Carmaker opts to produce hybrid version due to profitability concerns, citing pressure from Chinese EV competition
Ford has written off $1.9bn as it cancelled plans for an all-electric large SUV in the US, opting to produce a hybrid version instead in the latest sign of western carmakers struggling to make profitable electric cars.
The US carmaker said on Wednesday that it would not be able to reach a profit on the electric SUV within a year, its measure of whether a new car is viable, citing the stiff competition from Chinese manufacturers. It will initially write off the cost of $400m (£300m) in tooling for the vehicle, plus another $1.5bn (£1.15bn) in extra costs in the future.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/21/2024 - 10:59
08/21/2024 - 10:54
Marsh restorations allowing populations of fen raft spider, which can be up to 7cm long, to recover
One of the rarest and largest species of spider in the UK is said to be making a comeback on nature reserves.
After facing near extinction over the last century, the UK’s population of fen raft spiders is steadily increasing, and numbers are at a record high this year, according to the conservation charity RSPB.
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08/21/2024 - 09:00
Exclusive: researchers tested water across Watts and found lead, after people struggled to draw attention to ‘overarching neglect’
A new report has found elevated lead levels in tap water across Watts, a south Los Angeles community that has faced decades of environmental racism, including in the drinking water of multiple public housing developments.
Researchers working with the Better Watts Initiative, a community environmental group, tested tap water at sites across the neighbourhood, and found lead, a neurotoxic metal, at or above US government limits.
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08/21/2024 - 08:00
Volunteers come to share stories and labor. They leave with vegetables, war news and a shared sense of identity
On a recent Sunday, instructions in Arabic and English filled the air on a quiet street in New Hope, Minnesota. Every weekend, a group of Sudanese American professionals and students come to the half-acre space nestled near a distribution warehouse about 20 minutes north of Minneapolis. Their goal: to farm, and to do it together.
For the Sudanese Farming Group (SFG), every decision on this small plot of land is a collective one, every crop carefully tended. And each week brings new conversations, discoveries and people.
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08/21/2024 - 08:00
Twenty-four brain samples collected in early 2024 measured on average about 0.5% plastic by weight
A growing body of scientific evidence shows that microplastics are accumulating in critical human organs, including the brain, leading researchers to call for more urgent actions to rein in plastic pollution.
Studies have detected tiny shards and specks of plastics in human lungs, placentas, reproductive organs, livers, kidneys, knee and elbow joints, blood vessels and bone marrow.
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08/21/2024 - 06:00
Association of attorneys general has received millions from Koch Industries, fossil fuel lobby and fund linked to billionaire Leonard Leo
A powerful group that boasts 28 Republican attorneys general, including many who have sided with oil and gas firms to block states seeking compensation for weather disasters caused by climate change, has raked in millions of dollars from fossil fuel giants and a dark money fund tied to Federalist Society co-chair, Leonard Leo.
The Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga) has roped in about $5.8m from oil and gas giants and their allied lobbying groups since Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, campaign finance records show.
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08/21/2024 - 04:00
It is time to say this privatisation zealotry has been a disaster. March with us and let ministers know – enough is enough
You’ve been lied to, you’ve been misled, you’ve been extorted, you’ve been cheated, and you’ve been abused. For the last 35 years, you have been subject to nothing more than possibly the greatest organised ripoff perpetrated on the British people, and you have had little in return apart from greed, profiteering, financial engineering, political failure and regulatory incompetency. You’ve been had.
Thirty-five years after we were promised a utopian, market-driven vision of greatness, a future in which we would glory in the delights of an unlimited supply of clean water; in which our sewage would be quietly, efficiently collected, treated and disposed of, while our rivers, lakes and seas would teem with an abundant, diverse array of flora and fauna; and to top it all off we would have the cheapest water bills on Earth.
Feargal Sharkey is a campaigner and former lead singer of the Undertones
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08/21/2024 - 02:00
These new proteins could be our best hope of averting catastrophe. But governments are trying to have them banned
For many years, certain car manufacturers sought to obstruct the transition to electric vehicles. It’s not hard to see why: when you have invested heavily in an existing technology, you want to extract every last drop before disinvesting. But devious as in some cases these efforts were, they seem almost innocent in comparison with the concerted programme by a legacy industry and its tame politicians to suppress a far more important switch: the essential transition away from livestock farming.
Animal farming ranks alongside fossil fuel production as one of the two most destructive industries on Earth. It’s not just the vast greenhouse gas emissions and the water and air pollution it causes. Even more important is the amount of land it requires. Land use is a crucial environmental metric, because every hectare we occupy is a hectare that cannot support wild ecosystems.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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08/20/2024 - 23:00
Conservationists say the number of hunting licences granted is too high and condemn it as ‘pure trophy hunting’
Sweden has issued licences to kill 20% of its brown bear population in the country’s annual bear hunt, which begins today, despite concerns from conservationists.
Officials have granted licences for just under 500 brown bears to be culled by hunters. That equates to about 20% of the total population, according to official figures, and would bring the number of bears in Sweden down to approximately 2,000 – a drop of almost 40% since 2008.
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08/20/2024 - 22:07
Go-ahead given for first stage of $30bn SunCable project, which minister says will be ‘transformational’ for Northern Territory
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The Australian government has given the green light to the first stages of what it describes as the country’s “biggest renewable energy project ever” – an ambitious proposal to send energy from a solar farm in the Northern Territory outback to Singapore via subsea cables.
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the approval under conservation law of SunCable’s $30bn-plus Australia-Asia Power Link was a “massive step towards making Australia a renewable energy superpower” and that the project would be “economically and socially transformational” for the NT.
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