevitably made.
New Zealand’s reputation as a country with little to no corruption owes nothing to our lack of rigour in the regulation of party donations. As Philippa Yasbek, the author of a report by the Helen Clark Foundation calling for tougher rules to combat the risk of political corruption, said:
Our political integrity and honesty have largely evolved from social norms over many decades. Politicians by and large knew the conduct that was expected of them by New Zealand society. Sadly, today, we’re naive to think that’s enough.
Some political parties seem to take little heed of the existing rules. The Electoral Commission has issued warnings to several parties about large donations being declared too late.
The Independent Electoral Review released early this year recommended parties give up access to corporate donations in exchange for greater public funding. Other recommendations included a cap on political donations set at NZ$30,000, and a much lower threshold for disclosing donors’ names.
As one might expect, the political parties disagree about how funding should be regulated, as their main income sources vary. Labour approves of the proposals, although analysis indicates its revenue streams would suffer most if such policies were in place.
ACT is strongly opposed to the principle of public funding, although there are already significant public funds supporting parliament and party advertising during election campaigns.
What New Zealanders think
But what about public opinion? Do people believe large donors have “undue influence”?
The latest New Zealand Election Study, conducted after the 2023 election, included a module of questions that give insights into New Zealanders’ attitudes to potential party funding reforms. The study is a representative sample of nearly 2,000 eligible voters.
What stands out? Many people answered “don’t know” to the questions – which is quite reasonable. The laws that regulate political party activity in New Zealand are complex and of little relevance to most.
Nonetheless, some clear messages emerge. In general, a near majority of people were concerned about the influence of “big interests”. When asked if they agreed with the statement “The New Zealand government is largely run by a few big interests”, 45% agreed and 27% disagreed.
Drilling deeper into the data, about 35% of business owners agreed, compared to just under half of people who don’t own a business.
Asked whether they believed donors exert “undue influence” on politicians, 43% agreed. Only 18% disagreed. Almost 40% had no opinion on this topic and either didn’t know or took a neutral position.
While Labour, Green and NZ First voters leaned heavily to “undue influence”, National and ACT voters were evenly divided between “undue” and “not undue”.
National voters also strongly opted for “don’t know”. About a third of business owners perceived undue influence, compared with about 45% of non-owners.
The 2023 Election Study also included a question on the recommendation made by the Electoral Review that corporate groups and trade unions should be prohibited from making direct donations to political parties: 53% supported this change, while only 17% opposed it.
The Independent Electoral Review also recommended a limit of $30,000 for any individual donation: 57% agreed, compared to 14% who disagreed. While support was strongest on the left and among New Zealand First voters, significant numbers of National and ACT voters also agreed (47% and 44%).
Finally, we asked for people’s views on anonymity of “promoter donations”. Promoters are people or groups registered to advertise during an election campaign for an issue, or for or against a political party. They can collect anonymous donations that are not subject to the same disclosure requirements as parties.
Only 14% of respondents believed in continued promoter donation anonymity on the basis of privacy, and 47% preferred greater transparency. Breaking this down by party vote, some National and ACT voters prefer transparency over privacy, although more were either neutral or answered “don’t know”.
Support for reform
These results show public perceptions of undue influence by donors are widespread. While these perceptions are strongest on the left, they also penetrate deeply into groups who vote for the parties on the right, and into the business community.
And while the political parties have conflicts of interest, there is significant support for the recommendations of the Independent Electoral review across party lines among the New Zealand public, and inside the business community.
Assuming political parties in a democracy should be responsive to voters’ concerns and demands, this should give them food for thought when it comes to potential party funding reform.
This article is based on our submission to the Justice Select Committee inquiry into the 2023 general election.
The New Zealand Election Study (NZES) has been funded by Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, the New Zealand Electoral Commission, the Gama Foundation, and the University of Auckland.
Australian mining giant BHP is at the centre of one of the world’s largest class actions, the trial for which started this week in London.
The Fundão Dam in Mariana, Brazil, co-owned by BHP, collapsed in 2015 spilling a gigantic wave of toxic mud across 700 kilometres of land. Nineteen people were killed, villages and livestock wiped out, vast areas of land rendered uninhabitable and rivers and water supplies contaminated.
Corporate accountability
The class action has renewed questions about the responsibilities multibillion-dollar corporations have to local communities.
Leaders of the traditional people groups impacted by the disaster visited Australia with their lawyer Tom Goodhead from international legal firm Pogust Goodhead to raise awareness of the case two weeks ago.
Goodhead told a public forum at Macquarie University this was a case of corporate negligence and putting profit before safety. He said the operators were warned of the risk of dam collapse and continued to push operations beyond what was safe.
The class action is brought on behalf of more than 600,000 claimants. The trial is expected to run for 12 weeks and will be heard in the UK, because this is where BHP was headquartered at the time of the disaster.
The UK courts will apply the Brazilian laws, which say environmental polluters must pay for the damage they cause.
Can BHP fix this?
The claimants’ lawyers say the case is valued at more than A$68.8 billion. The figure is based on an estimation of the impact of the disaster on land, culture and sacred places, as well as some form of recompense for the lost lives.
[the] river has always been there for us to guarantee our livelihoods. It is a sacred space for us. The river is where we carry out our sacred practices. That’s where we sing, where we dance, where we gather. The new leaders, [our] children, have to learn how to swim in a water tank of a thousand litres.
But Thatiele Monic, president of the Vila Santa Efigênia and Adjacências Quilombola Association said the victims don’t trust the foundation.
In the same way that the mining company invades our land, the Renova Foundation also is invading our space and our territories. They do not respect our land. They do not respect our people, and they are creating more and more conflict. So that people are essentially giving up pursuing this.
Poor human rights record
Australian corporations operating overseas have a poor record on human rights.
The gold and copper mine triggered a brutal civil war between 1988 and 1998. Despite decades passing since the mine was decommissioned, the recent report confirms the mine continues to pose risks to life and safety due to the collapsing mine and ongoing contamination down rivers and into new areas.
The UNGPs say states should set out clearly the expectation that corporations in their jurisdiction respect human rights in all their operations – even those occurring overseas.
The Human Rights Law Centre found in a 2018 report on this topic that the Australian government was not doing enough to hold corporations to account.
It found Australian corporations operating overseas did so with impunity. Efforts to seek justice locally is often thwarted by corruption, lack of resources or ineffective legal process. At the same time, attempts by overseas communities to take legal action in Australian courts face enormous hurdles and rarely succeed.
This is why cases like the class action for claimants in Mariana are crucial for corporate accountability.
In my 2023 report with colleagues Surya Deva and Justine Nolan, we found this kind of litigation can raise awareness, facilitate broader industry developments and shape laws and policy.
Our report also found litigation needs to be supported by strong regulatory responses from governments, and complementary advocacy like shareholder or consumer engagement.
Cost of litigation
Litigation comes with significant risks to victims and their allies.
In a controversial development for corporate accountability in Australia, oil and gas giant Santos is using legal processes to challenge environmental groups who supported traditional owners opposing their Barossa gas project. Santos’ tactics, if allowed to continue, could limit public interest litigation in the future.
Thatiele Monic ended her speech at the Macquarie University event with a question worth repeating
This has happened in Brazil, but it has happened in many other places, and if we don’t do anything about it, and we don’t talk about it, it will continue to happen in many more other places. This is not the future I want for myself and for my people. I’d like to know. What future do you want for yourselves?
