The Guardian

UK prime minister delays ban on sale of new petrol and diesel cars as he pushes back net zero goals

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Rishi Sunak has announced a major rethink of his government’s climate policies, rolling back some of the UK’s most important green targets in one of his biggest policy U-turns in office.

At a press conference in Downing Street, the prime minister announced the UK would no longer plan to end the sale of new gas boilers by 2035, and would push back the deadline for selling new petrol and diesel cars by five years.

Cop28 offers an opportunity to rethink how we can develop investments that are profitable, liquid and easily accessible

As we move from UN climate week to Cop28 in Dubai later this year, we must stop the “greenwishing” and “greenwashing” and start thinking about the instruments that will enable the private sector and private investors to channel more capital toward climate resilience and sustainable development. While the public sector has an important role to play in this respect, scalable solutions require significant commitments of private sector resources. With the climate crisis already wreaking havoc on poor and rich countries alike, unlocking this largely untapped pool of capital has become an urgent priority.

Yet as matters stand, many investors associate climate-centric investments with “social impact” and reduced profitability. While sophisticated investors have the means to deploy their capital profitably toward decarbonisation, the energy transition and other climate-related sectors, such investments tend to be illiquid. They remain tightly wound up in private equity funds, and thus inaccessible to the ordinary investors and savers who are most exposed to climate-driven food, water and energy insecurity.

The PM has calculated that he can gain points with his party membership and skew byelection results. But at what cost?

Rishi Sunak’s retreat from the government’s net zero pledges triggers large- and small-scale conclusions alike. These range from a message about the future of the planet’s place in the prime minister’s priorities, at one extreme, to the anxiety it betrays about how to manage his way through his first party conference as Conservative leader, next month, at the other.

Nevertheless, Sunak’s move should be seen as a short-term electoral gamble rather than a massacre of the entire net zero agenda. That does not mean that it isn’t damaging to the net zero credibility established imperfectly by previous Tory prime ministers, let alone to Britain’s longer-term reputation on climate action. It is all these things. If it is electorally successful, the shift could also become more fundamental and more lasting.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

My favourite bird, the fastest in the world, calls to something in me

• The Australian bird of the year poll launches on 25 September 2023
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The peregrine is the fastest animal in the world. It drops on its prey from above, a 300km/h shard of death. This path, sky to ground, is called a hunting line – a phrase I first saw in JA Baker’s The Peregrine – my favourite book (also Werner Herzog’s, turns out), probably my favourite possession. Book and bird have been indistinguishable to me since: a talisman of what is beautiful and wild.

“They are killers,” Baker wrote in 1967. “That is what they are for.” To find one, look up. See it, as he did, “remote as a star … a small dark knuckle in the flawless sky”. Before it drops:

He seemed to split in two, his body shooting off like an arrow from the tight-strung bow of his wings. There was an unholy impetus in his falling, as though he had been hurled from the sky. It was hard to believe, afterwards, that it had happened at all.

With climate change a top priority for the public, surely time is up for a prime minister who couldn’t seem to care less?

• Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion

It’s quite a moment when a Green party MP finds herself on the same side of an argument as the chair of Ford UK – but here we are. Claims reported by the BBC yesterday evening that Rishi Sunak is planning to weaken some of the government’s key climate commitments have managed to unite businesses, the energy sector, car manufacturers, environmental groups and the general public against him.

His leaked programme appears not to be a couple of minor delays here and there but instead a coordinated, calculated and catastrophic roll-back. According to the leak, energy efficiency targets for private rented homes will be dropped; the ban on new petrol and diesel cars will be pushed back to 2035; the phasing out of gas boilers will be delayed; plans for taxes to discourage flying ditched; recycling schemes cancelled.

Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion

Scientists confirm three birds have died from virus as park authorities redouble efforts to protect islands’ endemic birds

National park authorities on the Galápagos Islands have heightened biosecurity measures to protect the archipelago’s unique fauna from the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza after scientists confirmed that three birds had died from the virus.

“From preliminary tests of the five specimens, three of them have tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza,” Danny Rueda, director of the Galápagos national park told the Guardian. Two frigate birds and one red-footed booby were confirmed to have died from the virus on Tuesday, after samples were sent to Guayaquil on the Ecuadorian mainland for examination.

