Simon Copland

Why do some pregnancies result in healthy babies, whilst others don’t? What are the factors behind this? That’s a question that Dr Chris Nolan, an endocrinologist in the Medical School, and his team are trying to answer in new research. Nolan is focusing on the factors behind the growth of diabetes in society. He now believes that early life events, starting in utero, may be particularly important in determining later life risks for diabetes.

“There are many pregnancies that go really well when the mother is obese giving rise to normal sized healthy babies. On the other hand, obesity is a high risk factor for things going wrong. Quite often these women have babies that are born obese,” says Nolan.

To investigate why some babies are born healthy and others not, Nolan is looking at the role of the placenta in obesity. “In this project, we want to know if the placenta is adapting to obesity to protect the baby. We’ll be studying mums and comparing their placentas to determine if there are differences between obese and non-obese women. If there are differences, then those adaptations are probably healthy.”

“The second question is if the pregnancy doesn’t go well and you have an obese baby, is the placenta failing to do its job? So, we want to compare the placentas from the obese mums who do well, to those who don’t, to see if there is a failure somewhere.”

“The project is in a really early stage, but I am very excited about the prospects,” says Nolan. “I hope that we can find some answers as to how the placenta works in pregnancy. I believe this could be extremely useful in helping deliver better health outcomes for pregnant women and their children.”

“For me the most enjoyable thing is the clinical skills side of it, because you get to apply the science you’ve learnt in the real world,” says Morgan Sheriden, a student in the Bachelor of Medicine / Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS). Clinical skills are a major component of the MBBS. “At the moment it’s been mostly examinations and taking histories from patients,” says Morgan. “In third year, you go from having four days of lectures and one day of clinical skills to having four days of clinical skills and one day of lectures at the hospital itself.”

Yet, despite his enjoyment of the clinical side to the program, Morgan really sees a future in research. “I think I would like to stay with academic medicine,” he says. “ANU in particular has quite a strong immunology background. So, I’m interested in hanging around and doing some work in that area.”

“There is a research project as part of the degree. I’m looking at using parasitic worms to treat autoimmune diseases such as asthma, allergies, and inflammatory bowel disease. In order to live in your gut, these worms have to turn down your immune system. Having only a few worms doesn’t hurt you, and this ‘turning down’ might make the symptoms of your autoimmune disease go away. It’s pretty exciting.”

Published at ABC The Drum on 19 January 2012

It’s an odd scenario when the Coalition becomes the main opponents to a new, profitable business. Long seen as the small government, pro-business party, the Coalition has engrained itself in the business community and business interests.

Yet, with the election of the Victorian and New South Wales Liberal Governments, it has become increasingly apparent that the Liberal’s pro-business pedigree is only extended to certain business operations – normally the dirtiest ones to boost.

It all started with new regulations in Victoria in 2011. Passed through both houses of the Victorian Parliament in 2010, these rules set strict new regulations on the development of wind farms in the state. Based on the idea of ‘community concerns’ about wind development, the regulations state that any person who lives within 2km of a proposed wind turbine will now have the ability to veto the project, with very little discourse for wind operators. The bill has the potential to cost Victoria $3 billion in wind investment and means that it would now be easier to get approval for a coal power plant in Victoria than a wind farm.

Despite outcry from the Victorian environmental and business community, on the eve of Christmas the New South Wales Coalition Government followed its Victorian counterparts in adopting similar regulations. The New South Wales Government boasted that these were the “toughest wind farm guidelines in Australia and possibly the world”. As Barry O’Farrell said, if he had his way, there would be no more wind farms ever approved in New South Wales.

It seems odd doesn’t it? Since when would a “pro-business” Government turn so angrily against a booming industry based on, often difficult to prove, concerns of a few NIMBYs in the area? What happened to their pro-business pedigree?

Looking into the events deeper it soon becomes clear that these regulations have nothing to do with health concerns, or worries about community consultation, but everything to do with a war against renewable energy that is being waged to bring the industry down.

Conservatives governments around the world have for a long time resisted new technologies to replace our energy system. For example, in 2004, it was revealed that prime minister John Howard held a secret meeting with fossil fuel industry representatives in order to discuss ways to stifle investment in renewable energy. This meeting was held just weeks before the release of the Government’s energy white paper, which called for large investment in ways to make fossils fuels cleaner.

