Interesting Ideas

Plans involve dredging and expanding docks to allow larger cruise ships to visit with up to 200,000 passengers annually

Janavi Kramer had just enjoyed a swim with friends and was sitting on a bench taking in a wonderful Cornish view – headlands plunging into deep water, bobbing boats, a bustling harbour town.

“We’re lucky to have this space,” said Kramer, who is an artist and scientific illustrator. “We use it for work, recreation and pleasure and it’s so scary to think that this could all be harmed. I worry about what we may be living with soon and what we’ll be leaving for future generations.”

The race is on in the robotaxi industry to get into new markets, build up customer bases, and edge out the competition before they arrive — or at least at these nascent stages when no one is too massive or dominant. I just covered news of Zoox launching paid service ... [continued]

The post Waymo Jacks Up Lobbying In Washington, DC appeared first on CleanTechnica.

On March 6, 2024, Nathan Owen, a resident of the UK, phoned police and told them his Jaguar I-Pace electric car had gone berserk on a motorway in Merseyside, a seaside area that includes the city of Liverpool. He told the police his car had suddenly accelerated and he could ... [continued]

The post UK Driver Jailed After “My EV Went Crazy!” Scam appeared first on CleanTechnica.

On my TikTok I find trash that’s blowing in the wind, and mimic its movements using what I have to hand

I’ve always been interested in the concept of value and what is thought of as rubbish. When people throw things away, a perfectly good table, say, I think, “That’s still usable.” I’m a dancer and choreographer and hoard clothing – costumes from shows or pieces my mum has lent me. Sometimes, I’ll collect random things offered on Facebook.

During the pandemic I was unable to perform but became hyper-aware of everyday movements around me. On daily walks in Los Angeles, where I live, I’d notice pieces of litter being blown about. I felt as if it was trying to get someone’s attention, but nobody was looking. I thought: “What if I start mimicking it? What if I used the trash as my choreographer?”

As NHS told to prepare for extreme weather, strain also felt in other areas including transport and farming

• NHS must prepare for annual summer heat pressures, says Yvette Cooper

The NHS has been told it must become more resilient to increasingly frequent heatwaves supercharged by the climate crisis, as the UK government puts adaptation to extreme heat high on its agenda. But what other public services are already feeling the strain?

Once touted as a possible “Norway of the Pacific,” New Zealand’s electric vehicle transition was stopped in its tracks by a change of government. The new conservative government reversed the generous tax incentives for EVs and brought in a road user charge. EV sales plummeted. Sounds like another country we ... [continued]

The post New Zealand Electric Vehicle Market Rises from the Depths! (CHARTS) appeared first on CleanTechnica.

It’s been over a year since Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) charged into the US federal government. His team fired thousands of government employees. Then they realized that so many problems emerged that they had to restaff many of those positions. Oops! It wasn’t lack of efficiency ... [continued]

The post Musk’s Mayhem Continues Beyond DOGE Into Our Everyday Lives appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Washington, D.C. — Today, energy company RWE announced a deal with the Trump administration in which the administration will pay the company $1.22 billion in exchange for the company cancelling three offshore wind projects and doubling down on LNG. This is the fifth time Donald Trump has paid off energy companies in ... [continued]

The post Donald Trump Pays Off 5th Energy Company in Attack on Renewable Energy appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The palm-sized greengrocer is bright, loud and abundant, and has long been a collectible item for Australian children

• Revealed: the top 10 invertebrates of the year

Before marbles, stamps and trading cards, there were cicadas.

There are thousands of cicada species globally, but for Australian children the craze centres on one particularly collectible item: the greengrocer.

AI is useful. Let me get that out of the way. What we are mostly referring to as AI at the moment (Claude, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Pilot, etc.) can do useful things. The point of there being an AI bubble is not that it isn’t useful — it’s that ... [continued]

The post The Messaging Skills That Have Blown Up The AI Bubble appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Portland, Oregon — Today, the United States District Court for the District of Oregon ruled in favor of clean energy developers in a legal challenge against Donald Trump’s Department of Defense for freezing reviews of wind projects and delaying development for renewable energy. The review freeze created a “de-facto moratorium” on new wind, ... [continued]

The post VICTORY: Court Overturns Trump Administration’s Wind Pause appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Ford is still playing its forthcoming midsized electric pickup truck close to the vest, but the EV finally has a name: Fathom.

