Australia is well behind other countries in embracing clean cars – it’s past time we kicked into gear on going electric
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It is tempting to think about what could have been. In 2020, a time many people would prefer to forget, there was a significant push to set an end date for the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.
The UK had announced a ban from 2030. India – the world’s most populous country and which, like Australia and the UK, uses right-hand-side drive cars – had a target to do the same. In Norway, about 60% of new cars were already electric.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/14/2026 - 10:00
04/14/2026 - 08:00
Trump’s EPA chief Lee Zeldin’s presence shows how much influence climate deniers now have, experts say
As scientists confirmed that March was the United States’ most abnormally hot month in recorded history, dozens of climate deniers gathered to promote misinformation and tout their newfound influence on federal policy.
At a conference hosted by the prominent science-denying thinktank the Heartland Institute last week, a crowd of mostly middle-aged men in suits claimed the world is finally waking up to the idea that the climate crisis does not exist.
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04/14/2026 - 07:00
From peak-bagging to thru-hiking, Americans have turned traversing land into personal milestones. This wilderness ranger and Indigenous writer has witnessed it firsthand
Këmituxwe Éhènta Wehikiyànkw
You are walking in our old homeland
After spending 12 years backpacking some of America’s wildest trails as a wilderness ranger for the US Forest Service – and then losing that job to politics – last spring I set out for the Appalachian Trail (AT), the longest hiking-only footpath in the world.
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04/14/2026 - 06:00
Rising temperatures and extreme drought are driving more destructive spring fires across the Great Plains. This year, forces aligned to create the perfect storm in Nebraska
In a normal year, the vast grasslands that roll across the American Great Plains would be starting to green. But at the center of the US, where most of the nation’s beef producers graze their herds, this spring brought fire instead of moisture, leaving more than a million acres black and barren.
Multiple blazes raged across Nebraska, where the records for the annual acreage burned were obliterated in a single month. The state logged the largest blaze ever recorded when the Morrill fire cascaded across more than 642,000 acres (260,000 hectares) before it was contained in March.
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04/14/2026 - 05:13
Meg O’Neill to return to upstream and downstream divisions after oil major’s costly foray into green energy
BP’s new boss has set out plans to reinstate the company structure the fossil fuel supermajor ditched six years ago as part of its failed attempt to reorganise the business to pursue a green agenda.
Meg O’Neill told staff that the 117-year-old company would return to a “simpler, stronger” two-business arrangement including an upstream oil and gas production unit and a downstream business focused on refining and distributing fuels and retail activities.
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04/14/2026 - 02:11
Researchers examined trends in 10 global cities, with Sydney’s summer growing at two-and-a-half times the average
Scientist Ted Scott could feel that summers in his home state of Minnesota were not what they used to be.
With the climate crisis accelerating, Scott could feel and see the seasons changing from their usual patterns – especially summer – and he wanted to know what the data said.
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04/14/2026 - 02:00
The government hails the ‘green revolution’ as a solution to economic decline, but some young jobseekers say the rhetoric does not match their experience
On paper, Jake Snell, 19, sounds like the perfect candidate for a role in the UK’s burgeoning green energy sector. He has high grades in maths and physics A-level, a distinction in BTec engineering and another distinction in an extended engineering diploma. He has also done work experience at an engineering company.
He is from Lowestoft, a coastal town in Suffolk, outside Great Yarmouth. Both towns contain areas that fall within the most deprived 20% in England and are part of a wider pattern of coastal places with low employment opportunities.
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04/14/2026 - 01:01
The artist and film-maker spent a summer on the island making poetic images of the local flora – and exploring their connections to Grenada’s historical trauma
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04/14/2026 - 00:30
A skull fragment found in a tray of unsorted fossils collected more than a century ago leads to discovery
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A prehistoric fossil, hiding in plain sight in museum storage for more than a century, has revealed that giant echidnas once roamed Victoria.
The Owen’s giant echidna, Megalibgwilia owenii, lived during the Pleistocene, a geological epoch that began 2.5m years ago. It grew to about 1 metre long and weighed up to 15kg – about twice the size of Australia’s modern echidnas.
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04/14/2026 - 00:00
Exclusive: Ministers accused of trying to keep investment firm’s withdrawal from partnership with NatureScot under wraps
A funding deal to raise £100m from private investors for urgently needed nature restoration in Scotland has fallen through without the Scottish parliament being told.
The Guardian has learned that Aberdeen, the investment firm, decided to withdraw from a partnership with the agency NatureScot to raise at least £100m for conservation projects from commercial and private investors late last year.
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