Ebony Birchall is affiliated with Macquarie University’s B&HR Access to Justice Lab.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Hole, Professor, Mathematical Sciences Institute and School of Computing, Australian National University
The source of all nuclear power is the binding energy of an atom. The energy stored in an atom can be released in two main ways: fission or fusion. Fission involves splitting big heavy atoms into smaller, lighter ones. Fusion involves combining little atoms together into bigger ones.
Both processes release a lot of energy. For example, one nuclear fission decay of U235, an isotope of uranium typically used as the fuel in most power plants, produces more than 6 million times the energy per single chemical reaction of the purest coal. This means they are great processes for generating power.
What is fission?
Fission is the process behind every nuclear power plant in operation today. It occurs when a tiny subatomic particle called a neutron is slammed into an uranium atom, splitting it. This releases more neutrons, which continue colliding with other atoms, setting off a nuclear chain reaction. This in turn releases a tremendous amount of energy.
To convert this energy to electricity a heat exchanger is installed, which turns water to steam, driving a turbine to produce power.
The fission reaction can be controlled by suppressing the supply of neutrons. This is achieved by inserting “control rods” which soak up neutrons. Historically, nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl have occurred when the control rods fail to engage and quench the neutron supply, and/or coolant circulation fails.
So called “third generation” designs improve on early designs by incorporating passive or inherent safety features which require no active controls or human intervention to avoid accidents in the event of malfunction. These features may rely on pressure differentials, gravity, natural convection, or the natural response of materials to high temperatures.
An unresolved challenge for fission is that the byproducts of the reaction are radioactive for a long time, in the order of thousands of years. If reprocessed, the fuel source and waste can also be used to make a nuclear weapon.
Fission power is a demonstrated technology. It is also scalable from large scale (the largest is the 7.97 gigawatt Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant in Japan) through to small-to-medium reactors that produce around 150 megawatts of electricity, as used on a ship or nuclear submarine. These are the reactors that will power Australia’s eight nuclear submarines promised as part of a trilateral security partnership with the United Kingdom and the United States.
What is fusion?
Fusion is the process that powers the Sun and stars. It is the opposite process to fission. It occurs when atoms are fused together.
The easiest reaction to initiate in the laboratory is the fusion of isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. Per unit mass, the reaction produces 4 times more energy than the fission of U235.
The fuel ion deuterium is incredibly abundant on Earth and in the universe. Tritium is radioactive with a half-life of 12 years, so is very rare on Earth. The universe is 13.8 billion years old; the only isotopes of light nuclei (hydrogen, helium and lithium) found in nature are those that are stable on those time scales.
In a fusion power plant, tritium would be manufactured using a “lithium blanket”. This is a solid lithium wall in which fusion neutrons slow and ultimately react to form tritium.
However, at present it’s very difficult for scientists to create a fusion reaction outside of the laboratory. That’s because it requires incredibly hot conditions to fuse: the optimal conditions are 150 million degrees Celsius.
At these temperatures the fuel ions exist in the plasma state, where electrons and (nuclear) ions are dissociated. The byproduct of this process isn’t radioactive; rather, it’s helium, an inert gas.
The leading technology path to demonstrate sustained fusion is called “toroidal magnetic confinement”. This is when the plasma is confined at extreme temperatures in a very large doughnut-shaped magnetic bottle.
Unlike fission, this technology path requires continuous external heating to reach fusion conditions and a strong confining field. Terminate either and the reaction stops. The challenge is not uncontrolled meltdown, but getting the reaction to occur at all.
A major unresolved challenge for toroidal magnetic confinement fusion, which attracts the majority of research interest, is the demonstration of a burning self-heated plasma. This is when the heating power produced by the reaction itself is primary. This is the objective of the publicly funded multi-national ITER project, the world’s largest fusion experiment, and the privately funded SPARC experiment at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
However, the consensus of much of the scientific community is that fusion will not be commercially viable until at least 2050.
A climate solution?
I am often asked if nuclear power could save Earth from climate change. I have many colleagues in climate science, and indeed my late wife was a high-profile climate scientist.
The science is clear: it is too late to stop climate change. The world needs to do everything it can to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and minimise catastrophic damage, and it needs to have done it decades ago.
For the planet, fission is part of that global solution, together with widespread rollout and adoption of renewable sources of power such as wind and solar.
On a longer time scale, one hopes that fusion might replace fission. The fuel supply is much larger and ubiquitously distributed, the waste problem is orders of magnitude smaller in volume and timescale, and the technology cannot be weaponised.
Matthew Hole receives funding from the Australian government through the Australian Research Council and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), and the Simons Foundation. He is also affiliated with ANSTO, the ITER Organisation as an ITER Science Fellow, and is Chair of the Australian ITER Forum.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pandanus Petter, Research Fellow School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University
On Saturday October 26, Queensland Premier Steven Miles’ Labor is vying for a fourth consecutive term in government, up against David Crisafulli’s Liberal National Party (LNP).
Although Labor won the previous election in 2020 comfortably, opinion polls in the lead up to this election have consistently pointed to an LNP win.
Recent Queensland history shows voters can produce dramatic election results, such as the 2012 wipeout of Labor, and its equally dramatic return to government in 2015. With no upper house to provide a check on government power, whoever wins will likely have a relatively free hand to enact their policy agenda.
A continuing trend of increased early voting means many Queenslanders have already made their judgement. But what have been the big issues dominating the campaign, and what priorities will the next government be working toward?
The usual suspects
The big issues of concern to voters in Queensland are likely familiar to people in other states:
cost of living
housing
crime
health
to a lesser extent, economic management.
However, the two main parties have different emphases and approaches.
A campaign on crime and crises
The LNP is focused on attacking Labor’s record. Crisafulli has largely tried to keep the party firmly on-message, highlighting what they describe as “crises” in housing, youth crime, cost of living, health and government integrity for at least the last year.
The extent of youth crime, what causes it and what solves it are a matter of debate.
But the LNP has been keen to present themselves as proposing tougher solutions than their opponents. They’ve made promises to change youth sentencing laws to deter offenders under the slogan “adult crime, adult time”.
They’ve also promised to provide “tough love” to at-risk youth with mandatory re-training camps.
On other issues, they’ve been promising more efficient health services, incentives to home ownership and greater government transparency.
However, they’ve been careful to try to avoid more controversial issues and present a “small target” on economic management. Interestingly, the LNP has largely confirmed they’ll adopt many of Labor’s budgetary priorities on cost of living relief.
Despite this, a last minute emphasis on the possible reversal of legislation decriminalising abortion and voluntary assisted dying has threatened to derail their careful messaging.
Crisafulli has walked back earlier support for Treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
If they win government, the LNP would also likely shut down the freshly minted Truth Telling and Healing Inquiry, claiming they will focus on “practical” help for Indigenous communities instead.
They’re also promising electoral reform with a longstanding commitment to remove “corrupt” compulsory preferential voting and the reversal of laws that banned property developer donations.
Progressive balancing act
Steven Miles took over from Annastacia Palaszczuk as Labor leader and premier less than a year ago.
Labor has also been focused on using incumbency to address key issues, while trying to stake out a position as a force for progressive change.
