The Guardian
Fast-growing BYD launches Dolphin EV, Australia’s cheapest electric car. Here’s how it compares
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
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.
Continue reading...It felt good to care about my community – before I was sent down a moral cul-de-sac | Rachel Cooke
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”.
Continue reading...Caught short: lack of recycled toilet paper in UK ‘fuelling deforestation’
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.
Continue reading...New windfarm could be used to power North Sea oilfield
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”.
Continue reading...March on UK Home Office over plan to deport jailed Just Stop Oil activist
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.
Continue reading...When it comes to rich countries taking the environment seriously, I say: vive la France | George Monbiot
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.
Continue reading...El Niño: how the weather event is affecting global heating in 2023
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.
Continue reading...South East Water blames working from home for hosepipe ban
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.
Continue reading...Paris finance reforms could untie poor countries’ hands in climate crisis
Changes to the World Bank could unlock developing states access to loans and to the means of staving off disaster
The Netherlands has almost the same amount of solar generating capacity as the whole continent of Africa. That must be, in part, because the interest on a loan to set up a windfarm in Africa is about 17% more than one to do the same in Europe.
Many poor countries enjoy vast natural resources of wind and sun yet struggle to access renewable energy because of the crippling cost of capital imposed on them. Private sector companies perceive far greater risk in poor countries, penalising most heavily the countries in greatest need of investment.
Continue reading...The sudden warming of Britain’s seas will tear through ocean life like a wildfire | Philip Hoare
What happens when the chill of our seas turns to a soupy stew? Fragile ecosystems will be destroyed and food sources for wildlife will disappear
Last weekend, at the very easternmost edge of England, tens of thousands of people of all ages gathered at a beach festival in Lowestoft to celebrate the sea joyously. To dance to trance music and listen to Linton Kwesi Johnson recite his poetry, and to hear marine scientists explain to seven-year-olds exactly why the sea smells the way it does. It was an idyllic scene. From dusk to dawn and back again, everyone was drawn to the vast and glorious element that connects us to the rest of the world.
But then, amid the revelry, a solemn procession appeared. Two dozen festivalgoers carried a series of blown-up photographs into the sea. They were portraits by the artist Gideon Mendel of people, many of them from the global south, standing amid the floods that had overturned their lives. Suddenly, in the face of their fates, the sea seemed not so benign after all. It was a reminder that sea levels are rising around the world; and that here in the UK we face our own potential disaster – the drastic sudden warming of the sea off Britain and Ireland.
Continue reading...Halt new roads and developments adding to emissions, advisers to tell UK government
Committee on Climate Change report likely to recommend ending road-building programme
The government should halt all new roads unless there are exceptional circumstances, the government’s climate advisers are likely to say next week.
On Wednesday the Committee on Climate Change will publish its latest report on the UK’s progress in dealing with the climate crisis. Speaking at Glastonbury on Friday, the climate change committee chair, Lord Deben, said new roads inevitably increased traffic and emissions.
Continue reading...We were afraid for the Titan five. But this story generated an uglier emotion, too: excitement | Bryony Clarke
Passengers aboard the sub lost on a dive to the Titanic became characters in a tragic drama. The rest of us were spectators
Finally, we know. The discovery of debris on the seafloor – confirming that the missing OceanGate Titan submersible probably disintegrated in an instantaneous implosion on the same day that it disappeared – brings to a bleak end the mystery that has horrified and mesmerised people across the globe.
The plight of the five passengers – the British adventurer Hamish Harding, the businessman Shahzada Dawood and his teenage son Suleman, the French veteran explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate’s CEO, Stockton Rush – has dominated front pages everywhere and spurred an international response that involved four countries and may have cost millions of dollars.
Bryony Clarke is an assistant letters editor at the Guardian
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Continue reading...Orcas nudge rudder of yacht near Gibraltar – video
A yacht competing in the Ocean Race had a close encounter with orcas on their approach to the strait of Gibraltar on Thursday, when the animals began nudging at its rudders. There were no injuries to the crew or damage to the boat. The Ocean Race said that ‘orca attacks’ on boats in the area around Gibraltar, where an individual or pod of orcas ram into a boat's hull or rudders, have become more common with boats being significantly damaged in some cases
Continue reading...Governments at Paris summit to finalise climate finance roadmap
Almost 40 leaders to present plans for overhaul of public financial institutions including World Bank
Questions over a tax on global shipping and other big sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and how countries should go about setting up a loss and damage fund continue to be the subject of fierce discussion, as governments meet in Paris to prepare an overhaul of global development and climate finance.
Nearly 40 heads of state and government and a similar number of ministers and high-level representatives will finalise a roadmap for the reform of the world’s public finance institutions, including the World Bank, and of overseas aid and climate finance.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including busy bees, a peregrine falcon and wild horses
Continue reading...Crocodiles! Everyone loves crocodiles. But can crocs and folks live in harmony? | First Dog on the Moon
It’s the age old battle between the NIMBYs and the YIMBYs!
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US honeybees suffer second deadliest season on record
Nearly 50% of US bee colonies died off last year, although efforts have helped the overall bee population remain ‘relatively stable’
The US’s honeybee hives just staggered through the second highest death rate on record, with beekeepers losing nearly half of their managed colonies, an annual bee survey found.
But by using costly and herculean measures to create new colonies, beekeepers are somehow keeping afloat. Thursday’s University of Maryland and Auburn University survey found that even though 48% of colonies were lost in the year that ended 1 April, the number of US honeybee colonies “remained relatively stable”.
Continue reading...‘Seismic shift’: Younger Australians reject idea humans have right to use nature for own benefit, survey shows
Poll also reveals increasing cynicism over environmental claims made by companies
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Australians are confused and cynical about the environmental claims made by companies and greenwashing is making people ever more sceptical, a latest survey of people’s attitudes to nature and climate change has found.
The research also points to a radical change in the expectations of Australian consumers and voters, with younger generations strongly rejecting the notion that humans have the right to use nature for their own benefit.
Continue reading...Labor’s attempt to enlist Meta to fight climate activists needs scrutiny – it’s all too likely to succeed | Jeff Sparrow
As the planet continues to heat, politicians will go to greater and greater lengths to suppress popular outrage
So NSW’s premier, Chris Minns, thinks social media platforms like Meta should prevent climate activists from broadcasting their protests.
Scientists tell us that temperatures in the sea and air are spiking; a new study warns about global ecosystems collapsing sooner than predicted. Yet governments everywhere display more determination in suppressing protest than combating warming. As Greta Thunberg notes, “activists all over the world are experiencing increased repressions just for fighting for our present and our future”.
Jeff Sparrow is a Guardian Australia columnist
Continue reading...3M pays $10.3bn to settle water pollution suit over ‘forever chemicals’
Settlement will provide funds to US municipalities over 13 years to test for and treat PFAS contamination in public water systems
3M Co has reached a $10.3bn settlement with a host of US public water systems to resolve water pollution claims tied to “forever chemicals”, the chemical company announced on Thursday.
The company said the settlement would provide the funds over a 13-year period to cities, towns and other public water systems to test for and treat contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
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