In the United States, Republicans have long fought against the advancement of renewable technology. In releasing their budget proposal for 2011, Republicans argued for $899 million cut in renewable energy, whilst fossil fuels would have only lost $31 million.

Why should this be the case? Even if you don’t believe in climate change, what is the harm in having a booming renewable energy industry? For a pro-business government, the industry can only be a good thing for the community, particularly one that is now as profitable as wind.

What we can see is that the fight against renewable energy has taken an ideological tinge, with a conservative v progressive approach to the technology.

As the main rallying point for progressive activists who want to tackle climate change, renewable energy has in many ways been seen as an answer to many problems, as it ‘benefits workers, the economy and Australia’s climate’. It is almost seen as an answer to all our problems – renewable energy is all good and dirty energy is all bad (I won’t delve into a critique of such a position in this post).

What this picture has done has created two opposing poles – the progressives who want change in our economy and are therefore pro-renewable energy v the conservatives who are happy with our economic system and therefore want to stick with energy systems we have. For many on the progressive side, this has lead to full, sometimes a little uncritical, embrace of everything renewable, whilst for those on the conservative side, it has often lead to a full ideological opposition to renewable energy.

For a long time it has been very easy for conservatives to engage in this war. Renewables have been seen as too expensive and unreliable to provide a real alternative to fossil fuels. It was therefore easy to attack it – simply say it was too expensive, put money into making fossil fuels ‘cleaner’ and let the industry wither.

Now, however, backed by the fossil fuel industry, the campaign against solar and wind power in Australia has exposed many of the very anti-business policies of the Coalition. With dropping costs and increasing reliability for renewable energy, conservatives have had to turn to ‘community concerns’ to wage their attacks. These concerns are based around a very tiny, loud minority, and apparently don’t exist for the coal or coal seam gas industry. They also go against strong evidence that show that renewable energy is extremely popular. For example, a survey conducted by the NSW Government in 2010 showed that wind and solar are the two most acceptable forms of energy production by the community. These results show that the anti-renewable campaign has nothing to do with an outpour of community angst, but is rather part of a broader ideological war.

There is no doubt that the renewable energy industry will continue to grow throughout the world. Wind and solar are booming and will soon be cheaper than current fossil fuels. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t regulate the industry, and any idea that all renewable energy companies are all good should disappear from our mindset. But as conservative governments engage in an ideological war against renewable energy it is clear that we will soon fall behind very quickly. Europe, Asia and the Americas are all embracing new forms of renewable energy and are reaping great benefits from it.

As long as we engage in these games we are certain to lose out.

Published on ABC The Drum on 5 January 2012

It’s not very often that we hear positive stories about climate change.

Our news feeds are normally filled up with messages about increasing greenhouse gas emissions, decreasing ice sheets and extreme weather events. It is a scary reality and one that has a real impact on those who care about and campaign on climate change.

As we hear more and more about increasing emissions and the failure of policy makers to address the problem, it becomes harder for climate activists to take an optimistic approach to climate campaigning. I have often seen this result in despair and withdrawal by climate activists, who see no real hope for any real change in the future.

Yet, despite the negative stories over the past year, there have been a number of real climate wins that can provide hope to climate campaigners worldwide.

2011 brought with it a range of victories on climate change – stories that whilst still not perfect brought with them some indication that we may actually be on a trajectory to a low carbon future.

Obviously many people are talking about the climate conference in Durban, with mix reviews of the success of the meeting. Whilst it is pretty clear that Durban definitely didn’t achieve anywhere near enough to tackle the issue of climate change seriously, it was clear that the pressure on delegates at the conference resulted in some clear progress that was much better than expected (although that is more a factor of lowered expectations than hugely successful outcomes).

However, it is when you look beyond the Durban Conference that we can see major advancements in climate policy.

First, of course, is that passage of the carbon tax in Australia. Whilst Tony Abbott may like to make this out to be a negative fact, Australia’s carbon tax is, along with the European emissions trading scheme, the most comprehensive carbon pricing scheme in the world. The reverberations of its passage have already been felt, with Al Gore noting after the passage of the tax:

Australia’s Parliament has put the nation’s first carbon price into law. With this vote, the world has turned a pivotal corner in the collective effort to solve the climate crisis.

Yet, it isn’t just Australia that has announced a carbon pricing scheme over the past year. In the middle of the year, China announced that it would implement a range of emissions trading schemes by 2013. The initial schemes would be rolled on a trial basis in 2013, with the scheme to be implemented nationally by 2015.

