The Guardian

‘Huge disconnect’ between employers’ public ambitions on diversity and their actions, say workers

Workers at environmental charities have said bold words on inclusion are not being matched with action, as research shows the sector still lags far behind others in racial diversity.

Only about one in 20 workers in the environmental charity sector identified as an ethnic minority last year, according to a survey of organisations, compared with one in eight in the wider UK workforce.

A huge retrospective of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky’s work showcases the terrifying, but oddly beautiful marks we can leave on the planet

Andrew Bowie wrote last year that concerns among his constituents about new pylons were ‘a priority’

The UK minister responsible for the building of new pylons has been quietly reshuffled after it emerged he had campaigned against the structures in his own constituency.

The energy minister Andrew Bowie had been in charge of energy networks, including building pylons, since he took up his post in February 2023.

Shareholders on all sides want to know where the oil giant stands on renewables, yet Murray Auchincloss opts for ambiguity

If in doubt, throw cash at the shareholders. It’s a safe tactic for a new chief executive assailed on two sides by investors with conflicting grumbles. BP’s Murray Auchincloss seized his debut moment. There will be $3.5bn of share buy-backs in the first half of this year, accelerating to a total of $14bn by the end of next. The shares rose 5%. For a week or two, that might stop people pointing out how BP’s share price has lagged its peers’.

Yet shareholders of all hues – those who want to transition faster out of fossil fuels and those who can’t see the point – surely also wanted to hear a clear statement from Auchincloss on where he stands in the great debate. How will BP prioritise its spending of cash that isn’t going on buy-backs and dividends?

Repetition has blunted the art museum protests so much that the pumpkin soup assault on the Mona Lisa felt pathetic. More effective tactics are needed

How many of the 38 environmental protests staged in museums in 2022 can you remember? How many of the more recent ones only generated widespread outrage? Did any of them lead to tangible change? The protesters’ cause is serious, the threat is very real, the message is important and urgent. But is it not getting through to the public?

Sixty years ago, Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes and multiplied Marilyn Monroe screen-prints exposed modern repetition as an ideal of mindlessness – an inescapable capitalist pattern ingrained in the oversaturated modes of production and consumption that distract and overwhelm while nurturing an irreducible sense of modern apathy. How many times is too many? Repetition is a complex phenomenon: it can deepen or hollow out experiences depending on how it is deployed. Repeated ad libitum anything shocking quickly becomes commonplace. Aware of the risk, good artists try not to repeat themselves; instead they strive to constantly reinvent. From Friedrich Nietzsche to Søren Kierkegaard, Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, Mark Fisher, Frantz Fanon, Robert Hughes, and Amia Srinivasan, modern thinkers have dwelled extensively on the all-pervasive pacifying powers of unwitting repetitiveness. The shock of the new quickly melts into the air.

Move is among bloc’s latest environmental concessions to farmers as protests continue across Europe

The European Commission is shelving plans to cut pesticide use and is taking the pressure off agriculture in its latest emissions recommendations, as farmers around Europe continue protests demanding higher prices for their products and an easing of EU environment rules.

The original proposal to halve chemical pesticide use in the EU by the end of the decade – part of the EU’s green transition – “has become a symbol of polarisation”, said the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. She added that she would ask the commission to withdraw the proposal.

Proposal is part of European Commission’s aim to become world’s first climate-neutral continent

The EU aims to slash its net greenhouse gas pollution by 90% by 2040 as part of its push to become the world’s first climate-neutral continent, the European Commission has announced before elections in June.

Under a landmark proposal laid out by its executive body on Tuesday, the bloc will have to pump 90% less planet-heating gas into the air by 2040 than it did in 1990, a figure which includes the carbon it removes from the atmosphere.

Parisians have voted to triple parking charges for these behemoths. Let that be the start of a much wider crackdown

Paris has developed a taste for better city living. Its vote to begin pricing sports utility vehicles (SUVs) off its streets by tripling parking charges is part of a diet for reversing autobesity – the trend by car manufacturers towards larger, more dangerous and polluting cars.

It’s not difficult to see what has driven Parisians’ ire: the reasons to dislike SUVs form a tailback so long it’s hard to see the front of the queue.

Andrew Simms is an author, co-director of the New Weather Institute, coordinator of the Badvertising campaign and the Rapid Transition Alliance, assistant director of Scientists for Global Responsibility and a research associate at the University of Sussex

Some SUVs and utes could cost more unless they clean up their act, while EVs could get cheaper under the new standards

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Carmakers are crunching the numbers on the federal government’s new vehicle efficiency standard (NVES) to make plans for what is shaping up to be a very different new car market by the end of the decade.

Some models could be discontinued or get more expensive, while more fuel efficient vehicles and EVs look set to be cheaper – and we’ll almost certainly have a broader range of hybrid and electric models to choose from.

Emissions fall 3.5% from 2021 but experts say government not doing enough to reach net zero

Greenhouse gas emissions fell slightly in 2022, new government figures reveal, with homes and transport remaining the highest emitting sectors.

The emissions for the territorial UK were equivalent to 406.2m tonnes of CO2, down 3.5% from 2021 and 50% from 1990.