They have warned of the potential “hidden” dangers of the LNP, pointing to unpopular cuts to the civil service last time the LNP governed.
On cost of living, they’ve given direct relief to households, with 50 cent fares for public transport, $1000 household energy rebates and promised free lunches for public school students.
They have been keen to say this is a dividend from increased royalties charged to coal mining companies.
On housing, they have continued their focus on addressing the undersupply of social and affordable housing alongside modest reforms to renters’ rights (although ruling out any caps on prices).
They’re promising a new era of state intervention to improve competition in petrol and energy retail.
On crime, Labor has followed the LNP’s lead in some matters, such as investing in extra police resources. They’ve also controversially ignored the Human Rights Act to keep youth imprisoned while emphasising diversion over punishment.
Of more comfort to progressive voters, they have positioned themselves as firmly committed to keeping their abortion and voluntary assisted dying legislation intact. Labor will also continue the transition to renewable energy.
Disenchantment with the major parties
Despite their efforts, or perhaps because of Crisafulli’s disciplined messaging, it doesn’t look as if voters have been swayed to keep the government. There’s a clear mood for change.
However, it should be noted this isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of Crisafulli or the LNP’s whole agenda, as opinion polls show neither is particularly popular.
After trailing for most of the campaign, Miles is still behind, but has made up a lot of ground in the past week.
Whoever wins, they will have to govern in an era when more people are disenchanted with the mainstream parties.
Among those vying to hold or increase their crossbench seats in regional Queensland are the socially conservative Katter’s Australian Party, as well as some popular local mayors running as independents.
The minor parties are campaigning hard on persistent problems in housing, cost of living, health and crime. These are all hard to solve quickly and not necessarily helped by rushed responses.
The next parliament will have to find a way to represent a state divided in public opinion between those in the city and those in regional areas across all of the key issues.
Pandanus Petter receives funding from the Australian Research Council to study public opinion polling, democratic responsiveness and the idea of ‘the Fair Go’ in public policy.
Cats have lived with humans for thousands of years. And long before cat memes and viral TikToks took over the internet, they’ve been comforting us with their purrs and making us laugh with their weird antics.
But what does the research say – are cats good for us?
Living with a cat can have a profound – and sometimes surprising – effect on our physical and mental health. Still, living with cats is not without risks.
Part of the family
You may have heard cats don’t have owners, they have “staff”. In fact, multiple studies show the humans who live with them feel more like beloved relatives.
In a study of 1,800 Dutch cat owners, half said their cat was family. One in three viewed their cat as a child or best friend and found them loyal, supportive and empathetic.
Another US study developed a “family bondedness” scale and found cats were just as important a part of families as dogs.
In fact we’ve adapted to each other. Cats are more likely to approach human strangers who first give a “kitty kiss” – narrowing your eyes and blinking slowly. And research suggests cats have developed specific meows that tune into our nurturing instincts.
What does this close relationship mean for health outcomes?
Owning a pet is associated with less social isolation. And some cat owners say “providing for the cat” increases their feelings of enjoyment and sense of purpose.
But the benefits of the relationship may depend on how you relate to your cat.
One study looked at different relationship styles between humans and cats, including “remote”, “casual” and “co-dependent”. It found people whose relationship with their cat was co-dependent or like a friend had a higher emotional connection to their pet.
Links to heart health
People who own – or have owned – a cat have a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases such as stroke or heart disease. This result has been repeated in several studies.
However a problem interpreting population studies is they only tell us about an association. This means while people with cats have lower risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases, we can’t say for sure cats are the cause.
People who own a cat – or have in the past – are at lower risk of stroke and heart disease. Ruth McHugh-Dillon, CC BY-NC
Cat ownership has also been associated with some positive changes in the gut microbiota, especially in women, such as improved blood glucose control and reduced inflammation.
Helping mental health
Having cat or dog is also associated with higher psychological well-being. For people with depression, patting or playing with their cat has been shown to reduce symptoms (although this was over a short, two-hour period and can’t be extrapolated longer-term).
Another way to find out about the health impact of cats is qualitative research: asking people what their cats mean to them, beyond the numbers.
When colleagues and I surveyed veterans, we found people more attached to their pets actually had poorer mental health scores. But their survey responses told a different story. One respondent said, “my cats are the reason I get up in the morning”.
Another wrote:
I consider my pet to be a service animal. My cat helps me to relax when I’m dealing with my anxiety, depression or when I wake during the night from the frequent nightmares I have. My cat isn’t just a pet to me, my cat is a part of me, my cat is part of my family.
It may be that veterans were more attached to their cats because they had worse mental health – and relied on their cats more for comfort – rather than the other way around.
Mental health downsides
It is possible being attached to your cat has downsides. If your cat becomes sick, the burden of caring for them may have a negative impact on your mental health.
In our study of owners whose cats had epilepsy, around one third experienced a clinical level of burden as caregivers that was likely to interfere with their day-to-day functioning.
Cats can also carry zoonotic diseases, which are infections which spread from animals to humans.
They are the main host for toxoplasmosis, a parasite excreted in cat faeces which can affect other mammals, including humans. The parasite is more likely to be carried by feral cats that hunt for their food than domestic cats.
Most people have mild symptoms that may be similar to flu. But infection during pregnancy can lead to miscarriage or stillbirth, or cause problems for the baby including blindness and seizures.
Pregnant women and people with lowered immunity are most at risk. It is recommended these groups don’t empty cat litter trays, or use gloves if they have to. Changing the litter tray daily prevents the parasite reaching a stage that could infect people.
Allergies
Up to one in five people have an allergy to cats and this is increasing.
When cats lick their fur, their saliva deposits an allergen. When their fur and dander (flakes of skin) come loose, it can set off an allergic reaction.
People without severe allergies can still live with cats if they regularly wash their hands, clean surfaces and vacuum to eliminate dander. They can also exclude cats from areas they want to be allergen-free, such as bedrooms.
People with allergies can live with cats if their symptoms aren’t severe. Ruth McHugh-Dillon, CC BY-NC
While cats can provoke allergic reactions, there is also evidence contact with cats can have a protective role in preventing asthma and allergic reactions developing. This is because exposure may modify the immune system, making it less likely allergic reactions will occur.
Susan Hazel is affiliated with the Dog & Cat Management Board of South Australia, Animal Therapies Ltd and the RSPCA South Australia.
In Australia and overseas, it’s clear that homes without gas – running on clean energy – are healthier, have cheaper power bills, and produce lower greenhouse emissions.
The emissions part is crucial. Collectively, homes are responsible for 10% of Australia’s greenhouse emissions. But how do we get Australia’s 11 million homes to ditch gas and switch to electricity for cooking, hot water and home heating?
The current approach is slow and piecemeal. State and local governments offer incentives to individual households, but few adopt them. For those that do, little coordinated support and guidance is available. The households must deal with suppliers and tradies on their own, which can be a frustrating and lonely process.
A pilot project to electrify 500 homes in a single postcode south of Sydney could show a better way. After a two-year campaign by residents, “Electrify 2515” has won A$5.4 million in federal funding, along with industry support. Challenges remain, but this pilot promises to demonstrate how household electrification can be accelerated and coordinated at scale.
