The Guardian

Electric cars are quieter, cheaper to run, more reliable and better for the environment than petrol cars. So why aren’t we all driving them? Well, they’re expensive for starters. Most Australians also worry electric vehicles won’t get them where they need to go. What happens if you run out of charge on a busy highway, or halfway to work? The government could easily address these problems. Here's how

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Individual efforts are important, but we need collective action and systemic change. And we can only get that at the ballot

In a world with so many problems, it’s easy to feel helpless. And particularly right now in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, quite alone. But even as we practice social distancing, we have an opportunity to work together to solve the greatest problem that humanity faces. No, I’m not talking about coronavirus. I’m talking about climate change.

Related: I’m bewildered that Trump would imperil America by abandoning the Paris agreement | Ban Ki-moon

Research has found feral cattle, horses, buffaloes and donkeys are destroying the habitats of smaller mammal species

A sharp fall in native mammal numbers in the Northern Territory over the past 30 years is significantly due to feral cattle, horses, buffaloes and donkeys destroying their habitat, government-backed research has found.

Related: Australia after the bushfires

We continue to trash the oceans and it is not going to end well

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Levels are still below those recorded before lockdown, says government advisory body

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Household food waste in the UK has increased by nearly a third as coronavirus lockdown restrictions have been eased and could spiral further, new research has warned.

The government’s waste advisory body, Wrap, said self-reported food waste was up by 30%, reversing progress made at the start of the pandemic as consumers threw away less food while confined to their homes.

National Employment Savings Trust to shun firms involved in coal, tar sands or arctic drilling

The UK’s biggest pension fund, the government-backed National Employment Savings Trust (Nest) scheme with nine million members, is to begin divesting from fossil fuels in what climate campaigners have hailed as a landmark move for the industry.

The fund will ban investments in any companies involved in coal mining, oil from tar sands and arctic drilling. But the move puts Nest – a public corporation of the Department for Work and Pensions – potentially at odds with the current pensions minister, Guy Opperman, who earlier this month condemned divestment as “counter productive”.

• Apple and cherry production hampered by lack of wild bees
• Bees affected by loss of habitat, pesticides and climate crisis

A lack of bees in agricultural areas is limiting the supply of some food crops, a new US-based study has found, suggesting that declines in the pollinators may have serious ramifications for global food security.

Related: ‘Murder hornets’: race to protect North America's honeybees from giant invader

During the pandemic, we saw ideological nonsense and prejudice mostly put aside – and we saw what we could accomplish when it was

Carl Sagan – one of my heroes and a scientist with a gift for communicating complex ideas in accessible ways – wrote back in 1994: “If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves … If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future.”

Clearly I don’t know what he would write if he were alive today. But he could hardly say that in the intervening 26 years we have become even slightly less violent, shortsighted, ignorant and selfish; I suspect that he would be dismayed at how much worse we have become; and how much more power has been accumulated without wisdom.

Global Witness campaigners warn of risk of further killings during Covid-19 lockdowns

A record number of people were killed last year for defending their land and environment, according to research that highlights the routine murder of activists who oppose extractive industries driving the climate crisis and the destruction of nature.

More than four defenders were killed every week in 2019, according to an annual death toll compiled by the independent watchdog Global Witness, amid growing evidence of opportunistic killings during the Covid-19 lockdown in which activists were left as “sitting ducks” in their own homes.

The government talks a good game when it comes to radical policymaking. But its failure to invest in a zero-carbon future tells a different story

Senior figures in this government like to view themselves as insurgents against a hidebound Whitehall establishment. This is partly because Boris Johnson won the last election after pledging to “get Brexit done”, breaking the post-referendum stalemate in parliament. But it is also settled wisdom in Downing Street, and in the Treasury, that a more general shake-up is required of Britain’s body politic if it is to become more lithe and nimble, and get ahead of the game.

More evidence of this desire to disrupt came on Tuesday in the form of a speech by Stephen Barclay, the chief secretary to the Treasury. Addressing a centre-right thinktank, Mr Barclay heralded a new era of state spending in which the ethos of Silicon Valley would inform departmental decision-making. In the spirit of west coast venture capitalists, government ministers and their civil servants would back schemes that took risks and which would therefore sometimes fail. The interminable delays and inveterate caution that have blighted government projects and investment would become a thing of the past. Inculcating this new Whitehall worldview is seen as fundamental to speedily delivering the “infrastructure revolution” promised by Mr Johnson at the end of last month.

For some lab-grown meat is ‘scary science’, for others a genuine lever for change. Rachel Khoo, believes it may be both

Grant Howie likes to describe himself as a “traditional kind of middle-aged meat eater,” which is to say he eats mostly beef or lamb sourced from farms in his region. But he’s also not shy of a plant-based burger made from hemp, soy and pea isolates, hydrated with coconut oils and flavour powders. His vegan daughter cajoled him into making plant-based products at his New Zealand-based company Fishers Meat.

