Australia

1)  The population of Australia is 21,007,310. The world's   smallest continent but the sixth largest country.

2) Major areas affected from environmental issues are: -Deforestation, the salinity in the soil will greatly increase. The Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef system in the world is suffering from: -Climate Change - Pollution, agriculture is affecting Australia’s coasts and oceans specially environments near the shore. It is estimated that almost 19,000 tones of phosphorus and 141,000 tones of nitrogen are discharged to rivers flowing to the coast -Introduced plants and animals -Oil spills -Boats (drop heavy anchors on reefs) -Over Fishing, Australians have reduced fish stocks to a dangerously low level. -Rising sea temperatures -Coral bleaching, loss of color of corals due to stress. Stress caused by change in the temperature of the water. Ultraviolet light. Changes in water chemistry. Starvation caused by a decline in zooplankton levels, a result of overfishing changes in salinity

3) Human impacts and environmental damage in Australia, The Great Barrier Reef Pollution, from fertilizers and boats/oil spills introducing foreign plants and animals over fishing.

4) The Australian government is trying to encourage Australians to get public transport rather than getting in their cars and driving to work but they are also trying to get Australians out and walking or even riding to work. The Australian governments are also trying to make sure that our river systems such as the Murray River are sustained for the future. The Australian Government is also trying to have a more environmentally friendly way of friendly of generating hot water by solar power. They are giving incentives to install a solar hot water service by paying part of the cost to install the solar panel as well as the other major parts of a solar hot water system. The Australian Government is also subsidizing the cost of installing gas tanks into vehicles. There idea of subsidizing the cost is to try to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases from being emitted into the environment. This is done due to the high amounts of greenhouse gasses that are being emitted into the environment each year by Australians. We can also turn off appliances at the wall which also reduces the greenhouse gasses that are emitted.

5) Some of the strategies that the government has offered to the Australian public has being popular such as the gas tanks in the car has being very popular due to the high oil prices that Australia has at the time. Australians have also taken to the solar hot water services but not to the same extent. These ideas are good but I think that the gas tank subsidy was a good move as LPG is a lot cheaper to manufacture and emits very little exhaust fumes compared to a car due to LPG burns hotter in a car. LPG is a good alternate fuel to unleaded petrol and is more environmentally friendly.

6) In the following web link we can see the changes that will occur if the ice caps don't stop melting. In this image we see that Australia is slightly covered by water at seven metres higher than it already is this only covers the edges of Australia. This could displace thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people. Most of the capital cities of Australia are placed on the coasts, some of which will become covered in water. This would become a disaster as most of the land that is livable is where the water will be covering. http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=-27.8390,138.1640&z=13&m=7

7) For renewable energy Australia has solar energy which you can have on your own house. The Australian government is encouraging people to get solar powered hot water services installed. Australians are getting a rebate of the total cost of the system to be installed onto your house. If in summer time you get too much energy you can sell it back to the solar companies. In Australia there are also wind-farms in the windier regions to generate electricity as well.

8) The Kyoto protocol is an international environmental agreement about climate change. Aimed to achieve "stabilization of greenhouse gases". Australia has signed the Kyoto protocol. It was signed after Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister of Australia, as the former Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard declined this idea arguing that the protocol could cost Australian jobs. Kevin Rudd had said if he won the November 2007 elections that he would sign the protocol. Kevin Rudd signed the protocol December 3rd 2007 and it took effect in March 2008.