As independent climate transitions specialists within Monash University, Climateworks Centre has no direct involvement in this project. But our ongoing Renovation Pathways Program focuses on ways to decarbonise Australia’s existing houses and bring about a national renovation wave. So we are watching with keen interest.
Testing extra incentives
The 2515 postcode sits between Wollongong and Sydney in New South Wales. It covers the suburbs of Austinmer, Clifton, Coledale, Scarborough, Thirroul and Wombarra.
The pilot encourages households to retire three types of gas appliance: water heaters, space heaters and cookers. Financial subsidies of up to $1,000 off electric hot water systems, reverse-cycle air conditioners and induction cooktops, and up to $1,500 off home batteries, are available. Higher subsidies are available to low-income households.
Successful applicants receive the subsidies as a discount on the purchase price of these new electrical appliances, rather than a rebate. Money for this is coming from the federal government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
Such incentives prompt households within a single community to make the switch together, retiring their electric appliances before their gas appliances fail or break, speeding up the transition.
A fully subsidised smart energy device, valued at around $1,500, is also installed in every home to track and optimise energy use. Subsidies are also available for upgrades to switchboards where required to meet modern safety standards.
Rooftop solar and electric vehicle chargers can also be purchased through the pilot, but will not be subsidised.
2515 is not the first community to rally behind clean energy. Grassroots initiatives are scattered around the country, such as in Yackandandah in northeast Victoria, Parkes in central west NSW, and Broken Hill in far west NSW.
Home energy pilot projects are also already underway through the Cooperative Research Centre Race2030, which partners with industry and research institutions. But these initiatives, along with those at a state and local government level, tend to recruit individual households across a wider geographic area.
In contrast, Electrify 2515 offers holistic support for households within a community. It is not driven by a single government program, or by a gas supply problem – which was the case for the people of Esperance in Western Australia.
By electrifying 500 homes in a single community, Electrify 2515 will provide a tangible measure of what’s required to drive rapid household electrification. The main challenge isn’t technological – it’s social. The technology is here. Getting the social drivers and settings right, at scale, is the key.
The holistic approach will demonstrate what consumers need to make the shift from gas to electricity. This includes what conversations are needed and which incentives enable all households to act in a coordinated way.
Local 2515 residents explain why everyone should join them in applying for the Electrify 2515 Community Pilot.
The bright side of a community approach
The whole-of-community focus brings technical and financial advantages.
After completing an application form and receiving an offer, households receive guidance and support from the installation partner Brighte, a commercial company that provides consumer loans for clean energy appliances such as solar panels and batteries. The service streamlines the decision-making process, which is often the biggest barrier stopping households from progressing with electrification.
Being able to work with a larger number of homes at once is likely to streamline and scale up installation with dedicated teams of installers and tradespeople.
It also helps build households’ trust in literature about payback times and financial benefits through friendly neighbourhood conversations and, importantly, through access to local real-world evidence, not just theory.
Thermal efficiency is also key
The electrification pilot is a solid starting point, especially for a community in a relatively mild coastal climate such as postcode 2515.
For homes in more extreme climates, or for inefficient older homes – which a lot of Australia’s homes sadly are – the fundamental thermal efficiency of the building must be improved alongside electrification of appliances.
The thermal efficiency of homes can be improved by insulating ceilings, walls and floors, double-glazing windows and sealing gaps. These measures make a home more comfortable for occupants. They can also reduce peak demand on the energy network and save on household energy bills.
Electrify 2515 currently focuses on appliance upgrades but adding thermal efficiency upgrades could take it to the next level. Without these upgrades, there is a risk of households in harsher climates using more electricity in a heatwave if homes are draughty and inefficient.
There are various ways to upgrade a home’s capacity to stay cool in summer and warm in winter. Climateworks Centre, 2023, Climate-ready homes: Building the case for a renovation wave in Australia.
When paired with electrification, thermal upgrades could save Australian households around $2,200 annually on their energy bills (based on 2023 gas and electricity prices), according to Climateworks Centre analysis.
Projects like Electrify 2515 should include both home thermal efficiency improvements and electrification efforts, particularly for communities in harsher climates in order to maximise benefits to households.
Electrification challenges
Electrify 2515 caters for low-income households, by offering higher subsidies to households in the lowest 25% income percentile to ensure these groups comprise 25% of community buy-in.
Renters are encouraged to put their hand up too. But it may still be challenging to encourage their landlords to invest in upgrades.
Further challenges include decarbonising homes that cannot generate electricity from rooftop solar panels due to being shaded by taller buildings or trees. This can sometimes be an issue for homes in colder winter climates with higher annual energy demands, such as Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT.
Building momentum for widescale rollout
The technology for all-electric homes exists. Now we must identify the key social drivers and settings required to spur Australia’s electrification wave.
Electrify 2515 is a promising approach. It’s a way to build momentum, showcase technology at scale, and prompt meaningful discussions around the benefits and challenges of getting off gas.
This program, and others like it, can provide a tangible real-world foundation to bring about bills savings, emissions reductions and healthier homes across Australia. And it will help ensure no one is left behind.
Climateworks Centre is a part of Monash University. It receives funding from a range of external sources including philanthropy, governments and businesses.
For many Australians, 2022 was a dark and devastating year. Major floods wreaked havoc on hundreds of communities in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. But for some, the floods themselves were only half the disaster.
As a recent report by Financial Counselling Victoria showed, many affected households had their insurance claims rejected or diminished, whether due to complicated exclusion clauses or because their “sum insured” had been whittled away by unexpected costs.
A long parliamentary inquiry sought to examine the insurance industry’s response to this disaster. Its final report – released to little fanfare last Friday – revealed a sector in crisis.
The report put forward 86 recommendations, which taken together could deliver real progress in pushing the insurance sector to deliver on its promises.
Some standout areas of focus included abolishing a principle called “like-for-like reinstatement” and increasing accountability and oversight. Making sure households can rely on their own coverage is a vital step.
But the report also highlighted just how vulnerable Australia’s housing stock is to climate change, which is no easy problem to solve.
To address the challenge of rising climate risk, we need to increase the resilience of Australian homes. Insurance will only be affordable if risk exposure can be brought down.
Recommendation 26 of the inquiry’s final report deals with the principle of “like-for-like reinstatement”. Written into many policies, this protects insurers from having to pay for home improvements in an insurance claim – known as “betterment” in insurance jargon.
‘Like-for-like’ rules can prevent households from improving their disaster resilience when rebuilding. Anna Mente/Shutterstock
The underlying idea is to stop households sneaking an extra en-suite bathroom into their insurer-funded rebuild. The same dimensions and building materials have to be used.
But this can mean a home that has been flooded ends up being rebuilt with exactly the same flood risk.
This was the experience of Madeleine Serle, whose home was flooded in Melbourne in 2022. She told me she had asked her insurer to rebuild using polished concrete floors in the downstairs rooms of her home, instead of the plasterboard and wood that had soaked up the floodwaters. Serle reasoned that if it flooded again, it wouldn’t cause so much damage.
Her insurer refused. Even when Serle offered to pay any extra costs herself that might arise from concrete flooring, her insurer insisted on a “like-for-like reinstatement”. This meant using the same low-resilience materials that will likely be destroyed if inundated again by floodwater.
Bringing ‘betterment’ to the fore
Serle was actively trying to reduce her future flood risk, but this was precluded by the terms of her insurance contract.
