Zero waste in an age of hungry machines

Yes, thank you, Mick.

And this week, I'm going to begin not with the Nepal glacier mudslide, nor the fires, floods and heat waves that are worldwide, because they're now regularly reported in the mainstream media, although they are rarely linked to climate change, even though it is behind all of them.

So instead, I'd like to begin in the US, where the Trump administration last week released yet another piece of environmental rollback legislation that's called the Colorado River Plan.

It lasted just three days before it was challenged in the courts by some surprisingly heavy opposition from Las Vegas.

The surprise is because up until now, the casino-owning moguls have been solidly behind Trump's MAGA schemes, but the new plan could see their state, Nevada, lose more than 70% of its already sparse Colorado River water allocation.

and that would have a devastating effect on the city of Las Vegas.

That's according to the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, whose name is John Entzminger.

Under the new Trump plan, Southern Nevada faced cuts to its allocated water in all future years, while Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming wouldn't face any cuts at all.

Of the seven states that rely on the river for its water, Nevada already gets the smallest amount.

Now the state's water authorities are saying the long-term impacts from the proposed cuts would be devastating, with Las Vegas bearing most of the pain.

Now these people are going to put quite a fight up against Donald Trump, and up until now they've been backing him.

Meanwhile, back home in Canberra, the federal government has spent years declaring its ambitions for Australia to become a renewable energy superpower, exporting what the world needs to decarbonise things such as green iron and critical minerals.

But remarkably, little of that conversation has been about the state that will be central to achieving this goal.

That's WA, Western Australia, which is looking more and more unwilling to cooperate with any federal plans.

Western Australia is the world's largest producer of iron ore and lithium, the second largest producer of alumna, and the world's third largest liquefied natural gas exporter.

It's also the only Australian state to have increased its total greenhouse gas emissions since 1990.

This is largely on the back of the incredible growth in iron ore and LNG exports.

Those emissions aren't just nationally significant.

The downstream emissions from burning WA's gas and smelting its iron ore and alumina overseas are roughly 16 times the state's domestic emissions.

So although they've got high emissions in the state of Western Australia, they export 16 times that amount which is burned elsewhere in the world which significantly is 2.6% of all global emissions.

That's exported from WA.

Crucially undermining WA's exports and emissions problems is its reliance on diesel.

The state's mining, transport and agricultural sections all rely almost entirely on diesel for their energy needs.

Now, the repeated closure of the Strait of Hormuz this year has been a warning about the risk of reliance on energy imports to WA, yet the Commonwealth's response has been a $15 billion package that's directed almost entirely at securing the supply of refined fuels and fertiliser.

That's instead of reducing our dependency through decarbonisation.