The Guardian

The government must do its bit to make new electric vehicles more affordable if mass adoption is to be achieved on the road to net zero

When the government controversially scrapped its discount on the purchase of electric cars last summer, the move was justified on the grounds that its work was done. After 11 years of subsidies, said ministers, the electric vehicle revolution had been “kickstarted”. As Britain strives to meet a 2030 target to end the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles, that judgment is beginning to look a little complacent.

Amid ongoing economic headwinds, data has emerged that suggests a drop-off in current demand for electric cars, despite notable public enthusiasm for their adoption in principle. Auto Trader, which hosts the country’s largest car sales website, reported this month that inquiries in relation to new electric vehicles had fallen significantly compared with last year.

Offices of Citibank in New York and Wells Fargo in San Francisco targeted by activists urging shareholders to act

As they exited their office in Tribeca on Monday afternoon, Citibank employees were confronted with a boisterous crowd chanting and dancing along to the music of a mariachi band.

It was a funny sight: New York banking professionals in black and gray business attire coming face to face with a loud, colorful group on a mission to engage in a conversation about the climate crisis.

MP Chris Skidmore says approval would undermine UK’s efforts to tackle climate crisis and its claims to leadership on world stage

• Opinion: I can’t let ministers trash our net zero pledge

The government’s former “net zero tsar” has urged ministers to halt the development of the Rosebank oilfield in the North Sea, or risk destroying the UK’s credibility on the climate crisis.

Chris Skidmore, the influential Conservative MP who led the review of the UK’s climate goals, writes in the Guardian on Tuesday of his concern that the development could derail net zero.

Roadmap to stop use of substances including ‘forever chemicals’ used to implement bans on 14 chemical groups so far, report states

A plan to ban up to 7,000 of the most potentially dangerous chemicals on the European market by 2030 is failing badly, according to a study.

A year ago, the EU launched a roadmap to banning groups of toxic substances linked to environmental damage and serious illnesses such as cancers, hormonal disruption and reprotoxic disorders. These included all bisphenols, the most dangerous flame retardants, and the increasingly controversial PFAS chemicals (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances).

Agreement between grouse moor managers and conservationists had also aimed to restore populations

Illegal killings of birds of prey have led the Peak District national park to end an agreement between grouse moor managers and bird conservationists aimed at protecting raptors.

The partnership was set up in 2011 and sought to restore bird of prey populations in the park. The rare birds have historically been killed by gamekeepers and others because they predate on grouse populations, which are maintained for shooting.

Cities bringing climate litigation against oil majors welcome US supreme court’s decision to rebuff appeal to move cases to federal courts

The decision, climate experts and advocates said, felt “like a dam breaking” after years of legal delays to the growing wave of climate lawsuits facing major oil companies.

Without weighing in on the merits of the cases, the supreme court on Monday rebuffed an appeal by major oil companies that want to face the litigation in federal courts, rather than in state courts, which are seen as more favorable to plaintiffs.

Ny-Ålesund in Svalbard, Norway, sits deep within the Arctic Circle, about 700 miles from the north pole. It has about 35 year-round residents, but in summer the population swells to more than 100 as scientists fly in from around the world. Life in the town centres around saunas, sled dogs, and a weekly evening gathering called Strikk og Drikk, or Knit and Sip

More than 300 barriers were taken down last year, boosting the health of waterways and the wildlife they support, say experts

A record number of river barriers, including dams and weirs, were removed across Europe in 2022, with at least 325 taken down in 16 countries, allowing rivers to flow freely and migratory fish to reach breeding areas.

In its annual report, Dam Removal Europe said Spain led the way for the second year with 133 removals, followed by Sweden and France. The UK completed 29 removals, including Bowston Weir, which was built on the River Kent nearly 150 years ago for a paper mill. Its removal will help restore the health of the river, which is home to white-clawed crayfish, freshwater pearl mussels, and water crowfoot (an oxygenating aquatic plant).

The southern lights surge over Christchurch's Port Hills, a place that would not usually get to enjoy them. Unusually high levels of solar storm activity meant the Aurora Australis could be viewed much farther north than the lights are typically seen, and in cities where light pollution would normally render them invisible

• Aurora Australis lights up New Zealand skies in spectacular ‘solar tsunami’

Court to decide if judicial review of Liz Truss move to allow new oil and gas drilling should be permitted

Greenpeace has attacked the government’s “disastrous” decision to award new licences for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea as it prepares to challenge the move in the high court.

A court hearing on Tuesday will determine whether the environmental group will be permitted a judicial review of the decision, made during Liz Truss’s short-lived time as prime minister.

Four days of peaceful activism led by Extinction Rebellion fail to elicit pledge from government to ban new oil and gas projects

After four days of peaceful demonstrations, climate activists gathered in Parliament Square as a deadline for the government to act to end all new fossil fuel projects was reached.

The actions involved a wide range of groups, including Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, as well as the Christian climate coalition, with thousands gathering for Earth Day in London on Saturday.