By seeking an end to like-for-like reinstatement, recommendation 26 is pushing for “betterment” to be brought to the forefront of how we think about insurer rebuilds.
It proposes allowing households to swap out size for quality in an insurer rebuild. That could allow them to use the money saved from reducing the footprint of their home on resilience measures, which are often much more expensive.
This wouldn’t just reduce their exposure to climate risks – fire, flooding and so on. It could also improve the energy efficiency of our houses, which is another key part of the climate challenge in Australia.
Standardised products
Many of the report’s other recommendations centred on the better handling of claims and better outcomes for households.
This includes by strengthening accountability through stronger regulatory oversight (recommendations 2, 4, 9, 41, 47, 49), tightening up some key loopholes (recommendations 3, 10, 13), and penalising insurers for delays in the resolution of claims (recommendations 19 and 57).
It also laid out ways to improve communications between insurers and households (recommendations 6, 10, 24, 25, 28, 33), so people can better understand what they should expect from their insurer – and when their insurer might be falling short.
These proposed reforms aim to create more standardised insurance products across the industry. But they could have gone further. The report didn’t go as far as recommending a fully standardised insurance product that all insurers would have to offer.
Making insurance products more standardised could make them easier to compare. DC Studio/Shutterstock
As the Financial Rights Legal Centre has argued, standardisation is vital to untangling the “confusopoly” that leaves households unable to make informed decisions about the merits of different policies on the market without reading reams of product disclosure statements.
Reform alone isn’t enough
The inquiry’s final report recommends the government buy back some of the riskiest homes (recommendation 81), alongside much stronger government support for households looking to mitigate their own risks.
But insurance reform alone isn’t enough to solve the problem that Australian households face in securing their housing amid worsening climate risk.
The bigger overarching problem faced by Australia is one of climate change mitigation and adaption. While our country is exposed to relatively high levels of climate risk, much of this risk is borne by individuals through home ownership.
With nearly half of all renter retirees living in poverty, Australians know owning their own home is a powerful way to secure their economic future. That’s why home ownership is referred to as part of the “third pillar” of the retirement income system (voluntary private savings), along with superannuation and the public pension.
Reforming our insurance system can make important strides in providing households with better tools to manage climate risk.
Only with stronger safety nets, and by grappling with risks at the societal level, can we counteract the extreme individualisation of climate risk that we experience here in Australia.
Antonia Settle 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.
We’ve all been there – caught outside without an umbrella as the sky opens up. Whether it’s a light drizzle or a heavy downpour, instinct tells us that running will minimise how wet we get. But is that really true? Let’s take a scientific look at this common dilemma.
You’re out and about, and it starts to rain – and naturally you’ve forgotten your umbrella. Instinctively, you lean forward and quicken your pace. We all tend to believe that moving faster means we’ll spend less time getting wet, even if it means getting hit with more rain as we move forward.
But is this instinct actually correct? Can we build a simple model to find out if speeding up really reduces how wet we’ll get? More specifically, does the amount of water that hits you depend on your speed? And is there an ideal speed that minimises the total water you encounter on your way from point A to point B?
Let’s break it down while keeping the scenario simple. Imagine rain falling evenly and vertically. We can divide your body into two surfaces: those that are vertical (your front and back) and those that are horizontal (your head and shoulders).
When moving forward in the rain, vertical surfaces such as a person’s body will be hit by more raindrops as speed increases. From the walker’s perspective, the drops appear to fall at an angle, with a horizontal velocity equal to their own walking speed.
While walking faster means encountering more drops per second, it also reduces the time spent in the rain. As a result, the two effects balance each other out: more drops per unit of time, but less time in the rain overall.
When the walker is stationary, rain only falls on horizontal surfaces – the top of the head and shoulders. As the walker begins to move, she or he receives raindrops that would have fallen in front, while missing the drops that now fall behind. This creates a balance, and ultimately, the amount of rain received on horizontal surfaces remains unchanged, regardless of the walking speed.
However, since walking faster reduces the total time spent in the rain, the overall amount of water collected on horizontal surfaces will be less.
All in all, it’s a good idea to pick up the pace when walking in the rain
For those who enjoy a mathematical approach, here’s a breakdown:
Let ρ represent the number of drops per unit volume, and let a denote their vertical velocity. We’ll denote Sh as the horizontal surface area of the individual (e.g., the head and shoulders) and Sv as the vertical surface area (e.g., the body).
When you’re standing still, the rain only falls on the horizontal surface, Sh. This is the amount of water you’ll receive on these areas.
Even if the rain falls vertically, from the perspective of a walker moving at speed v, it appears to fall obliquely, with the angle of the drops’ trajectory depending on your speed.
During a time period T, a raindrop travels a distance of aT. Therefore, all raindrops within a shorter distance will reach the surface: these are the drops inside a cylinder with a base of Sh and a height of aT, which gives:
ρ.Sh.a.T.
As we have seen, as we move forward, the drops appear to be animated by an oblique velocity that results from the composition of velocity a and velocity v. The number of drops reaching Sh remains unchanged, since velocity v is horizontal and therefore parallel to Sh. However, the number of drops reaching surface Sv – which was previously zero when the walker was stationary – has now increased. This is equal to the number of drops contained within a horizontal cylinder with a base area of Sv and a length of v.T. This length represents the horizontal distance the drops travel during this time interval.
In total, the walker receives a number of drops given by the expression:
ρ.(Sh.a + Sv.v). T
Now we need to take into account the time interval during which the walker is exposed to the rain. If you’re covering a distance d at constant speed v, the time you spend walking is d/v. Plugging this into the equation, the total amount of water you encounter is:
ρ.(Sh.a + Sv.v). d/v = ρ.(Sh.a/v + Sv). d
This equation gives us two key insights:
The faster you move, the less water hits our head and shoulders.
The water hitting the vertical part of your body stays the same regardless of speed, because the shorter time spent in the rain is offset by encountering more raindrops per second.
To sum it all up: it’s a good idea to lean forward and move quickly when you’re caught in the rain. But careful: leaning forward increases Sh. To really stay drier, you’ll need to increase your speed enough to compensate for this.
Jacques Treiner ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Football is a game of passion, and passions can become particularly inflamed when the sport represents larger political struggles. In Nigeria in 1977, an Africa-wide football contest fuelled the ethnic rivalry between the Yoruba and the Igbo people to the point that the military had to intervene. The game was to be played as a semi-final in the Africa Cup Winners’ Cup, the club football tournament that would go on to become the Caf Confederation Cup.
As scholars of sports communication, we recently published a research paper about that 1977 confrontation between Shooting Stars of Ibadan (Ibadan is home to a Yoruba majority in the south-west) and Enugu Rangers (Enugu is an Igbo state).
Our study adds to a history of football and politics that is not well documented in Africa. In the process it shows that football represents more than just sport, but can also be a way of understanding cultural and political issues.
Yoruba vs Igbo
The rivalry between the Igbos and Yorubas is almost as old as the formation of Nigeria in 1914. Both groups vie politically and for jobs. Each forms roughly a fifth of the Nigerian population. The Igbo had lost political power after the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970.
This rivalry became particularly visible in Nigerian football from the 1950s when ethnic groups contested annually for the Alex Oni Cup. The Yorubas often won, the Igbos a close second but the tournament was eventually discontinued because of fights between players and spectators.