Former prime minister says ‘businesses must have certainty’ to invest in green technologies

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Boris Johnson has waded into the row over Rishi Sunak’s plans to U-turn on some of the government’s net zero commitments, warning his successor that he “cannot afford to falter now” or “lose our ambition” for the country.

The former prime minister, who oversaw the introduction of many of the targets during his tenure, said “businesses must have certainty” about the UK’s net zero commitments, as companies reacted with alarm to the potential policy shift.

PM accused of delaying vital work on transforming UK economy as car industry leaders also condemn plans

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The boss of one of Britain’s largest energy suppliers has criticised the government’s plan to row back on net zero policies, including the planned phase-out of gas boilers, as a “misstep on many levels”.

Accusing Rishi Sunak of delaying the “vital work of transforming our economy”, the chief executive of E.ON UK, Chris Norbury, said there was no “green v cheap” debate. He said delaying some environmental targets to reduce pressure on household budgets during a cost of living crisis was a “false argument”.

UK not a serious player in global race for green growth, says Greenpeace, while Oxfam says move is ‘betrayal’

Scientists and environmental groups have expressed anger and dismay at the U-turn on net zero expected by the prime minister.

With some exceptions, the news industry is still not responding to the true scale and danger of global heating

In much of what we see, hear and read, the climate crisis has become inescapable. On Netflix, Don’t Look Up spent weeks as the most-streamed movie ever. Pop star Billie Eilish sings about hills burning in California. At the bookstore, climate fiction has become a genre of its own, while Jeff Goodell’s The Heat Will Kill You First, a harrowing nonfiction account of what life on a warming planet will mean, is entering its second month on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

And where is journalism in all of this? Despite our living through the hottest summer in history, as well as wildfires, tropical storms and crazy-hot oceans, the news media continues to be outdone by the rest of popular culture when it comes to covering the most urgent story of our time.

Mark Hertsgaard, CCNow executive director, author, and environment correspondent for The Nation, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of Columbia Journalism Review, are founders of Covering Climate Now

Guardian investigation finds 98% of Europeans breathing highly damaging polluted air linked to 400,000 deaths a year

• Europe’s pollution divide: see how your area compares

Europe is facing a “severe public health crisis”, with almost everyone across the continent living in areas with dangerous levels of air pollution, an investigation by the Guardian has found.

Analysis of data gathered using cutting-edge methodology – including detailed satellite images and measurements from more than 1,400 ground monitoring stations – reveals a dire picture of dirty air, with 98% of people living in areas with highly damaging fine particulate pollution that exceed World Health Organization guidelines. Almost two-thirds live in areas where air quality is more than double the WHO’s guidelines.

Rishi Sunak accused of ‘disgusting betrayal of vulnerable people’ over net zero U-turn as he misses UN climate ambition summit

The UK was notable by its absence on Wednesday from a key statement pledging ambitious action on the climate crisis, from a group of countries of which it is normally a leading member.

The “high ambition coalition” of countries, which aims to push the world to swifter cuts on greenhouse gas emissions, issued a call for “faster stronger” action on the climate, to cause emissions to peak by 2025, and a plan to put the world on course to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement.

The 42 known species of the parasitic plant Rafflesia, known as the corpse flower, are endangered due to destruction of forest habitats

Parasitic, elusive and emitting an overwhelming odour of putrefying flesh, Rafflesia – often called the corpse flower – has intrigued botanists for centuries. Now, scientists are warning that it is at risk of extinction and calling for action to save it.

The blooms of the Rafflesia have become famous for their odour of decaying meat, produced to attract flesh-eating flies. But the genus – which includes the largest flowers in the world, at more than a metre across – is at risk due to the destruction of forest habitats in south-east Asia. There are 42 species of Rafflesia, and researchers warn that all of them are under threat, with 25 classified as critically endangered and 15 as endangered.

Majority of offset projects that have sold the most carbon credits are ‘likely junk’, according to analysis by Corporate Accountability and the Guardian

The vast majority of the environmental projects most frequently used to offset greenhouse gas emissions appear to have fundamental failings suggesting they cannot be relied upon to cut planet-heating emissions, according to a new analysis.

