The Guardian

BYD, a Chinese carmaker once dismissed by Tesla’s CEO, claims to have outpaced western rivals with charging tech that’s as fast as filling petrol engines

Tesla’s boss, Elon Musk, once thought the idea that China’s BYD could compete with his company was laughable. In 2011, he smugly dismissed the Chinese carmaker as unimpressive, its products unattractive and its technology “not very strong”. He’s not laughing now – and not just because Tesla’s stock has plummeted amid a boycott by motorists protesting against his embrace of far-right politics. More pressingly, Mr Musk, like other western carmakers, has been outpaced by BYD.

Last week, the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer unveiled new charging technology that, it says, is capable of delivering 400km (249 miles) of driving range in just five minutes – as quick as filling up a petrol car. The system, released next month, will be fitted in two EVs, priced from 270,000 yuan (£29,000) – comparable to Tesla’s most affordable model in China. Yet BYD claims to quadruple Tesla’s kilometres-per-minute charging rate. Technological supremacy at a competitive price may help to explain why BYD now sells seven times as many cars in China as Tesla.

Exclusive: Australia’s top green organisations suspend anti-nuclear power ads to fund campaign against Labor’s move to protect salmon industry

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Australia’s leading environment organisations have abruptly suspended advertising campaigns attacking the Coalition’s plan to introduce nuclear power and are instead funding ads accusing Anthony Albanese of signing “the death warrant” of an endangered species.

The shift from criticising the Coalition to Labor on the cusp of an election campaign was agreed by the bosses of green groups – including the Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, the WWF Australia and the Climate Council – at what campaigners described as an emergency meeting on Saturday.

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Australia’s world heritage-listed reefs – Ningaloo on the west coast and the Great Barrier Reef on the east – are being hit by simultaneous coral bleaching, with teams of scientists on both coasts monitoring and tracking the event across thousands of kilometres of marine habitat. On Western Australia’s Ningaloo reef, waters have accumulated the highest amount of heat stress on record during an extended marine heatwave that has hit coral reefs all the way along the state’s vast coastline

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Scientists say widespread damage to both world heritage-listed reefs is ‘heartbreaking’ as WA reef accumulates highest amount of heat stress on record

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Australia’s two world heritage-listed reefs – Ningaloo on the west coast and the Great Barrier Reef on the east – have been hit simultaneously by coral bleaching that reef experts have called “heartbreaking” and “a profoundly distressing moment”.

Teams of scientists on both coasts have been monitoring and tracking the heat stress and bleaching extending across thousands of kilometres of marine habitat, which is likely to have been driven by global heating.

Cities lose thousands of mature trees a year. On Overbury Drive, neighbours were determined to protect a solitary giant dying red gum – stuck right in the middle of their road

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It’s a striking image; in a suburban landscape where nature has been largely pushed aside to make way for roads, houses and driveways, the thick craggy trunk of a towering river red gum tree stands defiantly in place, forcing the bitumen to squeeze and buckle around it. Bang in the middle of the street.

Barely a day goes by without the residents of Overbury Drive noticing a carload of tourists or curious locals pulling up in their quiet cul-de-sac, cameras at the ready.

Increasing run-ins between anglers and the ocean’s apex predators reflects a growing unease among beachgoers. But is widespread fear justified?

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Moreton Bay charter boat deckhand Bryce Daly is starting to feel unsafe swimming the waters he’s grown up fishing.

“You’ve always got a shark in the back of your mind,” the 32-year-old Jimboomba man says.

A new prize recognises the power of storytelling to address the biggest issue of our time

No novelist should ignore the climate emergency, Paul Murray, author of the bestselling novel The Bee Sting, told the Observer last year: “It is the unavoidable background for being alive in the 21st century.” In recognition of the vital role of literature in responding to the Anthropocene moment, this week the inaugural shortlist was announced for the Climate Fiction prize.

The five novels include Orbital by Samantha Harvey, set during one day on the International Space Station and the winner of last year’s Booker prize; time-travelling romcom The Ministry of Time from debut novelist Kaliane Bradley; eco-thriller Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen; And So I Roar, about a young girl in Nigeria, by Abi Daré; and a story of migrants in an abandoned city in Téa Obreht’s The Morningside. All the shortlisted authors are women.

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Broadcaster and nature campaigner claims Labour’s attack on wildlife in push for economic growth is ‘PR disaster’

Bats are being “scapegoated” by Rachel Reeves, Chris Packham has said, after the chancellor suggested the winged creatures were getting in the way of economic growth.