But ask this longtime food executive to eat lab-grown meat and Grant will dig in his heels. There is a limit to his progressiveness. “It just sounds too scary science,” he says.

We’ve turned a blind eye to a public health time bomb in already vulnerable communities

“I Can’t Breathe” is echoing across the planet. Filled with anguish and pain, these haunting words are spotlighting the systemic racism that has infected unjust policing practices, putting black and brown communities in its crosshairs. As police take lives with chokeholds and asphyxiate others with knees on their necks, we are reminded that racism is literally killing our people and planet.

Related: Is this the best of times, the worst of times, or both?

Project aims to show clean fusion power can be generated at commercial scale

The world’s largest nuclear fusion project began its five-year assembly phase on Tuesday in southern France, with the first ultra-hot plasma expected to be generated in late 2025.

The €20bn (£18.2bn) Iter project will replicate the reactions that power the sun and is intended to demonstrate fusion power can be generated on a commercial scale. Nuclear fusion promises clean, unlimited power but, despite 60 years of research, it has yet to overcome the technical challenges of harnessing such extreme amounts of energy.

Top investment house delists world biggest meat producer over lack of commitment to sustainability issues

The investment arm of northern Europe’s largest financial services group has dropped JBS, the world’s biggest meat processer, from its portfolio. The Brazilian company is now excluded from assets sold by Nordea Asset Management, which controls a €230bn (£210bn) fund, according to Eric Pedersen, its head of responsible investments.

The decision was taken about a month ago, over the meat giant’s links to farms involved in Amazon deforestation, its response to the Covid-19 outbreak, past corruption scandals, and frustrations over engagement with the company on such issues. “The exclusion of JBS is quite dramatic for us because it is from all of our funds, not just the ones labelled ESG,” Pedersen said.

CSIRO scientists determined the type of shark involved after examining the life jacket worn by 10-year-old boy when he was grabbed from a fishing boat

The shark that grabbed a 10-year-old boy from a fishing boat off north-west Tasmania was likely a great white measuring about 3.5 metres, scientists have said.

Lucas Arnott is recovering after the attack about 5km off the coast of Stanley on 17 July.

Snow leopards, tapirs, oriental storks and many others feature in WWF’s new collection. Its camera traps are wildlife friendly, as they cause little environmental disturbance, while producing permanent, verifiable records of some of the world’s rarest animals.

The technology can also give scientists vital insights into population numbers and trends at a time when poaching has reportedly increased

Reducing deforestation and the exploitation of wildlife are the first steps in breaking the chain of disease emergence

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In late 2013, in the village of Meliandou in rural Guinea, a group of children playing near a hollow tree disturbed a small colony of bats hiding inside. Scientists think that Emile Ouamouno, who later became the first tragic “index” case in the west African Ebola outbreak, was likely exposed to bat faeces while playing near the tree.

Every pandemic starts like this. An innocuous human activity, such as eating wildlife, can spark an outbreak that leads to a pandemic. In the 1920s, when HIV is thought to have emerged in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, scientists believe transmission to humans could have been caused by a bushmeat hunter cutting themselves while butchering a chimpanzee. In 2019, we can speculate that a person from south-west China entered a bat cave near their village to hunt wildlife for sale at the local wet market. Perhaps they later developed a nagging cough that represents the beginning of what we now know as Covid-19. Now, a growing human population, ever-encroaching development and a globalised network of travel and trade have accelerated the pace of pandemic emergence. We’re entering a new pandemic era.

Exclusive: Bushfires ‘one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history’, say scientists

Nearly 3 billion animals were killed or displaced by Australia’s devastating bushfire season of 2019 and 2020, according to scientists who have revealed for the first time the scale of the impact on the country’s native wildlife.

The Guardian has learned that an estimated 143 million mammals, 180 million birds, 51 million frogs and a staggering 2.5 billion reptiles were affected by the fires that burned across the continent. Not all the animals would have been killed by the flames or heat, but scientists say the prospects of survival for those that had withstood the initial impact was “probably not that great” due to the starvation, dehydration and predation by feral animals – mostly cats – that followed.

The fleet, found just outside a protected zone, raises the prospect of damage to the marine ecosystem

Ecuador has sounded the alarm after its navy discovered a huge fishing fleet of mostly Chinese-flagged vessels some 200 miles from the Galápagos Islands, the archipelago which inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

About 260 ships are currently in international waters just outside a 188-mile wide exclusive economic zone around the island, but their presence has already raised the prospect of serious damage to the delicate marine ecosystem, said former environment minister Yolanda Kakabadse.

Decline in species such as salmon harms entire ecosystems and livelihoods, say researchers

Populations of migratory river fish around the world have plunged by a “catastrophic” 76% since 1970, an analysis has found.

The fall was even greater in Europe at 93%, and for some groups of fish, with sturgeon and eel populations both down by more than 90%.