At around the same time, California formally adopted its emissions trading scheme, which was agreed upon in December last year. The state, which is the world’s eighth largest economy, has agreed to cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This scheme is the most comprehensive of any in the United States and is seen as a potential model for others around the country.

Also in the US, whilst the announcement has been delayed, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has vowed to continue with the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions in absence of a national price on carbon. This decision was bolstered mid-way through the year as the US Supreme Court upheld the ability of the EPA making regulations in this way. The announcement of the scale of the regulations is due next year.

In Europe, construction began on one of the biggest investments in renewable energy around the world; a project called DESERTEC. The first installation of DESERTEC will begin next year, with a massive solar installation being constructed in Morocco. After its completion, the project is designed to meet 15 per cent of Europe’s energy needs by 2050.

Yet, many of these policy achievements are unlikely to be met by one of the biggest, yet least talked about climate achievements of the year. Around the world, reports have been released that solar energy is on the move to reach grid parity with coal and other energy sources over the coming years.

For example, solar photovoltaic power has now reached grid parity in all states in Australia apart from Victoria, the ACT and Tasmania. These sorts of statistics have been seen around the world, with reports of imminent grid parity in the United States, China and many other countries. Such a move will mean that solar will soon become a cheaper alternative to coal, removing the cost argument from those who resist the implementation of renewable energies.

Last, but certainly not least, we have also seen a reinvigoration of many parts of the climate movement that have struggled after the Copenhagen conference. Whilst of course, there have been the large campaigns in Australia around the carbon tax, the most positive signs have been in the United States. Here, what was becoming a very fragmented movement has begun to coalesce around opposition to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. This campaign, which has involved massive protests and sit-ins in the White House, saw almost immediate success, with Barack Obama announcing a delay in the pipeline to further study the environmental impacts of its construction. Whilst the pipeline is still in play, this success has boosted the climate movement, with big plans for continued campaigning following on from this success.

These victories are all really big, new, and exciting developments that are showing the impact the climate movement is having on the community, Government and business alike. Of course this isn’t all that has happened and the news is not all good.

We still face what is known as the gigatonne gap between the emissions cuts required to avoid dangerous climate change and the cuts promised around the world. Yet, what these actions continue to show is that with enough campaigning and community pressure success is possible.

For those of us who find climate change frightening we should take some heart out of the achievements of 2011 and build on these to achieve more in 2012.

 

Sue Stocklmayer, Director of the Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS) at ANU, has become the first ever Professor of science communication in Australia. 

First published in ABC The Drum on 24 November 2011

As the world’s population hit 7 billion people, global attention has turned to the ‘population problem’.

While this discussion has taken a largely international focus, many have used the milestone as an opportunity to push for a stricter population policy for Australia.

With Australia’s limited resources controlling our population, it is argued, would significantly reduce environmental, societal, economic and infrastructure pressures. The key point of this is that any increase in Australia’s population would see us move beyond the nation’s carrying capacity and we therefore cannot solve any of our nation’s problems until we tackle population.

On the face of it, it seems like a logical idea. Unfortunately however, population policies are being used as a way to avoid the real issue our country needs to grapple with, our consumption and production problems. Population discussions tend to fall into two categories; (1) migration and (2) lower fertility rates. Let’s have a look at each of these issues by themselves.

Migration

Population-focused organisations often target lowered migration intake as it provides an easy target that is measurable and somewhat politically favourable. Many, such as Sustainable Population Australia argue for an immigration program where immigration should be no larger than emigration.

There are the obvious social issues that come with such a policy. Categorically reducing immigration is like saying: ‘Because I was born here and was lucky enough to gain citizenship from this nation, I deserve the extra resources we have and you don’t’. Given the unfair spread of the world’s resources and how Australians have benefited from that unfair distribution, this is an extraordinarily difficult position to justify.

Linked to this, and interestingly for the environment movement, is that the reduction of immigration doesn’t necessarily achieve anything except this social harm. No matter where we live, we are all people who use resources. Whether I live in Africa, Asia, Australia or anywhere else, I live in an economic system that is, or strives to be, based on a resource intensive model of production. Moving to a different place will not change this. Of course, the per capita resource use in these places is vastly different and the resource availability in each country is different as well. However, we cannot accept living in a world where we are comfortable with that situation. Instead of stopping people from using the same amount of resource we do through immigration controls therefore, we should be significantly reducing our resource use so we have the ability to share more of it around.