After this, Igbos did not have a representative club team in national competitions until after the war ended in 1970. Top Igbo footballers were employed at various clubs across the country, particularly in Lagos. Yorubas played for various clubs in their home region. One such club was the Shooting Stars. They made up the bulk of the Ibadan Lions team that won the national Challenge Cup four times from 1959 to 1969.
After the civil war, most Igbo footballers – who had fought unsuccessfully for the secession of Biafra state – were afraid to live in other parts of the country. Enugu Rangers was formed and the club dominated Nigerian football in the 1970s and 1980s.
Shooting Stars had become the beacon club of the Yorubas and quickly developed a rivalry with Enugu Rangers.
The semi-final that caused all the trouble
This ongoing rivalry escalated when the two clubs beat off opposition from across the continent to meet in the two legs of the semi-final of the Africa Cup Winners Cup in 1977. Shooting Stars were defending the title. Rangers chose not to take part in the more prestigious Africa Champions Club’s Cup – instead they sought to equal Shooting Stars’ feat of winning the Cup Winners Cup.
To add to the tension, Nigeria’s national team was made up of mainly by players from these two clubs – and the national team was competing in the last stage of the qualifiers for the 1978 men’s football World Cup. It was feared that the rivalry would affect its chances. Almost daily, the newspapers reported on accusations levelled by officials of the two teams at each other and the Nigerian Football Association (today the Nigeria Football Federation).
The association had to find solutions – fast. Both teams had played their home matches in their own cities so far. The association decided that their two semi-final games should be played in a “neutral” location: Lagos.
But after the first leg, a designated “home game” for Shooting Stars, ended 0-0, controversy erupted. Lagos is in the west of the country, home of the Yorubas. This was seen to give the Shooting Stars an advantage. There was also controversy about whether the teams could call up some or all of their players in the national team. The association’s authority to re-schedule the second leg was then called into question. These issues were argued at fever pitch and publicly by fans and in the media, with threats and ethnic undertones.
The association wanted to bar both Rangers and Shooting Stars from using their national team players, but was eventually forced to agree on the release of all players to play in the final leg of the Africa Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final. But not before making a very late request that the Confederation of African Football put off the game until after the national team’s World Cup qualifying games.
Shooting Stars, frustrated by the postponement, lashed out publicly and in the media. They accused Nigeria’s federal sports commissioner, Dandeson Isokrari, of ethnocentrism and favouritism. Isokrari was an easterner, from Enugu Rangers territory.
With tension boiling over and threats issued from both sides, the second-in-command of the Nigeria state, Major General Musa Yar’ Adua, stepped in to avoid ethnic strife and possible violence. He instructed the match to move to Kaduna, a northern city, away from the homes of the clubs. This decision by the country’s military leadership calmed nerves.
An overflowing crowd packed the Kaduna venue from the early morning. In the early minutes of the game, Shooting Stars mounted a siege in the Rangers’ goal area. It was so tense that journalists and photographers converged behind the Rangers goal. Angry Rangers supporters claimed they were not journalists and photographers, but disguised juju men concocting mystical incantations that kept the ball rooted in the Rangers goal area.
The match ended in another 0-0 tie but Rangers advanced when goalkeeper Emmanuel Okala helped to turn the penalty kick tiebreaker in the club’s favour, 4-2. Despite the tensions, there were no reported incidents of violence during the match.
This epic contest between two clubs during a continental cup contest in 1977 reminds us of the rivalry that persists even today among ethnic groups across the continent. Football often represents such ethnic rivalries beyond the field of play – and in the case of Enugu Rangers and Shooting Stars it reached a dangerous level that forced the state to step in.
The authors 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.
Later this week the government will receive the report of the year-long independent inquiry into its handling of the COVID pandemic.
Among the issues it will have to contend with is air quality, in particular the air quality in high occupancy public buildings such as schools, aged-care facilities, shops, pubs and clubs.
Many already have high quality air. High-fitration air conditioning (so-called mechanical ventilation) is standard in offices, hospitals and shopping centres.
But not in schools. Almost all of our schools (98% in NSW) use windows.
In Australia’s national construction code, this is called “natural ventilation” and it is allowed so long as the window, opening or door has a ventilating area of not less than 5% of the floor area, a requirement research suggests is insufficient.
Windows, but no requirement to keep them open
There’s no requirement to actually open the windows. School windows are often shut to keep in the heat in (or to keep out the heat in summer).
The result can be very, very stuffy classrooms, far stuffier than we would tolerate in shopping centres. This matters for learning. Study after study has found that when air circulation gets low, people can’t concentrate well or learn well.
And they get sick. Diseases such as flu, COVID and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) spread when viruses get recirculated instead of diluted with fresh air.
The costs of the resulting sickness are borne by students, parents, teachers and education systems that need to find replacement staff to cover for teachers who are sick and parents who need to look after sick children at home.
A pilot study prepared for the Australian Research Council Centre for Advanced Building Systems Against Airborne Infection (known as “Thrive”), suggests the entire cost of installing high-filtration air conditioning in every Australian school would be offset by the savings in reduced sickness.
What classroom air is like
The study carried out by the education architecture firm ARINA compared the ventilation of 60 so-called naturally ventilated schools in southern NSW and the Australian Capital Territory to that of a school in Sydney that happened to have been fitted with a Standards Australia-compliant air conditioning system to control aircraft noise.
It used carbon dioxide levels to measure ventilation. Carbon dioxide is a good proxy for ventilation because its levels are determined by both the number of people breathing out concentrated carbon dioxide and the clean air available to dilute it.
Under a normal load, defined as 26 students, one teacher and one assistant, measured levels of carbon dioxide in the air-conditioned school stayed below 750 parts per million (ppm) and were typically between 500 and 600 ppm.
A reading of 700 ppm is particularly good. It means the people in the room breathe in less than 0.5% of air breathed out by others.
But in “naturally ventilated” classrooms the reading often climbed to 2,500 ppm and sometimes more, within an hour of a class commencing.
At 2,500 parts per million, people in the room are breathing in 5.5% of the air breathed out by others. This is also high enough to affect cognition, learning and behaviour, something that begins when carbon dioxide climbs above 1,200 ppm.
Research suggests using ventilation to cut carbon dioxide to 700 ppm can cut the risk of airborne transmission of disease by a factor of two and up to five.
The economic case for healthy air
In 2023, Australia had 9,629 schools with 4,086,998 students.
ARINA has previously estimated the cost of ensuring all of these schools are mechanically ventilated at A$2 billion per year over five years.
Offsetting that cost would be less sickness. Documents released under freedom of information laws show Victoria spent $360.8 million on casual relief teachers between May 2023 and May 2024, 54% more than before COVID in 2019.
The figures for other states are harder to get, but if Victoria (with 26% of Australia’s population) is spending $234 million more per year on casual relief teachers than before COVID, it is likely that Australia is spending $900 million per year more.
Add in the teachers in non-government schools (37% of Australia’s total) and the potential saving from air conditioning schools exceeds $1 billion per year.
Add in the other non-COVID viruses that would no longer be concentrated and circulated in classrooms and the potential savings grow higher still.
