The Guardian

International Ski Federation urged to cut emissions, while activists warn of damage through heavy use of snowmaking

After promising early dumps of snow in some areas of Europe this autumn, the pattern of recent years resumed and rain and sleet took over.

In the ski resorts of Morzine and Les Gets in the French Alps, the heavy rainfall meant that full opening of resorts was delayed until two days before Christmas, leaving the industry and the millions of tourists planning trips to stare at the sky in hope.

Platypuses have not been seen in the Torrens since the 1880s, but now the river may be healthy enough to support the species again

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In May 1872, Adelaide’s doctors were surveyed about the “noxious effluvia” emanating from the River Torrens, the South Australian Advertiser reported. John Burn wrote to the paper to say he endorsed their condemnation of “the filthy state of Adelaide – a city of stenches”.

“If any of our citizens be sceptical, I would suggest his taking a stroll along King William Street on to the Morphett Street Bridge, where he might tarry a wee bit for the inhalation of the horridly pestiferous vapours there to be enjoyed,” Burn wrote.

Amid all the hysteria about ChatGPT and co, one thing is being missed: how energy-intensive the technology is

What to do when surrounded by people who are losing their minds about the Newest New Thing? Answer: reach for the Gartner Hype Cycle, an ingenious diagram that maps the progress of an emerging technology through five phases: the “technology trigger”, which is followed by a rapid rise to the “peak of inflated expectations”; this is succeeded by a rapid decline into the “trough of disillusionment”, after which begins a gentle climb up the “slope of enlightenment” – before eventually (often years or decades later) reaching the “plateau of productivity”.

Given the current hysteria about AI, I thought I’d check to see where it is on the chart. It shows that generative AI (the polite term for ChatGPT and co) has just reached the peak of inflated expectations. That squares with the fevered predictions of the tech industry (not to mention governments) that AI will be transformative and will soon be ubiquitous. This hype has given rise to much anguished fretting about its impact on employment, misinformation, politics etc, and also to a deal of anxious extrapolations about an existential risk to humanity.

Horticulture charity says climate breakdown is influencing trends, based on inquiries from gardeners

Fruits that thrive in hot weather and can now be grown in the ever-hotter UK summers, and weeds such as cow parsley to decorate borders, are among the 2024 garden trends predicted by the Royal Horticultural Society.

Climate breakdown has influenced most of the trends predicted by the horticulture charity, which seeks insights from its more than 600,000 members to forecast which plants may be in fashion in the coming year. While its trends list used to be based on simply which blooms were in vogue, now it highlights the quirks of gardening in a changing climate amid collapsing biodiversity.

Greening grey spaces Creative ways to green up grey urban spaces has become a major new trend as city gardeners are growing successfully in pots, growing up instead of out and using innovative ways of colonising indoor space, including terrariums.

Grow your own The RHS gardening advice service and website continues to see growth in “grow your own”. The most popular plants are tomatoes, followed by cucumbers, courgettes, chillies and runner beans.

Purple power Purple vegetables have traditionally been difficult for the home gardener but now breeders have begun introducing purple varieties that are easier to grow than traditional ones and avoid previous drawbacks, such as non-fruiting and limited purple colour, especially after cooking. Gardeners and chefs can anticipate purple carrots, cauliflowers, broccoli, tomatoes, peas, radish, French beans and lettuces.

Climate change fruits Recent hot dry summers are ideal for certain fruits, grape vines being an outstanding example – but others include figs, almonds, apricots, melons, peaches/nectarines and watermelons.

Local seed provenances and survivalist gardens After the temporary hiccup to the vegetable supply chain last spring, some gardeners now favour growing with more independence, including where they source their seeds.

Going wild Plants traditionally seen as unwanted weeds such as herb robert and plantain are becoming popular. Cow parsley is now a desirable border plant and dandelions are recognised as being key to providing food for bees early in springtime.

Gardening with nature The move away from classical, formal layouts towards naturalistic landscapes will continue to grow, with gardens making people feel that they are in a wild place and providing benefits to wellbeing, wildlife and ease of maintenance.