The post Get Your Hands On The New Ford Fathom Electric Pickup Truck For Just (Checks Notes) $28,350 MSRP appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The Chinese government has released new mandatory national standards regarding the safety requirements of autonomous driving systems. Nothing needs to be done urgently, as the new standards don’t go into effect until July 1, 2027. The standards apply to M- and N-category vehicles with Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous ... [continued]

The post China Unveils Safety Standards for Autonomous Driving Systems appeared first on CleanTechnica.

South Devon: On holiday in deeply familiar places, we swim fully clothed, snack on overhanging cherries and see the fallen Teignmouth pier

The West Country unrolls down the M4, then M5, under the kind of vintage-yellow hue produced by 35mm camera film where the light’s leaked in. Many fields have been harvested as early as we’ve ever witnessed on this deeply familiar route. Burnt black patches remind us just how flammable the countryside is.

We are exploring places we’ve only passed through before, via a farm-stay in a shepherd’s hut at West Town Farm, Ide. Our parking instructions urge us to allow the farmer to pass in her tractor. The gender reveal is so refreshing I want to cheer. Tenant Kate Sharp farms Hereford-cross beef cattle, Devon closewool and Exmoor horn sheep, as well as some lively Oxford sandy and black pigs, red as the Devon soil itself.

Environment Agency assessments find just 14.3% of country’s surface waters in good ecological status

Every single English water body is polluted with toxic chemicals, new government data shows, while just 14.3% of surface waters achieved good ecological status.

Each of the country’s rivers, lakes and estuaries was assessed by the Environment Agency as part of a six-yearly evaluation of England’s water quality. The EA checked for a range of toxic chemicals, from Pfas – or “forever chemicals” – to microplastics. Waters were also checked against a range of standards covering wildlife, water quality and physical habitat.

Forty years ago there were more than 22 sheep to every New Zealander, but wool prices and production declined with the uptake of synthetic alternatives

John Hargreaves’ family has farmed sheep and beef in Kaiwaka, north of Auckland, for generations. In the 1960s they had 3,000 ewes but in the decades since, as the value of wool declined and shearing costs grew, his flock slowly decreased to just over 1,700.

But now, for the first time in roughly six years, his wool is making money.

As another summer of extreme heat rumbles on, warnings about excess deaths, ageing infrastructure and potential food shortages are growing louder. So how well prepared is the UK to cope, both now and in the years ahead? Jessica Elgot and Alexandra Topping examine why politicians have been so slow to act.

Plus, Kemi Badenoch has distanced herself from the former neo-Nazi turned Tory council candidate Joshua Bonehill-Paine, only to offer him him an advisory role instead. What was she thinking?

You can read Jessica Elgot’s interview with the health secretary on heatwaves here

You can read about Kemi Badenoch’s action on Joshua Bonehill-Paine here

Please keep sending your comments and questions to politicsweeklyuk@theguardian.com

Follow and subscribe to the Politics Weekly YouTube channel here

Zoox has been allowed to do self-driving vehicle and robotaxi testing for a long time, but it hasn’t been allowed to charge passengers for them. Now, however, that has changed — Zoox got approval last week from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis ... [continued]

The post Zoox To Start Charging Passengers Next Week appeared first on CleanTechnica.

UN forecasters warn of worsening conditions in 45 countries currently experiencing severe food insecurity

About 50 million people are likely to be pushed into acute hunger before the end of next year by the rapidly developing El Niño weather system, according to forecasting.

This is in addition to the hundreds of millions of people already facing dangerous levels of hunger, owing to years of drought in parts of Africa and pressure on food prices from the war in Iran.

Changing paved areas to grass and planting trees can reduce urban heat island effect by as much as 1C, study shows

Add together all the UK’s household gardens and they cover an area three times larger than all the country’s nature reserves combined. But as the demand for car parking increases, many front gardens are being paved over, with research showing that this loss of green is adding to the urban heat island effect, particularly at night.

In 2005, about 7.5% of the UK’s front gardens were paved; by 2025 that had risen to 55%, according to Royal Horticultural Society estimates. Those hard surfaces absorb heat during the day and then slowly release the heat overnight. By contrast, leafy green gardens release moisture into the atmosphere, which helps to cool the air as the water evaporates.