How do we transition to a zero carbon energy market? Simon Holmes à Court believes we have much to learn from other countries with more advanced thinking in this space – they have spent the past decade thinking not about whether they should transition, but how. The 2017 Finkel Review created a blueprint to move Australia away from its high-emissions market by ramping up renewables and energy storage uptake. Are we on track?

Our sea levels are rising. Understanding the dynamics of the beach envelope and its overlap with human infrastructure is fundamental for effective coastal management. Dr David Kennedy studies the dynamic adaptation of beaches in the past to inform how we can manage them into the future. While NSW beaches have been studied for decades, but we are only just starting to understand the behaviours of Victoria’s beaches and their underlying geology.

The term “Anthropocene” was first used 20 years ago to describe a new epoch of geological time, coinciding with the start of the Industrial Revolution around 1750. It indicates a transition out of the Holocene into a new age – the age of human impact. This term has incited great debate amongst the scientific community as, in order for a new new geologic epoch to be accepted, we need to demonstrate our impact on the rock strata around and beneath us. This was achieved in 2019.

Professor Patrick Baker, Professor of Silviculture and Forest Ecology at the University of Melbourne, explains how tree rings can tell us about a landscapes climate history, and prove a worrying trend towards more extreme weather events and bushfires as a result of climate change. His studies have shown that bushfires are becoming more widespread and hotter than ever before, not just scarring trees – but killing them.

Senior Climatologist Dr Lynette Bettio explains that soon we will no longer be considering how we get through a single intense year, such as 2019, but how we can make it through a stretch of years with no respite. The climate has been set on a warming path – the long-lived greenhouse gasses that are in the atmosphere and the extra energy soaked up by oceans have secured the warming trend continuing for the next few decades. So the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO are investing a lot of effort to solve these problems, knowing the sooner we take action, the sooner we will see a divergence from the alarming projections in current climate models and simulations.