Worth more than $1 billion per year
And, in any event, the cost of replacement teachers is a woefully incomplete measure of the cost of illness in schools. Many ill teachers can’t be replaced because replacements aren’t available, making schools cancel lessons and combine classes, costing days, weeks and sometimes months of lost education.
Also, the bacteria and viruses spread by recirculated air infect students as well as teachers, keeping students (and often their parents) at home as well.
This suggests the costs per year of not air conditioning schools exceed $1 billion and may well approach or exceed $2 billion, which is the estimated cost per year over five years of air conditioning every Australian school.
Natural ventilation was never a good idea for classrooms: it was cheap at the time, but not cheap at all when the costs are considered. Those costs happen to extend beyond disease to thermal comfort, energy use and the ability of students to concentrate.
It’s time we gave students and teachers the kind of protections we demand for ourselves in our offices, our shopping centres and often our homes. It would soon pay for itself.
Geoff Hanmer is a member of the executive of the Industry Training and Transformation Centre for Advanced Building Systems against Airborne Infection Transmission (known as Thrive) which receives funding from the Australian Research Council, QUT, the University of Melbourne and industry partners in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. He is a director of the health expert body OzSAGE and the managing director of ARINA, an architectural consultancy.
For anyone who has been online in Australia longer than a decade or so, the discussion around current proposals to set a minimum age for social media use might trigger a touch of déjà vu.
Between 2007 and 2012, the Rudd–Gillard government’s efforts to implement a “Clean Feed” internet filter sparked very similar debates.
Beset by technical problems and facing fierce opposition, the Clean Feed was eventually abandoned in favour of laws that already existed. Will the proposed social media ban face a similar fate?
How to regulate cyberspace
The question of how to regulate a cyberspace occupied by both adults and children has puzzled governments for a long time. Traditional controls on physical media are difficult to apply to online spaces, particularly when so much online media comes from overseas.
As early as 1998, an Australian Broadcasting Authority report noted a key difficulty in online regulation. Namely, balancing adults’ access to legal online spaces and content with restrictions on childrens’ access to age-inappropriate material and bans on illegal content.
The Clean Feed proposal attempted to address parental concerns about age-inappropriate websites. First raised in 2006 by Labor in opposition, it became a campaign promise at the 2007 election.
The proposal aimed to solve the issue of overseas content. Australian authorities could already require website owners in Australia to take down illegal content, but they had no power over international sites.
To address this, the Clean Feed would require internet service providers to run a government-created filter blocking all material given a “Refused” classification by the Australian Classification Board, which meant it was illegal. Labor argued the filter would protect children from “harmful and inappropriate” content, including child pornography and X-rated media. The Australian Communications and Media Authority created a “blacklist” of websites that the filter would block.
Technical trouble
The Clean Feed was plagued by technical issues. Trials in 2008 revealed it might slow internet speeds by up to 87%, block access to legal websites, and wouldn’t block all illegal content.
While the effect on speeds was improved, the 2008 trials and others in 2009 revealed another problem: determined users could bypass the filter.
There were also fears the blacklist would be used to block legal websites. While the government maintained the filter would only target illegal content, some questioned whether this was true.
Internet service providers were already required to prevent access to content that had been given a Refused classification. This, along with unclear government statements about removing age-inappropriate material, led many to believe the blacklist could be more far-reaching.
The government also planned to keep the list secret, on the grounds that a published list could become a guide for finding illegal material.
The blacklist
In 2009, the whistleblowing website Wikileaks published a list of sites blacklisted in Denmark. The government banned those pages of Wikileaks, and in response Wikileaks published what it said was the Australian government blacklist. (The government denied it was the actual blacklist.)
Newspapers noted that around half the websites on the published list were not related to child pornography.
Wikileaks published what it claimed was the government’s planned ‘blacklist’ of websites, along with a rationale for publishing the list. Wikileaks
The alleged blacklist also contained legal content, including Wikipedia pages, YouTube links, and even the website of a Queensland dentist. This lent weight to fears the filter would block more than just illegal websites.
More debates emerged surrounding how the Refused classification category was applied offline as well as on the internet.
In January 2010, the Australian Sex Party reported claims from pornography studios that customs officials had confiscated material featuring female ejaculation (as an “abhorrent depiction” or form of urination) and small-breasted adult women (who might appear to be minors). Many questioned whether these should be banned, and if such depictions would be added to the blacklist – including members of hacker-activist group Anonymous.
On February 10 2010, activists targeted several government websites. The Australian Parliament site was down for three days. Protesters also mass-emailed politicians and their staff the kinds of pornography set to be blocked by the filter.
While Operation Titstorm gained media attention, other digital activists (such as Electronic Frontiers Australia and other members of Anonymous) criticised its illegal tactics. Many dismissed the protest as juvenile.
In February 2010, hacker-activists from Anonymous launched denial-of-service attacks and email campaigns in protest of proposed internet filters. WIkipedia
However, one participant argued that many protesters were children, who had used these methods because “kids and teenagers don’t really get the chance to voice their opinions”. The protesters may have been the very people the Clean Feed was supposed to protect.
The government abandoned the Clean Feed in 2012 and used existing legislation to require internet service providers to block INTERPOL’s “worst of” child abuse list. It remains to be seen whether the social media minimum age will similarly crumble under the weight of controversy and be rendered redundant by existing legislation.
The same, but different
The Clean Feed tried to balance the rights of adults to access legal material with protecting children from age-inappropriate content and making cyberspace safer for them. In a sense, it did this by regulating adults.
The filter limited the material adults could access. Given it was government-created and mandatory, it also decided for parents what content was age-appropriate for their children.
The current proposal to set a minimum age for social media flips this solution by determining what online spaces children can occupy. Similar to the filter, it also makes this decision on parents’ behalf.
The Clean Feed saga reveals some of the difficulties of policing the internet. It also reminds us that anxiety about what Australian youth can interact with online is nothing new – and is unlikely to go away.
Rebecca Houlihan 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.
Anyone who has spent time inside a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) knows it’s intense.
For the tiny babies cared for in these wards, any infection could prove fatal. Great care is taken to prevent the spread of pathogens, but outbreaks still occur.
Traditionally, detecting outbreaks within a NICU has been reactive – only after multiple babies fall ill at the same time.
Our research is advancing the use of whole-genome sequencing technologies to detect outbreaks early and stamp out bacteria before they threaten more babies.
From reactive to proactive
NICU outbreak surveillance usually involves monitoring rates of illness and identifying spikes and long-term trends that may point to a pathogen circulating on the ward.
When a potential outbreak is identified, bacteria may be cultured and retrospectively sequenced to determine if they can be linked to a shared source or transmission on the ward.
Wellington Regional Hospital has changed its approach to infection surveillance in the NICU. Rather than waiting for infants to fall ill, they are using the same sequencing technology we developed at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) for genomic contact tracking during the COVID pandemic.
Infants in the unit have diagnostic swab samples taken as part of routine practice. If any key bacteria are cultured from these samples, they are sequenced promptly to identify possible transmission events in near real time. This allows us to monitor the situation closely and respond quickly to emerging outbreaks.
Genome sequencing allows NICU teams to monitor infectious bacteria before babies fall ill. Getty Images
Because not all infants carrying a particular bacterial strain will experience a severe infection, this proactive approach can detect an outbreak before any babies fall ill.