Fertility control

Fertility control policies are often focused around eliminating incentives for people to have children, things such as the baby bonus and paid parental leave. Alternative measures also include creating financial disincentives for those who have children – one may say an anti-baby bonus.

These policies face significant barriers. Australia’s fertility rate is currently at 1.89 babies per woman, meaning we are below replacement fertility rates. Our population increase mostly occurs through immigration. Our fertility is at the point where there are very few non-coercive measures that would significantly reduce it. This is where birth control policies often take on a more coercive edge. For example, in 2009, president of Sustainable Population Australia, Sandra Kanck called for a one child policy for Australia. Such a policy, which would require banning people from having children and forcing women to have abortions, has significant serious social implications.

On top of this, whether we want to believe it or not, breeding and creating a future generation is somewhat important for continuation of human kind. Given the extremely low birth rates in Australia it seems somewhat ridiculous to claim that we need to drop births rates even lower. The simple fact is that if we do, we won’t be producing enough children to support the current population when we grow old. This is particularly concerning when we discuss fertility control in combination with immigration control.

There are reasons to have concerns about the world’s growing population. We are now living in a world that holds 7 billion people and it is estimated by the UN that this population will continue to grow to 9 billion before there is even a chance of it dropping. We must look at how we can help manage this growing population, but coercive policies such as targeting migration and forcing people to stop having children is not the answer.

Reports show that one of the most effective ways to help manage world-wide population growth is proper family planning facilities, increased education and the proper provision of methods for safer sex. This is not about punishing people who decide they want to have children, nor about stopping those who ask for help from entering our country. Rather, it is about ensuring that all people are able to make educated choices about the direction of their lives. If we wish to have an impact on populations we would be much wiser to target these issues in our social policies and aid provision, not only helping population issues but also providing great social benefits for those who need them most.

Yet, none of this is as important as tackling the real issue of the amount of resources our society uses. The per capita use of resources by Australians are constantly at number one or two in the world. If we really want to lead by example and show the world what sustainability looks like therefore, we must tackle our production and consumption problem. Having a reduced population that still vastly overuses our resources will be of no use to anyone.

If we want to become a sustainable society we cannot put all our focus on to our population – we need to have smart policies that tackle the real root causes of our problems; the way we use resources, not the number of people who use them.

Research from the Research School of Earth Sciences, the University of Kashmir and the University of Delhi has provided evidence that disputes the widely accepted theory of how India and Eurasia came together. Lloyd White said the team used the ANU designed Sensitive High Resolution Ion Microprobe (SHRIMP) to date zircon crystals from north of the ancient plate boundary between India and Eurasia, and found they were the same age as those from the south.

“Many scientists envisage the India-Eurasia collision as a relatively simple system where two continental plates rammed into each other,” White said. “Our research findings show that it was a bit more complicated than that. We don’t really know where to draw a line on the map that defines which bit was India and which bit was Eurasia, and we don’t know if material was transferred from one plate to another. As Gondwana broke apart, new volcanic islands and relatively small tectonic plates were created between India and Eurasia. What we now think is that these islands and small plates got sandwiched between India and Eurasia as they crashed together. It was much more like a multi vehicle freeway pile up than a prang between two cars.”

White said the research fundamentally questioned our assumptions of the tectonic boundary between India and Eurasia.

“We found that the zircons from what many people consider to be Eurasia had the same age record as those from India,” he said. “This indicates that the Karakorum and Pamir regions, north of the Himalayan range, were once a part of, or derived from the Gondwana supercontinent.”

White said more research was needed to create a better understanding of the earth many millions of years ago. “It is important that we know where the ancient boundary existed between these two plates as we try to unravel what the earth looked like before India rammed into Eurasia.”

The article can be accessed at the American Geophysical Union website.

Originally published on ABC’s The Drum on 16 September 2011

It’s a sad reality that after one of the biggest victories in decades for progressive activists regarding asylum seekers, most of the talk in reaction to the Malaysia Deal High Court case has been about how we can find ways to continue the rightward push towards refugees.

Whilst a few lone voices have called for a complete end to offshore processing, most policy makers have begun the search on how to get around the court’s decision. This has resulted in the Labor Party adopting a new policy to override the high court’s decision, which includes measures that will weaken human rights requirements in some places to levels that are worse than we ever saw under the Howard government.

