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Big UK businesses tell Labour ‘don’t waver’ on EV targets as pressure grows
Carmakers want ministers to ease mandate to make more electric vehicles, which would mean energy firms losing out
Major UK businesses including Ovo, SSE and BT Openreach are urging the government to stick to current electric car targets, as struggling carmakers pile pressure on ministers to relax the rules before industry talks.
The businesses said the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate, which forces carmakers to sell greater numbers of electric cars each year, is an essential part of the plan to reduce the carbon and air pollution emissions caused by vehicles on Britain’s roads.
Continue reading...Far-right groups plan to hijack farmers’ protest in London against tax changes
Extremists including Tommy Robinson associates latch on to event but organisers say they want it to be nonpolitical
Far-right groups are seeking to hijack a farmers’ protest in London against tax changes introduced by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves.
Extremists, including close associates of Tommy Robinson, have been using social media to urge supporters to turn up at the protest on Tuesday, as farming leaders sought to remind those attending of their responsibilities.
Continue reading...Countries must set aside differences and agree climate finance deal, says German minister
Jochen Flasbarth called on Cop29 delegates to press on as world faces increasing crises and drop in solidarity
Governments meeting to forge a global settlement on climate finance must get over their differences this week and come to a deal – because if talks carry on until next year they stand little chance with Donald Trump in the White House, the German development minister has said.
Jochen Flasbarth, one of the most influential ministers at the UN Cop29 summit, said that if the final days of the summit did not produce a breakthrough countries would face a much tougher prospect.
Continue reading...Farmers in England and Wales feel betrayed by inheritance tax changes, says NFU
Union leader says anger is unprecedented, but does not condone any plan to stop food reaching supermarkets
The president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has said that farmers in England and Wales feel “betrayed” by changes to inheritance tax rules, while saying his organisation does not condone mooted plans to stop food reaching supermarket shelves.
Tom Bradshaw, the NFU president, said anger among farmers about the changes announced in last month’s budget over inheritance tax and farms was unprecedented, and that he understood why many members wanted to take action.
Continue reading...COP29: ClimeFi, Xprize launch global CDR challenge to shore up demand
COP29: “Dark vessels”, oil and gas under-reporting fuelling unrelenting rise in global GHG emissions -data
The Observer view: the Cop summit is foundering, we need urgent action not more hot air
The grim negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, have shown the need for reform of the UN annual global climate talks
‘Global emissions continue to increase, carbon sinks are being degraded and we can no longer exclude the possibility of surpassing 2.9C of warming by 2100.” It is a bleak assessment of our planet’s future and could have been made by just about any environmental organisation on Earth.
In fact, they are the views of an international group of climate experts that highlight, in sharp detail, the manifest failings of the UN’s annual Cop climate summits, whose 29th iteration is now being staged in Baku, Azerbaijan. These talks, they said last week, are no longer fit for purpose and need an urgent overhaul.
Continue reading...How winter makes recycling harder with 40% jump in contamination
New data reveals an extra 5,000 tonnes of waste is sent to landfill or incineration from November to March
Plastic bottles are reviled for polluting the oceans, leaching chemicals into drinks and being a source of microplastics in the human body.
They even cause problems with recycling. When plastic bottles are mixed with cardboard in recycling bins, in the wet winter months the sodden cardboard wraps around the plastic bottles and trays, causing havoc at recycling plants.
Continue reading...I’m finally into ‘prepping’ and ready for the apocalypse | Eva Wiseman
Piles of loo paper, a years worth of tinned good and snake-proof boots. No wonder prepping has become a lifestyle choice
Prepping – I’m coming round to it. I’ve had Prepare, the old government website that Oliver Dowden launched this spring, open on my laptop in a quivering tab for a while now, and this week I’ve been dipping in every now and then to remind myself of “how to prepare for an emergency”. How many bottles of water we may need, tweezers, a sage reminder about the fact of tinned meat.
I’ve dabbled in prepping before, without really realising what I was doing. A fear in the early 2000s that Rimmel might stop making my favourite eyeliner led to me dashing to Boots to buy five. Which is fairly normal, I think? On the spectrum of normal? Sensible probably, when so many, as you’ll know, have brushes too fine or ink that disappears in rain. In the grip of lockdown, as supermarket deliveries were increasingly scarce, when I was blessed with a Tesco slot I would focus not on toilet paper or flour, but on treats. I’d stockpile the good biscuits, and, in my naivety, Biscoff spread. I remember there were very large gift bars of Galaxy chocolate on offer for a while, bars the size of a small dinghy which I would buy in bulk, nibbling away at the corners like a parasite. That was when we started decanting our pulses. Still, beside the microwave sits a proud wall of oversized Tupperware, carefully labelled in my six-year-old daughter’s handwriting: “spageti”, “green lenttles”, “ryce”. It felt good. I felt prepared, but for what, was unclear.
Continue reading...Farmers have hoarded land for too long. Inheritance tax will bring new life to rural Britain | Will Hutton
Prices and rents will fall under Rachel Reeves’ plans, enabling a younger generation with new ideas to enter the field
One of the baleful dimensions of our times is the way that the conversation about what constitutes the good society is framed by the rich and their interests. A conception of the common good withers; instead it is replaced by the existential importance of private wealth, private interests and private ownership to societal health. Nowhere is this more exposed than in the debate over taxation, and in particular the taxation of inherited wealth – as the debate over the past fortnight has dramatised.
Half a million people die every year. Under the reforms to inheritance tax relief on agricultural land proposed in the budget, about 500 individuals who inherit land worth more than £2m (£3m if they were married to the deceased) will join the rest of society and have inheritance tax levied on their bequest – albeit at half the rate, with an enlarged exemption and 10 years to pay it, concessions not made to the rest of us. How fortunate and privileged are they?
Continue reading...'The sixth great extinction is happening', conservation expert warns
Fracking hell: Donald Trump selects oil and gas CEO and climate denier to be energy secretary
The post Fracking hell: Donald Trump selects oil and gas CEO and climate denier to be energy secretary appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Red squirrels ‘to vanish from England’ unless vaccine against squirrelpox funded
Conservation group warns species threatened by exploding populations of grey squirrels who carry lethal virus
Red squirrels will soon disappear from England unless the government funds a vaccine against squirrelpox, one of the biggest groups set up to protect the species has warned.
Conservationists say the English population of non-native grey squirrels has exploded this year, triggered by warmer winters which enable mating pairs to feed and breed all year round, and estimate that 70% are carrying squirrelpox, a virus which is lethal only to red squirrels.
Continue reading...PREVIEW: Experts call for ambitious NDCs to spur investment, hope G20 summit will ease COP pressure
COP29: US House Republicans arrive to pitch LNG, nuclear in conservative climate agenda
COP29: REDD+ projects could help conserve hydropower capacity in Brazil -study
COP29: BRIEFING – Pakistan launches carbon market regulations
COP29: No sign of life in climate finance text as talks hit impasse
COP29: Dutch champion ‘green carbon’ trade as a feedstock, on way to negative emissions
United Utilities refuses to hand over data on sewage discharges into Windermere
Water company claims information is not in the public interest despite widespread pollution of UK waters
• ‘It’s a national disgrace’: fury at sewage-filled Windermere over toxic algae and dead fish
One of the UK’s biggest water companies is fighting a legal battle to block public access to data on treated sewage it is discharging into Windermere in the Lake District.
United Utilities initially claimed that data from phosphorus monitors at sewage treatment works at the lake “was not environmental information”. It later claimed the information on phosphorus – which can pollute watercourses when at high levels – was “internal communication” and exempt from disclosure.
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