And because whole-genome sequencing decodes the entire genetic makeup of bacteria, it also provides the NICU team with information on how pathogens are related to each other. This allows them to differentiate one-off cases imported to the unit from any circulating within it.
This level of detail allows for precise infection monitoring and fast, informed decisions on outbreak control.
A case study
This shift was recently tested when proactive genomic surveillance showed two infants in the NICU had eye infections caused by the same organism, an uncommon strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
MRSA is notorious for its resistance to common antibiotics, making it particularly dangerous in hospitals.
The onsite sequencing showed the two cases were likely linked. The priorities were to establish whether other infants were affected and limit the pathogen’s spread as quickly as possible. Screening of infants in the NICU found six more carrying the same strain of MRSA (though none with serious illness).
This meant these infants could be isolated rapidly and the outbreak contained before any others developed a significant infection. ESR’s experience as genomic contact tracers helped establish how these infections spread in the unit.
An outbreak response takes up resources and involves multiple steps, from the initial confirmation of the infection and its transmission route to communication with parents.
This proactive approach to infection surveillance provides an early-warning system. It means the NICU team can be confident an outbreak is underway and act quickly to contain it.
MRSA in New Zealand
The power of genome sequencing extends beyond immediate outbreak control.
By comparing the genomic data generated in the lab to that collected in national surveillance projects, our team was able to show the strain that caused the eye infections may have emerged in the early 1990s.
This strain has slowly accumulated the genes required to evade first-choice antibiotics, underpinning the risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in Aotearoa New Zealand.
We also highlighted the power of genomics to reveal connections when we found the MRSA strain causing illness in the NICU was related to bacteria collected from cattle. This discovery underscores the concept of “One Health” – the idea that human health, animal health and environmental health are inextricably linked.
The data suggest bacteria from a cow milk tank and from babies in a hospital may have shared a common ancestor at some point.
Future focus
As we continue to unravel the complex world of microbes, tools like whole-genome sequencing offer hope in the ongoing battle against infectious diseases. The work at Wellington Regional Hospital’s NICU is just the beginning.
From protecting our most vulnerable newborns to uncovering unlikely connections between farm animals and hospital patients, genomic technology is changing how we combat infectious diseases.
As this technology continues to evolve, it promises to play an increasingly crucial role in safeguarding public health, one DNA sequence at a time.
In the face of growing antibiotic resistance and emerging pathogens, this proactive, genomics-based approach to infection control may well be our best defence.
We would like to acknowledge the contributions by Max Bloomfield and the teams at Awanui Labs, and Emma Voss and team at Livestock Improvement Corporation.
Rhys White received a travel bursary from Oxford Nanopore Technologies and a travel grant from the UK Microbiology Society.
David Winter and Suzanne Manning 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Guastella, Professor and Clinical Psychologist, Michael Crouch Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health, University of Sydney
Neurodevelopmental conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism affect about one in ten children. These conditions impact learning, behaviour and development.
Executive function delays are core to challenges people with neurodevelopmental conditions experience. This includes skills such as paying attention, switching attention, controlling impulses, planning, organising and problem-solving.
These skills are important for learning and long-term development. They have been linked with future occupational, social, academic and mental health outcomes. Children with improved executive function skills and supports for these skills do better long term.
Decades of studies have described how difficulties in attention and impulse control underpin ADHD. Meanwhile, difficulties with switching attention and flexibility of thinking have been proposed to underpin autism.
As a result, different supports and interventions developed for different neurodevelopmental conditions target these skills. It sets up a system where a diagnosis is made first, then a set of supports is provided based on that diagnosis.
But our recent study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, shows executive function problems are similar across all neurodevelopmental conditions. Understanding these common needs could lead to better access to supports before waiting for a specific diagnosis.
Our study found more similarities than differences
We looked at 180 studies, over 45 years, that compared executive function skills across two or more neurodevelopmental conditions.
We brought the research together for all neurodevelopmental conditions that have been defined by diagnostic manuals, including ADHD, Tourette’s syndrome, communication disorders and intellectual disabilities.
Surprisingly, we found most neurodevelopmental conditions showed very similar delays in their executive skills.
Children with ADHD showed difficulties with attention and impulse control, for example, but so did children with autism, communication and specific learning conditions.
There were very few differences between each neurodevelopmental condition and the type of executive function delay.
This suggests executive function delay is best considered as a common difficulty for all children with neurodevelopmental conditions. All of these children could benefit from similar supports to improve executive skills.
But supports have become siloed
For decades, research has failed to integrate findings across conditions. This has led to siloed research and practices across the education, health and disability sectors.
Our data showed a gradual shift in the type of conditions that have been studied since 1980. In the earlier days, as a percentage, there were a far greater proportion of studies conducted on tic disorders, such as Tourette’s syndrome. In the past ten years, autism has been of greater focus.
This means research and practice is also siloed, based on the focus on funding and interest in the community. Some groups miss out from good science and practice when they become less visible in the political landscape.
This has led to a skewed support system where only children with a specific diagnosis can be offered certain interventions. It also reduces access to supports if families can’t access diagnostic services, which can be particularly difficult in regional and rural communities.
Due to these diagnosis-driven research practices, there are now assessment services, guidelines and treatments that are recommended for autism. These are usually independent from and not offered to children with ADHD, Tourette’s syndrome, communication disorders or intellectual disabilities despite a significant overlap in children’s needs.
How does this affect access to support
Families often find it hard to get the help they need. They often describe the assessment and support process as confusing, with long wait times and lots of barriers.
We have previously shown caregivers often attend assessment and support services with a broad range of needs, but leave with many needs unaddressed.
Recent national child mental health, autism and ADHD guidelines call for more integrated supports for children. But most services are not well set up to do this. It will take time to drive such system change if this is to be achieved.
Why we need integrated research
More integrated research will lead to more cohesive support systems across education, health and disability for all children in need.
Studies show, for example, that many risk factors (genetic and environmental) are common to all neurodevelopmental conditions. These include a broad overlap of risk genes that are the same between conditions, and common environmental factors that influence development in the womb, such as the use of certain drugs, stress and a significant immune response.
Other studies show how most children diagnosed with one neurodevelopmental condition will also be diagnosed with others.
But gaps remain. While we know certain stimulant medications can work well for ADHD, for example, we have less information about how they might help children with other neurodevelopmental conditions who have attention difficulties.
Unlike our knowledge about social supports for children with autism, we don’t have much research on how we can help children with ADHD with their social needs.
We should take a wider view of children’s needs
It’s important for families to be aware that if their child meets criteria for one neurodevelopmental condition, it is very likely that they will meet criteria for other neurodvelopmental conditions. They will likely have many needs relevant to other conditions.
It is worth asking clinical services about broader needs beyond a diagnosis. This should include developmental, mental and physical health needs.
It is also important to consider that many common interventions may have potential to support all children with neurodevelopmental conditions.
This is an important issue for government. Reviews are under way for supporting the needs of people with autism, intellectual disability and ADHD.
It’s time to establish more integrated systems, supports and strategies for all people with neurodevelopmental conditions for their home, school, play and work.
Adam Guastella receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and Australian Research Council for research into neurodevelopmental conditions. He is director of the Clinic for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Research and scientific chair of Neurodevelopment Australia, a scientific group seeking to improve the knowledge and supports for all people with neurodevelopmental conditions.
Kelsie Boulton 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.