For these politicians, onshore processing is simply not politically palatable enough to be considered a genuine solution.

This shows that while refugee advocates must celebrate this massive victory, they also need to be careful that they do not give up the fight under the hope that this court case will lead to a significant long-term change in asylum seeker policy in Australia.

A tactic seldom used by Australian social movements, political court cases have gained prominence over the past year. While there have been some important court cases in Australian history, such as the Tasmanian Dams case of 1983 (upholding the right for the Federal Government to intervene in the Franklin Dam case), the Wik and Mabo cases in relationship to Aboriginal land rights and the WorkChoices case of 2006 (upholding the constitutionality of WorkChoices), a number of important cases over the past year have brought the Australian courts into focus.

In the weeks leading up to the 2010 Federal Election, activist group GetUp! challenged two pieces of electoral legislation, overturning laws that closed the electoral act earlier than has previously occurred and barred people from enrolling online. Then of course, recently the High Court overturned the Government’s so-called Malaysia solution, as well as potentially all offshore asylum seeker processing.

This relatively small amount of court activity is in sharp contrast to some other countries. In the United States for example, court challenges have been the basis behind some of the greatest social movement victories in the country. The Brown vs Board of Education (1954) case effectively brought an end to racial segregation, Roe v Wade (1973) determined that banning abortion was against the constitution and more recently court cases in California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Maine have declared bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

These cases in the United States have shown that court challenges have the ability to create real change quickly. In each of these cases a relatively short court case (in relation to the actions of a grass roots campaign) has resulted in immediate changes to significant Government policy. Without Roe v Wade for example it is clear that a number of US states would have bans on abortion today.

These results, open up the question, why aren’t court cases used more by Australian activists?

In fact, this was a question asked by GetUp! in a questionnaire to its supporters last year. Asking people for their opinion of what their future campaigns should be, one option GetUp! canvassed was using court cases more regularly. And who could blame them? Their court cases regarding the electoral act brought them great publicity and quick results. Why not continue to do it again?

There are two problems with this strategy.

The first is the obvious – not all bad legislation/practices are against the constitution or the law. Court cases can therefore only be used against particular laws/practices, meaning that they cannot form the sole basis of any social movement. In the case of asylum seekers, we can also see that even if the court strikes down policy, it can also simply be re-legislated by a government, removing all of the court’s power.

The second more substantive problem though, is that court cases are often elitist and extremely expensive activities that whilst they bring legislative change, don’t build social movements. Court cases can cost a lot of money, involve only a small number of people and do so in a way that does not engage with the greater populous but rather solely with the legal system. This can cause problems if court cases become the only form of political engagement an organisation engages in.

For example, the US queer movement have seen significant legislative change over the past decade due to court challenges, but these cases have not necessarily been coupled with significant changes in society. While of course these court cases have not been the only activities from the queer movement in the US, they have seen a huge amount of money pumped into them, followed by masses of publicity. However, public opinion around issues such as marriage equality has been difficult to change; the reason why two of these challenges (California and Maine) have eventually be overturned at the ballot box. Serious questions therefore have to be asked as to whether putting this money into building a stronger grass-roots movement would have lead to more sustainable change, even if it took a little longer to achieve.

The same problem can potentially be seen for the refugee court case. Whilst the case brought swift changes to current policy, it is likely to do little to change public sentiment about asylum seekers in the long run. This means that a change in the Migration Act is unlikely receive very little backlash from the broader community.

Court cases have their positives and their negatives. Although they can bring quick change and build momentum for activists, they can do so at the expense of the ability to build a strong social movement. It is therefore essential that proper thought is given to the use of court cases as a mode of change and that when they are used they are not done so in a way that excludes other social movement activities.

Refugee and asylum seeker policy still has a long way to go for progressive activists in Australia. Recent changes have moved some policies away from the dark years of the Howard era, but the simple fact that Labor Government would even propose a Malaysia solution shows that there is still a long way to go.

Whilst this court case was a huge victory for refugee activists, they must make sure they don’t fall into a trap of thinking that this case is the be all and end all. If they do, they could face the same problems as many progressive court cases around the world, as backlashes against court cases result in a hardening of public opinion, in turn making it more difficult for progressives to make further changes.

Changes to legislation require corresponding change in society.