Nick O'Malley
Nick O’Malley links climate science, politics and lived conditions, treating environment coverage as a beat that runs from global negotiations to local weather records and species on the move. As national climate and environment editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, he leads reporting on climate change, environmental risk and the energy transition across both mastheads. His work combines data-heavy explainers, policy analysis and on-the-ground reporting, including live coverage of fast-moving environmental events. A background as an investigative reporter shapes his focus on accountability, making governments, industries and institutions central subjects in his climate and environment stories.
Climate science, records and extreme weather
O’Malley’s climate science coverage is built around hard numbers and clear thresholds, regularly translating complex datasets into plain summaries of how fast conditions are changing. He reports on annual climate assessments, including pieces on Australia recording its second-hottest year on record and the world posting its hottest year, foregrounding average temperature shifts against pre‑industrial baselines and what they imply for future warming. His articles on heat records, such as reporting on Sydney’s late‑winter temperatures tumbling past historic marks, connect meteorological detail with broader climate trends and regional impacts.
When covering extreme weather in Europe and North America and the new era of fire danger it signals for Australia, he treats those events as evidence in a global pattern rather than distant curiosities, tying overseas disasters to domestic risk and policy questions. He also explores less familiar atmospheric threats, such as the impact of surging satellite launches and space tourism on the thinning of the ozone layer, using expert analysis and launch statistics to show how new industries are reshaping upper-atmosphere chemistry.
Across these pieces the tone is explanatory rather than alarmist, but the cumulative picture is of a climate system already outside historic bounds, with clear, quantified markers of that shift.
Emissions, energy transition and climate policy
Policy design and emissions trajectories are a recurring spine of O’Malley’s reporting, with a series of stories unpacking how legislation, deals and economic trends translate into real‑world cuts in greenhouse gases. His coverage of the Safeguard Mechanism and the deal between the Greens and Labor on industrial emissions focuses on what changed in the policy architecture, who gained leverage, and how those shifts alter the path for Australian industry.
He writes frequently on the global energy transition, highlighting expert commentary that climate action is effectively locked in worldwide, even in the face of political resistance from leaders such as Donald Trump, and stepping through how delays in one major economy can still cost lives and slow progress elsewhere.
International emissions data is another focus: in explaining reports that China’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling, he breaks down percentage shifts, time frames and sectoral drivers rather than treating the headline as a simple turnaround story. On the domestic side, he covers waste and recycling policy, including container deposit schemes and soft plastics, showing how design details and funding decisions determine whether environmental programs succeed or fail. Energy generation and urban planning appear in his broader portfolio, where he reports on proposals for widespread rooftop solar on residential and commercial buildings and the potential for cities to generate a large share of their own electricity. Taken together, these pieces frame climate policy as a series of practical choices under constraints, with O’Malley paying close attention to mechanisms, timelines and accountability rather than only the rhetoric around targets.
Global climate diplomacy and geopolitics
O’Malley treats international climate diplomacy as a central part of the environment beat, covering major summits and envoys with an emphasis on outcomes and gaps rather than ceremony.
His writing on COP28 examines what the conference achieved - such as agreements to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency improvements by 2030 - and sets those commitments against what negotiators failed to secure. He explains complex summit language in plain terms, clarifying how phrases around fossil fuels, finance and adaptation translate into expectations for national policies and investment flows. His coverage of global climate envoys, including interviews with senior diplomats who argue that the clean‑economy transition is underway irrespective of specific political leaders, explores how international actors see the balance between inevitable structural change and political delay. Pieces on China’s falling emissions and broader international trends often situate national data within global trajectories, showing how shifts in one country affect aggregate progress and diplomatic dynamics.
The result is a body of work that treats climate diplomacy as a field where numbers, legal wording and political power intersect, and where readers are given enough detail to understand both the ambition and the limits of each agreement.
Conservation, biodiversity and environmental risk
Beyond climate metrics and policy, O’Malley reports on conservation stories and emerging ecological risks, often using individual events to illustrate systemic vulnerabilities. His live coverage of a humpback whale rescue operation in Sydney Harbour places readers on the water as teams work to free a trapped calf, tracking the effort through updates and pairing field reporting with photography. In invasive species reporting he covers threats such as a looming fire ant invasion described as worse than cane toads, detailing the projected economic costs and the level of funding required to contain and eradicate the species. His work on plastic and recycling examines how specific policy tools - like container deposit schemes - have succeeded where soft‑plastics recycling programs have struggled, mapping links between design, enforcement and environmental outcomes. These pieces show a reporter comfortable moving from big‑picture climate stories to granular coverage of animals, pests and waste systems, with a consistent focus on how human decisions shape ecological futures.
4 more environment journalists.
Adelaide Lang
Adelaide Lang combines climate reporting with courtroom and Indigenous-focused journalism. She reports for The Daily Telegraph, with work also appearing in The Canberra Times, and contributes guest pieces to National Indigenous Times. Her environment coverage focuses on climate-threatened islands, community resilience and how policy decisions affect people facing direct environmental risks. She follows local campaigns, adaptation efforts and political pressure while keeping the human effects clear. Lang also covers court proceedings involving public officials, including the trial of State MP Gareth Ward over historical sexual and indecent assault charges. Her reporting examines how allegations are tested in court and how the justice system handles accusations against people in power. With more than five years in digital media and courtroom reporting, she writes clear, factual accounts of events, legal processes and their consequences.
Ashleigh McMillan
Ashleigh McMillan is a breaking news reporter at The Age. She stands out for covering the environment through public events, infrastructure and everyday city life. Her reporting tracks how protests, policy decisions and sudden incidents change routines, public safety and the spaces people move through. She covers fast-moving stories across Victoria, with a focus on community tension, access and the lived effects of official decisions. Her work includes protests and public demonstrations, crime and courts, transport and ticketing changes, traffic experiments, weather, and environmental conditions in the city. She reports on what people see and feel on the ground, with attention to victims, commuters, residents and the practical consequences of legal and infrastructure decisions.
Bareket Falk
Bareket Falk uses environmental stories to show how growing bodies handle physical stress, especially heat, during exercise. She is a pediatric exercise physiologist and kinesiology professor whose work focuses on how children, adolescents and adults respond to activity across growth and development. She writes evidence-led explainers for The Conversation that test assumptions about children’s vulnerability and turn decades of exercise science into clear, practical guidance. Her core piece looks at how children and adults cope with extreme heat, walking through basic thermoregulation and challenging the idea that children are automatically more fragile. Her journalism draws directly on research into blood flow, sweating, body size and growth, keeping technical detail tight and translating findings into concrete behaviours such as pacing activity, seeking shade and hydration. She is interested in how physical activity interacts with maturation, body composition and recovery, and uses data to check myths about kids’ risk.
Bec Lorrimer
Bec Lorrimer is a visual journalist and picture editor who tells environment stories through photography and careful image selection at the Guardian. She works at the intersection of climate coverage and visual editing, using picture-led formats to show how global heating and other environmental pressures play out in everyday life. Her environment beat centres on picture galleries that track the lived experience of climate extremes, including record high temperatures in South Korea, with in pictures sequences that foreground the scale of global heating over text-led analysis. She also contributes to monthly roundups of the strongest photos and human-centred features such as a nursing home story, focusing on people and places under pressure. As a global visual editor and assistant picture editor on international fronts, she selects images across environment, politics, culture and general news, drawing on her background as a photographer, video director and photo producer.