Environment

Reports of a giant breakaway iceberg and a new 64-kilometre crack in the Larsen ice shelf in the Antarctic peninsula — dramatic indicators of warmer weather — seem to have had little or no impact on the major greenhouse gas culprits at the world climate conference in Berlin. Australia and the United States are leading the charge against strict controls of greenhouse gas emissions in the two-week conference, which began on March 28.

Despite PM John Howard's call for a "full-blooded debate" about energy, greenhouse and uranium mining, there has been little discussion about renewable energy sources such as wind power.

In May, young people carrying a banner "United Front Against Golf Course Development" demonstrated outside the offices of the minister for youth and sport in Jakarta, leading to a heated polemic in the newspapers. A private

Fidel Castro's rousing six-minute address to the Earth Summit in Rio said everything delegates had come from around the world to hear, says Dr Judy Henderson, Australian Council for Overseas Aid representative at the Earth Summit in June.

Environmentalists have cautiously welcomed the draft report of the Resource Assessment Commission into the effects of the proposed gold-platinum-palladium mine at Coronation Hill in Kakadu national park.

A historic alliance of conservationists, left parties, resident group activists and Australian Democrats has condemned the Liberal City Council's decision to place a massive land-fill dump in Rochedale, a residential suburb on Brisbane's south side.

Overseas aid from official and non-government sources in Australia has hardly headed left, but it is certainly going green.

Many Sydneysiders remain sceptical about how the NSW Water Board is handling the city's sewage disposal dilemma, with concerns focussing on just how clean the ocean will be after hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on improving the treatment and discharge technologies.

There's a lot we know about Australia's forests — and a staggering amount we don't know.