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As the capital’s annual cycling marathon enters its fifth year, it is smaller and safer but still predominantly male

This year’s RideLondon was the fifth time the event that now bills itself as the world’s biggest weekend of cycling has taken place.

And as has become a tradition, here are my first thoughts – typed in the press centre, still in my bike gear – about the 100-mile event. As ever, feel free to disagree/add your own observations below.

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All the key dates and contact info for the Observer Ethical Awards 2017
• Read more about this year’s categories

Launch
30 July 2017

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Britain has joined France and India in trying to ban the sale of diesel and petrol cars, but some say Australia’s size makes the transition too difficult

It is only a matter of time until every Australian car is all-electric. But while other countries are speeding up the transition, with plans to ban petrol cars within a couple of decades, Australia is stuck debating even modest cuts to vehicle emissions, let alone policies to encourage zero-emissions cars.

But as the UK, France, India and other countries move quickly towards getting all petrol cars off the roads, could Australia’s fleet be caught up in the winds of change?

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The cruise line industry is booming. The bigger the boats, the larger the profits. But what, if any, are the engineering and environmental limits?

The ethical experts judging your nominations
• Read about this year’s categories

Lucy founded the Observer Ethical Awards in 2005. She writes the Observer Magazine’s Ethical Living column specialising in ethical fashion. She is author of To Die For (Harper Collins, 2011) and executive producer of the Netflix documentary The True Cost (available on Netflix).

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Details of this year’s Observer Ethical Awards categories
• The ethical experts judging your nominations

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Ethical living columnist and awards founder Lucy Siegle on the 11th Observer Ethical Awards

In the 10 years since An Inconvenient Truth, the Observer Ethical Awards have highlighted that change is not only desirable but possible too. Now in our 11th year, we want you to help unearth the new crop of talent working to make a better world.

Activists like to say that the real job is to prepare the world for huge change, but we’re celebrating some of the positive shifts: away from a fossil fuel economy to one powered by renewables; away from irresponsible design, like single-use plastics, to products that stand the test of time.

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The uptake of renewables and gas is slowly reducing electricity CO2 emissions — but transport emissions are on the rise, and negating some of those improvements.

Faith in the plan eroded by this week's Four Corners investigation

With mining of cobalt and other elements politically and ethically charged, the hunt for alternatives is on

Britain last week joined France in pledging to ban sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2040 in an attempt to cut toxic vehicle emissions. The move to battery-powered vehicles has been a long time coming. Environmental campaigners claim that charging cars and vans from the grid, like a laptop, is sure to be cleaner than petrol or diesel power. The government agrees and says it will invest more than £800m in driverless and clean technology, and a further £246m in battery technology research.

BMW plans to build a fully electric version of the Mini at Cowley in Oxford from 2019. Volvo announced earlier this month that from the same year, all its new models will have an electric motor.

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Oxford economist Dieter Helm said that the agriculture industry enjoys benefits ‘nobody else in the economy gets’

Tax breaks for farmers have caused a “subsidy addiction” and are used to avoid inheritance tax, a government adviser has claimed.

Economist Dieter Helm, chair of the Natural Capital Committee, which advises the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), called for a review of the current taxation rules for farmers and said the agricultural sector received a disproportionate level of government support.

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Tesla delivers first of its mass-market electric vehicles, the Model 3. The top range car will have a range of 500kms, while the standard version will have a range of 350kms. Australia will have to wait until 2019.

Windermere, Lake District There’s a bullfinch aboard the steamer, and intriguing creatures in the water

The moment my hands catch the bird so I can free it from the ship’s capacious saloon, I become dizzy. As the Windermere steamer Swan reverses out from the pier at Bowness and manoeuvres around it feels to me as though it’s the lake dotted with sailing craft and leafy islands that is pirouetting, not the boat itself.

The moment passes. My diminutive charge’s heart pumps in sync with the beat of the engines reverberating below decks. The steamer heads down England’s longest lake towards Lakeside near its southern end.

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VINYL LIFE?: A compound that may form cell wall-like structures has been detected in the dense atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan.

Murray Littlejohn first recorded the Moaning Frogs of WA on a device made from a gramophone mechanism in the early 1950s.

How field crickets are being brought back from the brink of extinction by a unique conservation project.

Why is London is trying to become an urban forest? And scandi cool breathes new life into fine wool.

European Union’s top court orders an immediate halt to large-scale logging in the Unesco-listed ancient forest

The European Union’s top court has ordered Poland to immediately halt large-scale logging in an ancient protected forest, one of many cases that has pitted the nationalist, eurosceptic government in Warsaw against the bloc.

The EU’s executive commission earlier this year sued Poland at the European court of justice (ECJ) over logging in the Białowieża forest, a Unesco World Heritage site.

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Terms and conditions relating to nominating in the awards

The Observer Ethical Awards 2017 (the “Awards”) consist of 7 separate categories (each an “Award Category”), which are each governed in accordance with the general terms and conditions, and the award category-specific terms and conditions (collectively, “Terms and Conditions”), specified below. The Award Categories are as follows:

a) Young green leaders;

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The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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