2 . Thanks to the 1999 Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, 26 endangered species in Australia have seen their populations recover.

It seems like that we're always hearing about new animals that have become endangered, but there's some good news in Australia: 26 animal species no longer meet the criteria to be listed as threatened. Australia’s biodiversity has been in decline, with more than 1, 700 species and ecological communities known to be on the line. In 1999, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act was passed to introduce protections for endangered animals. The burrowing bettong is one of 26 Australian species that have returned from the edge of extinction.

Seemingly these are working, as a recent study published in the journal Biological Conservation reviewed the animals that were previously or currently listed as threatened between 2000 and December 2022, and discovered that 26 species had recovered to no longer meet the criteria. Species that have seen improvement include the charmingly named burrowing bettong, the golden bandicoot and the bulloo grey grasswren.

Factors behind this improvement include habitat management, control of introduced predators (捕食者) and translocation of endangered animals to predator-free islands. However, the species have not been officially delisted at this time. The EPBC Act only allows species to be delisted if doing so will not have a negative effect on their survival, and researchers believe that conservation gains could be lost should management efforts be stopped.

Dr Michelle Ward, a conservation scientist at WWF Australia, told The Guardian, “The key problem with delisting species is that then they no longer have monitoring and no longer need certain funding plans.”

However, it is promising that researchers have found signs of improvement. Hopefully this will continue among these and other species!

6 . It has been over 150 years since the Great Chicago Fire. The 1871 fire killed an estimated 300 people. It turned the heart of the city, wood-frame buildings quickly constructed on wooden sidewalks, into ruins, and left 100,000 people homeless. Like the Great Fire of London in 1666, the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Great Chicago Fire reminds us that big cities can still be frail.

But that same night, about 250 miles north of Chicago, more than 1,200 people died in and around Peshtigo. It was the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history. Survivors said the fire moved like a hurricane, jumping across Green Bay to light forests on the opposite shore.

Chicago’s fire came to be seen as a disaster that also led to the invention of steel skyscrapers, raised up on the city’s ashes. It has overshadowed the Peshtigo Fire. And for years, the two were seen as separate disasters. However, many of those houses and sidewalks that burned in Chicago had been built with trees grown around Peshtigo.

Chicago’s fire was long blamed - falsely - on an Irish-immigrant family’s cow kicking over a lantern. Some people thought the Peshtigo Fire started when pieces of a comet (彗星) landed in the forest, which has never been proven.

What we understand better today was that the Midwest was historically dry in the summer of 1871. When a low-pressure front with cooler temperatures rolled in, it produced winds, which can fan sparks (火星) into wildfires. The fires themselves generated more winds. Several parts of nearby Michigan also burned during the same few days ; at least 500 people were killed there.

At present, all of those fires on an autumn night in 1871 might help us see even more clearly how rising global temperatures and severe droughts, from Australia to Algeria to California, have made forests easier to burn, and people more likely to be harmed by the climate changes we’ ve helped create.

7 . Dairy (奶品场) packaging has been changing a lot for so many years. Now, businesses are using technology to create more sustainable (可持续的) packaging options along the whole supply chain.

Ian Olmstead, program manager at Dairy Australia, says, “We’re trying to make sure the plastics we use are designed in a way that allows them to be recycled. Then we have partnerships in place that support the processes for recycling, and seek to increase the food-grade recycled content that can be used again in dairy packaging.”

Brownes Dairy — Australia’s oldest dairy has worked with Tetra Pak to make its next change. Brownes’ senior marketing manager, Nicole Ohm, says it has been important to create a product that not only is recyclable, but starts life in a sustainable way, too. “The start of life is just as important as the end of life,” she says. “Being able to make an effective change at the start of life just makes for a greener result.”

Milk packaging is made of three covers. Recyclable cardboard sits in the middle, with polyethylene (聚乙烯) plastic on both sides acting as a protection. Historically, these outer covers have been made from plastic, but Brownes’ new packaging will use a renewable resource: sugarcane, a kind of plant. “The plant-based protections behave in the same way,” Ohm says, “and so does the recyclability.” “Being Australia’s oldest dairy carries a level of responsibility,” Ohm says. “Even though we are very old, we are not at all traditional—we are very advanced.”

When it comes to plastic packaging, the dairy industry faces many challenges. Recyclable material must be food safe, for example. And one plastic milk bottle might contain a number of different plastics, from the bottle itself to its cover. Even the glue on the label becomes part of the recycling challenge that needs to be got over.

Dr Stephanus Peters is a managing partner at PEGRAS, a global technical solutions consulting company. Peters explains the problem PEGRAS has been asked to solve: make it easier to take away non-recyclable parts from milk bottles to avoid pollution. “You always have a little bit of glue left,” he says. “We have to take away the glue before the bottle can be recycled. If successful, this advance could be used in every industry.”

10 . Most people, if you quizzed them, probably wouldn’t know how much of all global trade is done by sea. It’s one of several reasons that the pollution and carbon emissions from shipping gain much less attention than those from road transport and other industries. It’s over the horizon, out of sight and out of mind.

Today, the international shipping industry is the main mode of transport for around 90 per cent of world trade. It’s powered almost entirely by fossil fuels. Studies show that alternative technologies and zero-emission fuels — including electrofuels such as hydrogen, ammonia and methanol — have the potential to significantly reduce the industry’s carbon footprint and thus require urgent implementation (实施). There’s just one catch: they don’t exist yet.

Even if the technology were available, the infrastructure (基础设施) for that technology or fuel is going to take time to develop. And an even bigger challenge is going to be whether that methanol or ammonia fuel is green, which touches on other industries such as renewable electricity. Do we even have enough renewable electricity in the world to be able to generate these fuels? It’s a complex supply chain that requires cooperation across the industry. It’s not something that one company can solve by itself.

According to Piotr Konopka, senior manager for energy and decarbonisation (碳减排) programs at DP World, there are some simple behavioral changes that can help cut down on fuel used in the meantime, from the regular maintenance and reduced idling of port equipment to the implementation of weather routing that helps ships avoid rougher, more fuel-intensive stretches of water. “Of course, efficiency is unlikely to ever reduce emissions by more than five or ten per cent, but it’s definitely a low-hanging fruit,” he says.

“This is the last moment for the IMO to act decisively to eliminate shipping emissions” says Delaine McCullough, shipping emissions policy manager at environmental NGO Ocean Conservancy. “We need countries to demand that the IMO set strong emission-reduction goals and take action at home if the IMO fails to do the right thing.”