The Latest Breaking News from The Conversation

Humans have been reshaping the environment for at least 10,000 years. But the Anthropocene is the name given to the specific period of Earth history during which humans have had a global effect on the planet’s climate and ecosystems. Despite formal rejection as a geological epoch, it’s widely understood within…

Australia’s productivity is flatlining, posting the worst vitals we’ve seen in 60 years.

The first term of the Albanese government was defined by its fight against inflation, but the second looks like it will be defined by a need to kick start Australia’s sluggish productivity growth.

The food industry will go to great lengths (and spend a fortune) to lobby policymakers, confuse the public and politicise scientific findings. You can see the results in the UK’s delay of a ban on junk food advertisers targeting children, or the orchestrated backlash to a report that recommended cutting…

One-third of the Earth’s land surface is already degraded. The UN estimates that more than 2.6 billion people are harmed by land degradation, with countries losing up to US$10.6 trillion (£7.8 trillion) a year because of damage to “ecosystem services”, including the benefits people get from nature such as water…

Israel’s initial attack on Iranian nuclear and military facilities, alongside its assassination of top military officials and nuclear scientists, on June 13 has been followed by days of escalating strikes. Iran threatened “severe punishment” and quickly launched what were, in relative terms, smaller-scale missile attacks against Israeli territory.

In the early hours of June 13, Israel launched its largest-ever attack on Iran. Airstrikes involving more than 200 aircraft targeted nuclear and missile facilities, as well as key figures in the Iranian military and nuclear programme leadership. The attack, codenamed “Operation Rising Lion”, appears to have been supported on…

Get rid of states? Legal scholar Stephen Legomsky, who taught for 34 years at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, has just published a book, “Reimagining the American Union,” that proposes a radical idea: Abolish state government. The Conversation’s politics and democracy editor, Naomi Schalit – a…

Data centres are the invisible engines of our digital world. Every Google search, Netflix stream, cloud-stored photo or ChatGPT response passes through banks of high-powered computers housed in giant facilities scattered across the globe.