Three years ago, XR was hanging by a thread – the Big One protest suggests the movement has learned from its mistakes

Over the weekend, tens of thousands of climate activists and concerned citizens converged on Westminster for “the Big One”, a climate demonstration with more than 200 participating organisations, including trade unions, community groups and charities, and led by Extinction Rebellion (XR). The demonstration’s convivial atmosphere was somewhere between a county fair and Glastonbury: participants tried out screen printing, ate together on College Green and took part in talks about the climate crisis.

It was easy to forget that in 2020, XR was hanging by a thread. The pandemic decimated the movement on the ground – because its members could no longer meet, recruit others or plan activities. Also, the actions of a handful of protesters who blocked a London commuter train used by working-class people in October 2019 were received very badly, and did lasting damage to the group’s reputation (an XR spokesperson later apologised). “People are very keen to talk about the climate crisis,” one XR member recently told me, “but when they find out we’re from Extinction Rebellion, they don’t want to know.”

Ellie Mae O’Hagan is a writer and head of external engagement at the Good Law Project

Tory MPs call for ministers, not watchdog, to make decisions on sites of special scientific interest

Senior Conservative MPs have suggested the nature watchdog Natural England should be stripped of powers in an overhaul of how it manages England’s best wildlife sites, after complaints from landowners.

Wildlife experts have said it is “outrageous” that sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs), which are some of the most important areas for nature in the country, could be “determined by politics rather than science”.

Instead of yanking products, agency required industry to add more instructions to labels before re-approving dicamba, lawsuit claims

The US Environmental Protection Agency has effectively ignored a 2020 federal court order prohibiting the use of Monsanto and other producers’ toxic dicamba-based herbicides that are destroying millions of acres of cropland, harming endangered species and increasing cancer risks for farmers, new fillings in the lawsuit charge.

Instead of permanently yanking the products from the market after the 2020 order, the EPA only required industry to add further application instructions to the herbicides’ labels before re-approving the products.

Diane Wilson took on Formosa Plastics and won a $50m settlement to help clean up decades worth of toxic plastic waste

Grassroots activists who took on British mining giants and a serial plastics polluter – and won – are among this year’s recipients of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.

The environmental campaigns led by the six 2023 Goldman prize winners highlight the hurdles faced by some local activists, who are often on the frontlines confronting the toxic mix of corporate greed and systemic corruption that is fuelling the climate emergency, biodiversity collapse and increasingly forced displacement.

A research team has discovered a parasite that’s been killing off sea urchins, but there’s no method to eliminate it yet

Marine biologists at a Florida university say they have solved the mystery of a mass die-off of long-spined sea urchins from the US to the Caribbean.

The scientists blame a microscopic, single-cell parasite for the die-off, which took hold early last year. Affected Diadema antillarum urchins lose their spines and suction, then succumb to disease.

Dirty air causes premature death of at least 1,200 children across Europe every year, says European Environment Agency

Europe is failing its children when it comes to air pollution, exposing nearly all children across the continent to air that falls below healthy standards and delaying the clean-up of the sources of pollution, research has found.

Breathing dirty air causes the premature death of at least 1,200 children across Europe each year, and many thousands more are afflicted with physical and mental health problems that could have lifelong impacts, according to the latest assessment of air pollution by the European Environment Agency.

With austerity eviscerating their budgets, councils are renting out public land to generate income

When the mill owner Joseph Strutt cut the ribbon on the Derby Arboretum in 1840, entry came with a caveat. This landscaped sweep, one of the first public parks in England, was only open to the public on Sundays and Wednesdays. For the rest of the week, its fountains and pathways were reserved for paying customers, whose entry fees effectively subsidised the park.

The system was scrapped in 1882, as the growing concern for public health among Victorian reformers accelerated the creation of open public parks in towns and cities across England. Anyone can now stroll through Derby’s arboretum. But another form of gatekeeping is taking place in parks today. Councils that have seen their budgets eviscerated by austerity are finding ways to turn parks into cash-generating assets, often by renting stretches of the land to fenced-off commercial events.

Experts ask the public to be on the lookout for the invasive species and kill them and their brood to protect US plant life

Experts are urging the US public to start keeping an eye out for the spotted lanternfly, an invasive species harmless, if irritating, to humans, but known to wreak havoc on plant life and agriculture.

Experts believe that spotted lanternflies entered the US in a shipping crate. Native to China, they were first detected in Pennsylvania in 2014 and have since spread to at least 14 states.

Wildlife presenter urges people to join action on climate crisis during mass protest supported by more than 200 organisations

Wildlife presenter Chris Packham has made a rallying call for “every last person who cares” about the planet to join Extinction Rebellion after thousands took part in a demonstration on Saturday.

The 61-year-old broadcaster spoke to the crowd from a stage close to Parliament Square, Westminster, during the second day of a mass protest the climate group has called The Big One.