Planet-friendly gardening Gardeners will be increasingly in tune with nature: inquiries to the RHS about wildlife gardening increased by more than 28% in 2023.

Houseplants reach the next level – Tropical-looking plants and orchids which create a “jungle vibe” have become popular, as has growing up instead of out. Favourites will include epipremnum, sedum morganianum, and old favourites such as string of hearts and spider plants.

Succulents Driven by houseplants and sourcing drought-resistant bedding, interest in succulents is increasing, with commercial landscapers introducing the hardier ones into landscapes. New cultivars are also being released, including aeonium, cotyledon and crassula.

Lib Dem analysis finds 4,574 hours of sewage has been spilled in festive swimming spots in the last year

Long-established Christmas seaside swimming locations have been flooded with sewage over the last year, prompting concern that swimmers could fall ill.

They would not be able to claim compensation, as Tory MPs earlier this month blocked a Lib Dem amendment that would have allowed anyone who got sick as a result of illegal sewage dumping to claim from water companies.

Exemption under federal environment law to allow scientists to collect 25 of the critically endangered ‘walking fish’

Scientists in Tasmania will remove up to half of the island’s “emblematic” red handfish from the wild ahead of expected marine heatwaves deemed an existential threat to their survival.

The critically endangered Tasmanian red handfish population has fallen to between 50 and 100 in the wild, due to the degradation of the seaweed habitat it needs to breed.

Australian Associated Press contributed to this report

Sales surge as cities and states look to cut pollution from cars and improve options for Americans to get around

After several years of false starts, electric bikes are finally entering the American mainstream, amid booming sales of a multiplying number of models on offer and as more states offer incentives for people to ditch their cars and shift to two, motor-assisted, wheels.

This year could be considered “the year of the ebike”, according to John MacArthur, a transport researcher at Portland State University. Ebike sales in the United States leaped by 269% between 2019 and 2022, with the market size expected to have grown further in 2023, to be worth $2.59bn.

Despite a typical suburban upbringing – and two PhDs – Jonathan Cornford and his family decided to restrain their consumption

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When my wife, Kim, and I got married in 1995 we decided, in our youthful idealism, that we would try to “live simply so that others might simply live”. It turns out that living simply can sometimes be quite complicated. Nevertheless, from the outset it was clear to us that living simply should involve living on a lower income than the Australian norm. We were sort of downshifters, except we had never shifted up in the first place.

The bulk of our married life has been spent living at an income level that put us in the bottom 20% of Australian households. We now have two older teenagers, and for most of their lives our family technically hovered around the Australian household poverty line. But “poverty” has been very far from our experience.

EVs made up just 2% of new car sales in May 2022, but now 8.3% of new car sales in 2023 are battery powered

The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has welcomed a boom in electric vehicle sales, revealing the number of fast-charging sites has nearly doubled in the last year.

National strategies on electric vehicles are expected to more than double the number of charger stations again within three years, as the federal government seeks to incentivise the use of cleaner cars. New fuel efficiency standards, expected to be outlined in early 2024, are likely to further discourage the sale of higher-emitting vehicles, making electric cars more attractive.

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Around the world, the people fighting for the survival of our planet are being shamefully silenced and villified

Injustice is easy to oppose after it has receded into the past, and there is no cost to imagining yourself as a hero long after the event. Everyone celebrates the suffragettes now, but at the time they were vilified as hateful spinsters and terrorists. McCarthyism is a pejorative political label on right and left alike now, but at his peak, more Americans approved of Senator Joseph McCarthy than frowned on his witch-hunt. Most people would like to believe they’d have stood up against the homophobia of 1980s Britain – yet, by 1987, only 11% of the British public believed same-sex relations to be “not wrong at all”.

