The Guardian

My mother was killed by a driver while I was campaigning for safer cycling. Now I’ve helped create a national travel strategy

A little over a decade ago my daughter Aggie asked me a question that changed the path of my working life. She asked: “Can we ride to the park?” It wasn’t her question that altered everything, it was my answer – which was: “No.”

We live in a typical northern seaside town, and the park in question was – I know because I measured it later – 549 metres away, a distance that takes a little over one minute to ride. I, an ex-Olympic cyclist, didn’t feel I could keep my daughter safe on our roads for one minute. And that felt very wrong. It wasn’t what I wanted for her, and it wasn’t the place I wanted to live. So I decided to do something about it.

Chris Boardman is the interim commissioner of Active Travel England

Officials from Exxon, Shell, Chevron and BP have been summoned to appear before the House oversight committee in February

A US congressional committee has invited board members at four large oil companies to testify in February about the industry’s role in the climate crisis and spreading “disinformation”, turning up the heat on big oil after lawmakers grilled their CEOs last year.

The hearing of officials from Exxon, Shell, Chevron and BP, scheduled for 8 February, is the next phase of the House oversight committee’s investigation into the role of fossil fuel companies in blocking action on climate change and misrepresenting the industry’s efforts to address it.

Tiny particles including tyre dust found in ice cores stretching back 50 years, showing global plastic contamination

Nanoplastic pollution has been detected in polar regions for the first time, indicating that the tiny particles are now pervasive around the world.

The nanoparticles are smaller and more toxic than microplastics, which have already been found across the globe, but the impact of both on people’s health is unknown.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including beluga whales, a ‘snow fairy’ and two egrets hitching a lift

Mia Mottley is just one of a raft of strong women across the Caribbean and South America tackling society’s most pressing issues. The world could learn a lot from them

There is a common misconception that the developing world is full of archaic values and that women struggle to have their voices heard. The more countries I visit and the more female leaders I speak to, the more I am convinced the contrary is true.

In fact, those in positions of power worldwide could learn important lessons from these strong women when it comes to tackling some of society’s most pressing issues, including pandemics, the climate crisis, education and infrastructure.

The deal to build an electric car battery plant near Blyth will bring up to 3,000 jobs to the area by 2028

The UK government will invest £100m in Britishvolt as the car battery manufacturing startup seeks to build Britain’s first large-scale “gigafactory” in the north-east of England.

The government’s Automotive Transformation Fund will invest alongside asset management company Abrdn and its majority-owned property investment arm, Tritax, to fund a sale and leaseback deal for the huge building that will house the electric car battery factory, near Blyth in Northumberland.

Government considers scrapping scheme that pays for energy efficiency measures for poorer households

More than 30,000 jobs would be put at risk if the government were to scrap the energy bill levy that pays for home insulation improvements for poor households, the industry has warned.

Ministers are mooting an end to the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), a £1bn levy on energy bills that pays for energy efficiency measures for people on low incomes. The energy price cap is expected to rise by about £700 to £2,000 for the average household bill in April, after a surge in gas prices.

Some rightwingers claim renewables have increased costs, but Energy UK blames over-reliance on gas

Energy companies want the government to implement policies to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions, the industry’s leader has said, despite claims from some on the political right that high energy prices should spark a rethink.

Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of Energy UK, which represents the industry, said: “The government should press on with net zero policies. That’s something they still need to do. We are missing the carbon budgets.”

Stunning images from the 10th year of the worldwide Ocean Art underwater photo competition. Thousands of entries from 81 countries were judged with the winners including nine taken in Australia

Council plant faced ‘a lot of challenges’ to beat five other state entrants on qualities including clarity, smell, taste and ‘feeling in the mouth’

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A competition to find Australia’s finest drop of water has announced the Richmond valley council water plant in NSW as its winner.

The 2021 Best Tasting Tap Water competition, hosted by the Water Industry Operators Association of Australia (WIOA), pitted water authority state winners from metropolitan and regional areas around the country against each other.

A fifth of those polled said they could reduce food waste if they knew more recipes

Nearly £1.2bn worth of fruit, veg and bread is binned in the UK every year, with one in five consumers stating the reason they waste so much is they “don’t know what to cook”.

Close to 76m items – an average of nearly three per household – are thrown away every week, according to new data based on research by Censuswide, which asked consumers how much food they threw away. The scale of the waste is staggering, with 914m potatoes, 733m tomatoes and 728m carrots ending up in dustbins each year.

Tim Westley takes up chef friend’s challenge to transform laughing gas litter

The little steel bulbs that litter parks, roadsides and city centres – the discarded canisters from Britain’s second favourite drug, laughing gas – cause misery to many communities. But now one blacksmith has found an innovative use for them – turning them into handmade kitchen knives.

The prevalence of the canisters has prompted some councils to impose local bans, while the home secretary is keen to outlaw them nationally.