Reeves recently said she wanted businesses to “focus on getting things built, and stop worrying about the bats and the newts”, and this week the press release announcing her shake-up of all the UK’s regulators mentioned bats six times. A very niche directive to Natural England, the nature watchdog, to take advice from the Bat Conservation Trust out of a planning document, became the linchpin of Reeves’s deregulation plan.

Campaigners welcome long-delayed proposals to reduce pesticide-related harms to pollinators

The use of pesticides on UK farms is to be reduced by 10% by 2030 under government plans to protect bees and other pollinators.

Campaigners welcomed the news, but said they were disappointed that the target applied only to arable farms and not to urban areas and parks.

Thanks to breathtaking negligence, the liquid fertiliser used to help grow our food bubbles with a lethal cocktail of toxins

If humanity has an epitaph, it might read something like this: “Knackered by the things we missed.” It is true that several existential threats are widely known and widely discussed. But some of the greatest dangers we face appear on almost no one’s radar.

How often have you thought about this one: spreading sewage sludge on farmland? I would guess very few would include it in their top civilisational hazards. Despite the best efforts of a handful of us, it trundles on, unknown to most. Surprising as it may seem, new research suggests that it could help call time on us.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

I love them all even the creepy weird ones

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Kangaroos and wallabies are the only hopping species heavier than 5kg, and the small musky rat-kangaroo might help us learn why

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Scientists stalking a small marsupial through a remote Australian rainforest say they may have found a clue to the mystery of why its bigger kangaroo cousins hop instead of walk.

Kangaroos and closely related wallabies are the only large animals to hop upright on two legs, researchers from Australia’s Flinders University said Thursday, but why remains a mystery.

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Exclusive: energy secretary says 2050 target is imperative, and accuses opposition of betraying of future generations

The government is “absolutely up for the fight” over net zero, Ed Miliband has said, as he accused the Conservatives and Reform of “a total desertion and betrayal” of future generations by failing to tackle the climate crisis.

After a turbulent week for Labour in which it has been charged with abandoning its values by slashing disability benefits, the energy secretary sought to focus attention on the party’s plans for the green energy transition.

Western Forest will cover 2,500 hectares across Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Bristol

A new Western Forest is to be created across a swathe of the west of England from the Cotswolds to the Mendips, the government has said.

The project, one of the government’s promised national forests, will create 2,500 hectares (6,200 acres) of woodland by 2030 across five priority areas in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Bristol, with plans to plant 20m trees by 2050.

Unesco report highlights ‘unprecedented’ glacier loss driven by climate crisis, threatening ecosystems, agriculture and water sources

Retreating glaciers threaten the food and water supply of 2 billion people around the world, the UN has warned, as current “unprecedented” rates of melting will have unpredictable consequences.

Two-thirds of all irrigated agriculture in the world is likely to be affected in some way by receding glaciers and dwindling snowfall in mountain regions, driven by the climate crisis, according to a Unesco report.

Exclusive: Representatives of king, National Trust and others called on to work together to protect environment

Steve Reed called in some of England’s biggest landowners for a meeting on Thursday, asking them to come up with meaningful plans to restore nature on their estates.

Representatives for King Charles and Prince William were among those at the meeting, asked by the environment secretary to draft new land management plans to help meet the country’s legal Environment Act targets.

Campaigners condemn North Dakota jury’s ruling as Greenpeace must pay Energy Transfer at least $660m

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The verdict against the environmental group Greenpeace finding it liable for huge damages to a pipeline company over protests has been described by advocacy groups as a “weaponization of the legal system” and an “assault” on free speech and protest rights.

A North Dakota jury decided on Wednesday that Greenpeace will have to pay at least $660m to the pipeline company Energy Transfer and is liable for defamation and other claims over protests in the state in 2016-2017.

Members of public accounts committee raise concerns about culture and call for greater examination

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Nuclear whistleblowers who try to draw attention to cultural and safety issues face bullying, MPs have warned.

Members of parliament’s public accounts committee have said they are concerned about the way people who raise concerns about culture and safety on nuclear sites are treated.

Conservationists voice concern that the Ontario theme park will struggle to find suitable homes for its animals

Canada’s embattled Marineland theme park is to raise money to “expeditiously” remove animals from its grounds, including the world’s largest captive beluga population, as it looks for a buyer. But a lack of available sanctuaries in the country suggests finding a home for stranded whales, dolphins and pinnipeds will be a daunting task.

In February, the park won approval to divide its sprawling property so it can take out mortgages on separate parcels, with the aim of using the funds to keep the park operating and to move the animals. In documents filed to the city of Niagara, Marineland said the financing it had secured “requires the owner to remove the marine animals from the property expeditiously”.