Which takes us to climate activism. This year has seen a global onslaught against people agitating for more action to mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis. Courts can issue stern judgments, but so can history, and you have to wonder its future verdict on how the persecution and silencing of those raising the alarm only escalated when the scientific evidence had become so cast-iron, and when extreme weather events hammered home the imminent danger facing the human species. Here in Britain, a government which is reneging on its climate commitments – not least by expanding oil and gas licences – is simultaneously introducing repressive legislation to silence those holding them to account.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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

Fishing nets abandoned or lost in the sea – known as ‘ghost nets’ or ‘ghost gear’ – have been called ‘the most deadly form of marine plastic debris’. Dolphins, fish, whales, seabirds and turtles become entangled and die slow, painful deaths. But divers in Dakar are working to remove the threat

Exclusive: ‘We need to listen to the scientists. Excessive pesticide use is killing our bees,’ say company heads in letter to minister

The UK government should stop ignoring the science and block a bee-killing pesticide from being used, business leaders have said.

The neonicotinoid pesticide Cruiser SB is used on sugar beet and is highly toxic to bees. It is banned in the EU but the UK has provisionally agreed to its emergency use every year since leaving the bloc. In 2017, the then environment secretary, Michael Gove, promised to use Brexit to ban all neonicotinoids.

Conservationists call for more action after reptiles, fish and birds added to list, including 10 species deemed critically endangered

Seventeen species, including two birds, two fish, several reptiles and the Lord Howe earthworm, have been added to Australia’s list of threatened species.

The sooty shearwater, known for its long-distance journeys, has been listed as vulnerable, while the red-tailed tropicbird, which breeds on Christmas Island, has been listed as endangered.

Outrage in Colaton Raleigh after trees felled by government agency without consulting community

Not much happens in the sleepy village of Colaton Raleigh, where almost half of the residents are retired. So local walkers were horrified when they woke up one morning to an act of “environmental vandalism” that left behind the maimed stumps of 100 ancient beech trees.

Residents in the east Devon community are grieving the loss of the beloved trees, which were located in a special conservation area and site of special scientific interest, home to lots of local plants and animals, after they were felled by a government agency without consulting the community or council.

New clean energy record set after windfarms generate 21.8GW in half an hour on Thursday morning

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The blustery weather brought by Storm Pia has helped Britain’s windfarms set a new clean energy record, with wind turbines generating more than half of the country’s electricity.

Windfarms generated 21.8 gigawatts (GW) of electricity between 8am and 8.30am on Thursday, according to RenewableUK, a not-for-profit renewable energy trade association, citing figures from National Grid’s electricity system operator (ESO).

Cloud seeding improves air quality in city of Lahore but experts say practice is not a sustainable solution

Artificial rain has been used in an attempt to lower pollution levels in Lahore, Pakistan.

The capital city of the eastern province of Punjab, near the Indian border, has some of the worst air quality in the world and has become extremely polluted because of a growing population of more than 13 million people.

Shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien says report examines costs through an investment lens rather than a consumer lens, but Chris Bowen says nuclear crusade not viable

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The shadow energy minister and long-time nuclear advocate Ted O’Brien has accused Labor of weaponising a CSIRO report which found renewables to be the cheapest form of energy.

The Australian Energy Market Operator/CSIRO report found renewables was the cheapest form of power. This prompted the climate change minister, Chris Bowen, to say the opposition’s crusade for a nuclear option was not viable.

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Blue Marine Foundation is challenging government for ignoring scientific advice on limits and giving a green light to overfishing

The UK government’s decision to set catch limits for fish populations above those recommended by scientific advice is to be challenged in the courts by marine conservationists who accuse ministers of breaking their own post-Brexit rules.

The legal challenge, expected to start in January, will argue that the government is “illegally squandering” a public asset and going against laws aimed at improving sustainable fishing.

The smokescreen generated by recent carbon-offset setbacks should not blind us to the simple truth that we must protect our intact forests and bring back those we have lost

Some have recently questioned whether forests really are the climate solution they have long been held to be. This is because some emit great quantities of carbon, while the markets set up to finance them have stumbled. But there is no pathway to a livable climate without saving our intact forests, regrowing some, and finding a more straightforward way to pay for them than carbon offset projects.

A 2021 study led by Brazilian scientists established that the Amazon was emitting more carbon dioxide than it was absorbing. The great carbon sink had seemingly become a smokestack. The paper mirrored a 2019 analysis of Canadian forests, which showed they had been net emitters since 2001.