Scientists say find shows importance of mapping deep ocean where coral can escape effects of global heating

A huge coral reef has been discovered off the coast of Tahiti in the Pacific Ocean’s “twilight zone”, offering hope that more pristine ecosystems are waiting to be discovered at unexplored depths.

Stretching along the ocean floor for nearly 2 miles, the reef, covered in rose-shaped corals, is one of the largest such discoveries at depths of more than 30 metres, where sunlight levels are much lower.

More than a thousand crows roost in Sunnyvale every night, ruffling locals’ feathers with caws and droppings

Each night, more than a thousand crows descend on Sunnyvale, California. In recent years a growing contingency of corvids have been roosting in the Silicon Valley town’s downtown district, filling the night air with a chorus of caws and painting the roads, Pollock-esque, with droppings.

The spectacle has failed to charm residents and local business owners. Vice-Mayor Alysa Cisneros said constituents had been complaining about the crows since she began campaigning for office in 2019. “In terms of the kinds of complaints I get on a consistent basis, crows are a top concern, right after speeding drivers,” she said.

Africa’s unprecedented population growth will impact geopolitics, global trade, migration and almost every aspect of life. It’s time for a reimagining of the continent

In 2022 the world’s population will pass 8 billion. It has increased by a third in just two decades. By 2050, there will be about 9.5 billion of us on the planet, according to respected demographers. This makes recent comments by Elon Musk baffling. According to him, “the low birthrate and the rapidly declining birthrate” is “one of the biggest risks to civilisation”.

Fertility rates in Europe, North America and east Asia are generally below 2.1 births per woman, the level at which populations remain stable at constant mortality rates. The trajectory in some countries is particularly arresting. The birthrate in Italy is the lowest it has ever been in the country’s history. South Korea’s fertility rate has been stuck below one birth per woman for decades despite an estimated $120bn (£90bn) being spent on initiatives aimed at raising it. Japan started the century with 128 million citizens but is on course to have only 106 million by 2050. China’s population will peak at 1.45 billion in 2030, but if it proves unable to raise its fertility rate, the world’s most populous country could end the century with fewer than 600 million inhabitants. This is the “big risk” alluded to by Musk. The trouble is, his statement seems to imply that “civilisation” does not include Africa.

Exclusive: Officers say cuts and operational decisions have made England’s regulator ‘toothless’

Staff at England’s Environment Agency say it has been cut back to such an extent that they cannot do their jobs and the regulator is no longer a deterrent to polluters.

Three officers at the EA have described to the Guardian and Ends Report how they are increasingly unable to hold polluters to account or improve the environment as a result of the body’s policies.

Northumbrian Water admitted two breaches of law after manhole collapse led to sewer blockage

A water company has been fined £240,000 after a damaged manhole led to two unauthorised sewage discharges into a stream.

Untreated sewage leaked into Coundon Burn in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, on 13 March 2017. A member of the public rang Northumbrian Water after seeing effluent in the stream, and the firm – which had a turnover of £834.6m that year – sent workers to free a sewer blockage.

Sadiq Khan’s pledge to cut traffic by 27% is welcome, but more must be done – not least to protect residents’ health

Last Friday, everyone living in London was told to avoid strenuous physical activity. An intense area of high pressure meant pollutants were caught in the air, rather than being blown away as usual. The government forecast the highest level of pollution – band 10 – would be reached, with air pollution at its highest recorded level since March 2018. The advice to avoid intense exercise put the onus on the most vulnerable in society – children, elderly people, those living with lung and heart conditions – rather than encouraging drivers to move to more sustainable transport options or limit their journeys. But, as a report published on Tuesday shows, we will not effectively tackle the climate crisis without real traffic reduction.

If London is to be a city that works for everyone – drivers included – it needs to move seriously towards a future with fewer private cars on its streets. That’s why I was so heartened to see the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, acknowledging that traffic needs to go down by at least 27% in the capital to meet our climate targets. While I would argue that we could be more ambitious, Khan’s target is impressive, compared with the 2018 mayoral transport strategy, and marks real progress. Around the world, cities that have reduced cars have become better places to live and work: cleaner, safer, with healthier residents who have the option to move around in different ways, rather than relying on private cars..

Hirra Khan Adeogun is head of car-free cities at the climate charity Possible

Many urban gardens rich in pollinator-friendly plants and provide food all year round, find Bristol researchers

Small gardens are as important as big gardens for conserving bees and other pollinators in UK cities, a study has found.

Worldwide, bee populations are declining. Habitat destruction, pesticide use, and climate change have led to the disappearance of some pollinators, but researchers found that small urban gardens are some of the most pollinator-friendly places.

‘Urgent’ coordinated action to tackle overconsumption, farming subsidies and the climate crisis also needed to halt biodiversity loss

Expanding national parks and protected areas will not be enough to halt the destruction of nature, warn leading scientists, who say urgent action on overconsumption, harmful subsidies and the climate crisis is also required to halt biodiversity loss.

Governments are expected to commit to a Paris-style agreement for nature at Cop15 in Kunming, China, later this year, with targets that include protecting at least 30% of the oceans and land by 2030.