We subsidise the purchase of twin-cab utes and charge GST on bikes and public transport. It’s absurd

Parisians just voted to charge large vehicles three times more to park in the city than small vehicles. In Australia we offer the most convenient parking for free to people driving enormous twin-cab utes (we call them loading zones, even though you don’t have to load up anything more than your groceries). Policy choices matter.

Last year all of Australia’s top 10 selling cars were twin-cab utes or large SUVs. And just as most utes aren’t really shifting cargo around our cities, “sports utility vehicles” are not engaged in sport – and they clearly aren’t utilities. But the names used to describe these expensive, inefficient and dangerous forms of transport are by no means the most absurd thing about Australian car culture.

Grants needed towards buying EVs as well as a battery health testing standard to reassure consumers

Ministers need to intervene to boost the secondhand electric vehicle market and allay “uncertainty and concerns” over the health of their batteries, a House of Lords committee has said.

Peers on the environment and climate change committee urged the government to step up efforts to encourage electric vehicle adoption amid consumer jitters over the cost of vehicles, the longevity of their batteries and the availability of charging points.

Study finds ‘unprovoked’ attacks were more common for surfers than swimmers

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Australia is home to a disproportionate number of deadly shark attacks, with isolated areas carrying a greater risk of fatalities, international research has found.

The 10 fatal attacks globally in 2023 doubled the five in the previous year, with four of last year’s deaths occurring in Australia.

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Findings in leading scientific journal that globe has breached key warming milestone challenged by climate science experts

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Between 30 metres and 90 metres below the surface of the Caribbean Sea, an ancient sponge species that grows a hard skeleton has been quietly recording changes in the ocean temperature for hundreds of years.

Now those sponges are at the centre of a bold and controversial claim made in a leading scientific journal that, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the planet may have already warmed by 1.7C – half a degree more than estimates used by the United Nation’s climate panel.

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There is both hope and hype for what artificial intelligence can do for growth – if politicians can tame its destructive potential

Since returning from this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, I have been asked repeatedly for my biggest takeaways. Among the most widely discussed issues this year was artificial intelligence – especially generative AI (“GenAI”). With the recent adoption of large language models (like the one powering ChatGPT), there is much hope – and hype – about what AI could do for productivity and economic growth in the future.

To address this question, we must bear in mind that our world is dominated far more by human stupidity than by AI. The proliferation of megathreats – each an element in the broader “polycrisis” – confirms that our politics are too dysfunctional, and our policies too misguided, to address even the most serious and obvious risks to our future. These include climate change, which will have huge economic costs; failed states, which will make waves of climate refugees even larger; and recurrent, virulent pandemics that could be even more economically damaging than Covid-19.

The WEF zeitgeist is, in my experience, a counter-indicator of where the world is really heading. Policymakers and business leaders are there to flog their books and spew platitudes. They represent the conventional wisdom, which is often based on a rear-window view of global and macroeconomic developments.

Exclusive: Meeting took place days after BP reported record profits while households were squeezed by high energy bills

The energy and climate minister Graham Stuart asked BP about the incentives required to “maximise” extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea, documents released under freedom of information rules have revealed.

Stuart’s meeting with the corporation’s UK boss, Louise Kingham, last year came days after BP had announced a record profit of $28bn (£23bn) for 2022, raised its dividend to shareholders, and rowed back on its aim to cut its carbon emissions by 2030. Households were also enduring very high energy bills. BP will report its profits for 2023 on Tuesday.

Terry Reintke and Bas Eickhout vow to fight for more equal and ecological Europe amid surge to far right

The European Green party has picked Terry Reintke and Bas Eickhout as lead candidates to front its campaign ahead of elections in June that polls suggest will see it lose seats.

Flanked by green banners bearing the word “courage”, the two MEPs, who were elected by delegates at a congress in Lyon on Saturday, said they would stand up to the surge of the far right and fight for a more equal and ecological Europe.

Moving to a new flat forced my wife and I to go electric – and realise it wasn’t the tragic culinary loss I believed

My wife and I have always had certain non-negotiables when looking for a place to rent: good light, a decent location – and a gas stove. We love cooking together, and countless food shows have impressed upon us that there is nothing more essential to a tasty meal than a flame.

Then came the pandemic. Our landlord wanted to move back into our Barcelona flat, so in the first months of 2020 we found ourselves looking for a new place to stay. With just days to relocate before the first Covid lockdown came into effect, we were forced to set aside our preference for gas – and reluctantly moved into an apartment with an induction hob.

Michael Kavate writes the newsletter Cooler Futures and is a senior reporter with Inside Philanthropy

Experts say Albanese government plan should provide a greater choice of electric cars but Coalition calls savings claims a ‘lie’

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Suppliers of electric vehicles are the big winners from the Albanese government’s fuel efficiency standards with one industry group saying half of all new cars will be electric by 2029 and 100% by 2035 on the proposed trajectory.

The energy minister, Chris Bowen, and infrastructure minister, Catherine King, released the details of the plan for consultation on Sunday, saying motorists would potentially save $1,000 a year by 2028 as manufacturers brought in more efficient models.

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They promise more energy and a vastly improved range for EV drivers. But can they deliver on the hype?

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Working in the dry room at Deakin University’s Battery Research and Innovation Hub is no day at the beach.

“[It’s] more desert than beach,” says its general manager, Dr Timothy Khoo. “At the beach, you at least still get the moisture coming in.”

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