The global, multibillion-dollar voluntary carbon trading industry has been embraced by governments, organisations and corporations including oil and gas companies, airlines, fast-food brands, fashion houses, tech firms, art galleries and universities as a way of claiming to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint.

A total of 39 of the top 50 emission offset projects, or 78% of them, were categorised as likely junk or worthless due to one or more fundamental failing that undermines its promised emission cuts.

Eight others (16%) look problematic, with evidence suggesting they may have at least one fundamental failing and are potentially junk, according to the classification system applied.

The efficacy of the remaining three projects (6%) could not be determined definitively as there was insufficient public, independent information to adequately assess the quality of the credits and/or accuracy of their claimed climate benefits.

Overall, $1.16bn (£937m) of carbon credits have been traded so far from the projects classified by the investigation as likely junk or worthless; a further $400m of credits bought and sold were potentially junk.

Plans set to be announced on Friday could include delaying ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars

Rishi Sunak is planning to row back on some of the government’s net zero policies that impose a direct cost on consumers as the Conservatives attempt to create a dividing line with Labour before the next election.

The Guardian understands that the move, expected to be announced in a major speech this Friday, could include delaying a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and watering down the phasing out of gas boilers.

An unattended pastry truck was irresistible to a bear mom and her cub, who gorged on doughnuts before being chased away

Two bears on an Alaska military base raided a Krispy Kreme doughnut van that was stopped outside a convenience store during its delivery route.

The driver usually left his doors open when he stopped at the store but this time a sow and one of her cubs that loitered nearby sauntered inside, where they stayed for probably 20 minutes on Tuesday morning, said Shelly Deano, the store manager for Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson JMM Express. The bears chomped on doughnut holes and other pastries, ignoring the banging on the side of the van that was intended to shoo them away, Deano said.

Prof Lesley Hughes and others says there is ‘cognitive dissonance’ between Labor’s stated commitment to the climate crisis and its policies

The Australian government is “missing half the equation” in acting on the climate crisis by backing a shift to renewable energy but having no plan to get out of fossil fuels, according to an author of a new scientific review.

Prof Lesley Hughes is a leading climate change scientist and member of the independent Climate Council and government advisory body the Climate Change Authority. Hughes said there is a “cognitive dissonance” between Labor’s stated commitment to addressing the problem and the pace at which it is moving.

These beady-eyed, bulletproof birds are an adaptive species – and their lift and lilt is like a flight path that takes me safely home

• The Australian bird of the year poll launches on 25 September 2023
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One year I built myself a little nest in a green tent, surrounded by moonahs and gumtrees. Inside, I had an old embroidered tablecloth, its coloured threads stitched in swirls. I had crocheted rugs, a bean bag, a small seat and a floor covering.

From the tent I felt and heard the beauty in many small things: the way the light came through the fabric walls; the birds, so close to me, feeding in the wet soil; the magpies singing all morning from high up in the dry branches of the gumtree; tiny wrens of yellow and grey, a mass of them flitting in the tea tree; wattlebirds clacking; and the lift and lilt of the currawongs carolling.

Report says climate change made rainfall heavier but human factors turned extreme weather into humanitarian disaster

Carbon pollution led to heavier rains and stronger floods in Greece and Libya this month but other human factors were responsible for “turning the extreme weather into a humanitarian disaster”, scientists have said.

Global heating made the levels of rainfall that devastated the Mediterranean in early September up to 50 times more likely in Libya and up to 10 times more likely in Greece, according to a study from World Weather Attribution that used established methods but had not yet been peer-reviewed.

Melting ice caps and rising sea levels are urgent but people care more about the floods, wildfires and droughts that are here now, New York summit hears

Floods, wildfires, drought and the onslaught of extreme weather are driving a global health crisis that must be put at the centre of climate action, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

“The climate crisis is a health crisis; it drives extreme weather and is taking lives around the world,” Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the WHO, said. “Melting ice caps and rising sea levels are, of course, crucial issues, but for most people they are distant threats in both time and place. The threats of our changing climate are right here and right now.”