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Latest vehicle from Build Your Dreams, which in less than a year has become our second-biggest electric vehicle seller, has a starting price of $38,890

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Many Australians haven’t heard of BYD, the Chinese brand now selling the country’s cheapest new electric car.

BYD, or Build Your Dreams, is the biggest threat to Tesla globally and has garnered a cult-like following that’s translating to sales success locally.

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The result of the council’s vicious campaign means most of us will be long dead before their replacements reach maturity

In Sheffield, my home town, the council has at last apologised for misleading the public, the media and the courts during the dispute over its unfathomably stupid and vicious campaign to fell 17,500 of the city’s street trees, many of which it now accepts were perfectly healthy. This development is, of course, welcome, if long overdue. But it doesn’t really change anything. Who will ever be able to forget the chainsaws? Beloved limes and sycamores are gone. Most of us will be long dead before their replacements reach anything like maturity.

Thinking about this horrible, unnecessary business all over again, I’m struck by the default accusations of nimbyism on the council’s part, an attitude that persists even now. In its statement, it said that it had misrepresented those who protested against the destruction as “primarily interested only in their own streets”.

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Less office waste material during Covid has led big lavatory roll makers to cut amount of recycled paper in tissues, according to consumer body

Hoarding during the Covid-19 pandemic underlined just how important loo roll is to the British public. But working from home had another unexpected effect: less waste paper from offices, which means less recycled material to make toilet roll.

New research by Ethical Consumer magazine shows that the three main toilet brands have cut the amount of recycled paper in their tissues. It said the use of virgin wood pulp was fuelling deforestation, although paper-industry advocates dispute this.

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Electricity generated on Shetland could be used to fuel the proposed Rosebank field, instead of homes

Electricity from a new onshore windfarm could be used to power the biggest undeveloped oilfield in the North Sea, campaigners are warning, ahead of an imminent decision over whether to approve the project.

The huge Rosebank oilfield is three times bigger than the controversial Cambo field that was put on hold more than a year ago. It has the potential to produce 500m barrels of oil and its final approval is expected to reach the energy secretary, Grant Shapps, in the next few weeks. It is expected to be approved after Rishi Sunak hinted last month that it would be “economically illiterate” not to invest in UK oil and gas because Britain will remain reliant on fossil fuels for “the next few decades”.

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German national Marcus Decker in prison for climbing Dartford bridge faces automatic deportation, say campaigners

Hundreds of protesters were expected to march to the Home Office on Saturday demanding deportation proceedings be called off for an environmental activist imprisoned for scaling the Dartford Crossing.

Marcus Decker is serving one of the longest sentences ever passed for a non-violent protest in British history after a Just Stop Oil demonstration in October. He is a German citizen with leave to remain in the UK, but he faces automatic deportation after serving the two years and seven months sentence.

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Emmanuel Macron’s government is at least doing the bare minimum to avert the planetary crisis – and putting the UK to shame

While we remain transfixed by a handful of needy egotists in Westminster and the crises they manufacture, across the Channel a revolution is happening. It’s a quiet, sober, thoughtful revolution, but a revolution nonetheless. France is seeking to turn itself into an ecological civilisation.

Like every government, the French administration should be going further and faster to address the greatest predicament humankind has faced: the gathering collapse of Earth systems. But you can measure the seriousness of the government’s plan by its institutional commitment. France now has a ministry for ecological transition. By the end of next year, the nation’s 25,000 most senior civil servants will have been trained in the principles behind this transition. By the next presidential election, in 2027, every public sector worker will have had this training, tailored to their sector. Think about that: 5.6 million people will be taught about the biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis and the natural resources crisis – how these phenomena relate to the public services they supply and how public sector workers can use this knowledge to change the way they work.

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Planet is being hit by double whammy of global heating and emerging El Niño

The planet is being hit with a double whammy of global heating in 2023. On top of the inexorable rise in global temperature caused by greenhouse gas emissions is an emerging El Niño. This sporadic event is the biggest natural influence on year-to-year weather and adds a further spurt of warmth to an already overheating world. The result is supercharged extreme weather, hitting lives and livelihoods.

The last major El Niño from 2014 to 2016 led to each of those years successively breaking the global temperature record and 2016 remains the hottest year ever recorded. However, El Niño has now begun and may already be driving new temperature records, with record heatwaves on land from Puerto Rico to China and record heatwaves in the seas around the UK.

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A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Two fund managers have pledged up to $6 million towards a startup that sequesters carbon and converts toxic seaweed into replacements for petroleum products and other industrial inputs.

The Canadian environment ministry on Friday published its draft federal offset protocol for private sector improved forest management (IFM), mirroring efforts already underway in British Columbia and confirming plans to develop a separate iteration for Crown lands.

Utility’s head says demand for drinking water has risen 20% since pandemic, outpacing supply

A water company has blamed more people working from home post-pandemic for a new hosepipe ban.

South East Water, which supplies more than 2m homes and businesses, will impose the first hosepipe ban of the summer on Monday, affecting households across Kent and Sussex.

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A US law firm is dedicating "substantial resources" from its whistleblower practice to investigate potential violations of the country's Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) linked to fraudulent or manipulative activities in the voluntary carbon markets.

More trouble in Antarctica: the extent of frozen seawater fastened to the coast (called landfast ice) hit a record low in March 2022. If this trend persists, the consequences could be catastrophic. Alexander Fraser, Senior Researcher in Antarctic Remote Sensing, University of Tasmania Christine Weldrick, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Tasmania Laura Dalman, PhD candidate, University of Tasmania Matthew Corkill, PhD candidate, University of Tasmania Pat Wongpan, Quantitative Sea Ice Biogeochemist/Ecologist, University of Tasmania Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Regulated parties shed net holdings of California Carbon Allowances (CCAs) and speculators extended length through a week of heightened spread activity, while both entities reversed course from the prior week in the US Northeast power sector carbon market, data from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) showed Friday.

Private sector climate targets should not be considered credible if they rely on avoided emissions carbon credits, with only CO2 removals having a positive impact on GHG emissions, a US-based university think-tank said Friday.

Three EU member states made minor progress in the past fortnight towards completing their free allocation of 2023 ETS carbon allowances, with Finland finally commencing the annual process according to the final update for this year.

Malawi has established a new agency to manage the trade and marketing of its carbon credits, President Lazarus Chakwera announced Friday, upping the country's forecast for the size and value of its offering.

Politicians are expected to intervene in the next few years to alter EU ETS rules that are on course to have the market hit absolute zero emissions in 2040, a conference heard this week, as analysts predicted EUA prices would exceed €250 several years before that unless something was done.

Researchers say that monarchs with more white spots on their wings migrate more successfully.

Wastewater regulations are stalling new homes development in parts of England, says Baroness Scott.