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Police have never taken cycle theft seriously – and the worst effects of this crime are felt by young and disadvantaged people

• Adam Becket is a senior writer for Cycling Weekly

For most cyclists, bike theft feels like an inevitability. It’s just one of those risks that you are doomed to face any day you take your bike out. Such is the fear I have of my pride and joy being stolen – yes, I am one of those people who consider my bike to be my most important possession – that I rarely, if ever, lock it up outside. At home, it stays inside. At work, I take it into the building. If the bike is outside, I’m either on it or in close proximity to it.

It doesn’t seem to matter what kind of lock or preventive measure you use, or where you leave them, bikes – from a cheap, secondhand cycle to a top-of-the-range racer – can just go missing in an instant, with little recourse apart from claiming on insurance.

Adam Becket is a senior writer for Cycling Weekly

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A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

The compliance instrument surplus bank expanded in the fourth quarter even after accounting for 2021 interim obligations in the linked cap-and-trade system, according to programme data published Friday.

The Forest Carbon and Climate Services Branch in the Government of British Columbia (BC) is hiring a Senior Forest Carbon Analyst to lead and support climate mitigation opportunities in BC's forest sector. Main responsibilities would include enabling forest carbon offset projects, but would extend to other emissions reduction and sequestration programs and policies in B.C.'s Ministry of Forests.

Regulated parties reduced their California Carbon Allowance (CCA) and RGGI Allowance (RGA) net length this week, as financials went the opposite direction in the WCI market, according to US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data published Friday.

The first orbital rocket launch from Britain is about to blast off - but it's just the start for the UK's race to space.

Proposal sets out lower limits for soot, which is estimated to cause early deaths of thousands of Americans each year

The Biden administration is proposing lower limits for a deadly air pollutant, saying tougher standards for soot from tailpipes, smokestacks and wildfires could prevent thousands of premature deaths a year.

A proposal released on Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency would set maximum levels of nine to 10 micrograms of fine particle pollution per cubic meter of air, down from 12 micrograms set a decade ago under the Obama administration. The standard for particle pollution, more commonly known as soot, was left unchanged by then president Donald Trump, who overrode a scientific recommendation for a lower standard in his final days in office.

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The electric car revolution could be set for a fresh incentive with drivers soon to be able to earn tokenised nature-based credits after plugging into a charge point.

Norwegian renewables powerhouse Statkraft gas ordered 40 MW of electrolysers from tech firm Nel, the companies said on Friday in a move that further boosts the country’s hydrogen capabilities following this week’s deepened energy partnership with Germany.

Wind-powered electricity rose to 26.8% of 2022 usage while gas-fired power, at 38.5%, continued growth as largest single source

Windfarms produced a record amount of Great Britain’s electricity last year, although gas-fired generation also increased, National Grid has said.

Figures from the company’s electricity system operator (ESO) showed that wind-powered electricity accounted for 26.8% of generation in 2022, up from 21.9% the year before.

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Ski resorts in the Alps are grappling with unseasonably warm weather as a result of global warming. A lack of snow has caused many to close

• Record warm winter in parts of Europe forces closure of ski slopes

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EUA prices consolidated on Friday after a turbulent few weeks, trading flat on thin morning volume with prices continuing to closely track gas markets.

Humanity is now a ‘geological superpower’ and declaring a new epoch is critical to tackling its impact, scientists say

Exactly where and when did the Anthropocene begin? Scientists are attempting to answer this epochal question in the coming months by choosing a place and time to represent the moment when humanity became a “geological superpower”, overwhelming the natural processes that have governed Earth for billions of years.

They could decide the start is marked with a bang, thanks to the plutonium isotopes rapidly blasted around the planet by the hydrogen bomb tests that began in late 1952, or with a shower of soot particles from the surge in fossil-fuel power plants after the second world war.

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Hong Kong is still keen to find a way to link up with China's carbon trading market, but more work has to be done to make that happen given the complexity of the issue, according to a top official at the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC).

Conservative-majority court could soon decide on scope of Clean Water Act, dramatically affecting laws and wetlands countrywide

A 15-year legal tussle over a tiny plot of land near a lake in northern Idaho could culminate in the US supreme court drastically reshaping clean water laws across the country, with a decision by the conservative-dominated court now looming.

The case is the latest and perhaps most significant of the repeated challenges to the scope of the Clean Water Act, which has been the subject of 50 years of fraught argument over the federal government’s ability to prevent pollution seeping into America’s waterways.

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Emission of toxic chemicals and carcinogens from gas stoves creating indoor pollution worse than car traffic

Around one in eight cases of asthma in children in the US is due to the pollution given off by cooking on gas stoves, new research has found, amid moves by Joe Biden’s administration to consider the regulation, or even banning, of gas cookers sales to Americans.

Around a third of US households have gas stoves in their kitchens, with the gas industry long touting the method as the cleanest and most efficient way to cook food.

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Exclusive: National Lottery funds will help vulnerable coastal town combat effects of rise in sea-level

A coastal town in Cornwall where rising sea levels threaten to wipe out homes, beaches and businesses in a few decades’ time has been awarded £2m to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

The money awarded to the popular tourist destination of Bude, in north Cornwall, and 11 surrounding parishes, from the National Lottery climate action fund, comes as the area faces an existential threat from the heating planet.

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Sentiment in the Chinese carbon market has fallen off a cliff in recent days after a flurry of trading activity in the last week of last year, while the central government has yet to make a final decision on allocation and offset rules going forward.

Shareholders say lawsuits over PFAS compounds linked to cancer and other diseases represent growing threat to companies’ profits

Investors from some of the world’s largest firms are pressuring chemical companies to end production of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, which shareholders say represent an enormous and growing threat to manufacturers’ bottom lines.

PFAS are a class of about 12,000 compounds typically used to make products resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and are linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver problems, immune disorders, birth defects and other serious health issues.

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Climate disasters continue to ravage our country – more international aid is urgently needed to save millions from misery

• Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif is the prime minister of Pakistan

The apocalyptic rains and floods that hit Pakistan last summer claimed 1,700 lives, left a swathe of territory the size of Switzerland under water and affected 33 million people – more people than live in most European countries.

International attention has receded, but the waters have not. Large parts of Sindh and Balochistan provinces remain inundated. The number of food-insecure people in Pakistan has doubled to 14 million; another 9 million have been pushed into extreme poverty. These flooded areas now look like a huge series of permanent lakes, transforming forever the terrain and the lives of people living there. No amount of pumps can remove this water in less than a year; and by July 2023, the worry is that these areas may flood again.

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