Exclusive: Report finds poorer areas particularly affected by varying availability and cost of charging electric cars
The UK is at risk of a drastic slowdown in its transition to electric cars because of big disparities in the availability and cost of charging points, especially in poorer areas, a report says.
The study, by the consultancy Stonehaven, argues that given rapid advances in batteries and car range, persuading more people to move to electric vehicles is now less an issue of technology than one of “urban management and social equity”.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
12/29/2024 - 09:00
12/29/2024 - 06:00
A car is often essential in the US but while owning a vehicle is better than not for life satisfaction, a study has found, having to drive too much sends happiness plummeting
The United States, with its enormous highways, sprawling suburbs and neglected public transport systems, is one of the most car-dependent countries in the world. But this arrangement of obligatory driving is making many Americans actively unhappy, new research has found.
The car is firmly entrenched as the default, and often only, mode of transport for the vast majority of Americans, with more than nine in 10 households having at least one vehicle and 87% of people using their cars daily. Last year, a record 290m vehicles were operated on US streets and highways.
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12/29/2024 - 03:00
In 2024 horticulturalists made single biggest introduction of rare seeds to collection in the past decade
The Codonopsis clematidea smells like a skunk, the Tulipa toktogulica has a peculiar, elongated bulb and the Fritillaria imperialis is exceptionally tall. But to the horticulturalists who journeyed to remote alpine meadows and forests to find these rare flowers growing in the wild this year, they are nothing less than the “jewels of the earth”.
Now, the seeds from these and hundreds of other wild plants that were collected in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan have entered the living collections at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.
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12/28/2024 - 18:00
Protests, Taylor Swift and chubby penguins are all part of the best images from the wire agencies in 2024
More summer essentials
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12/28/2024 - 15:32
The 40-year-old school chaplain was bitten by the shark while fishing with family in waters off Keppel Islands on Saturday
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A youth pastor and school chaplain described as an inspirational leader has been identified as the man who died after being bitten by a shark while on holiday with his family in Queensland.
Emergency services were called to Humpy Island in the Keppel Bay Islands national park, about 18km off the central Queensland coast, on Saturday after reports a man had been attacked.
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12/28/2024 - 11:00
Read more from My DIY climate hack, a series on everyday people’s creative solutions to the climate crisis
While droughts are a natural feature of California’s climate, human-induced warming has made them even drier. After Eric Haas, 62, moved to Oakland in 2007, California was in a drought so severe a statewide emergency was declared. After experiencing drought conditions for several years, the California professor had a rainwater and greywater capture system installed at his highly efficient urban home to do his part to conserve water.
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12/28/2024 - 10:00
Changing tides have led to an increase of beached marine life, whom rescuers scramble to save before they die
While Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is known as a popular vacation destination in the north-east US, it has built a reputation for an entirely different reason this year: animal strandings.
Dolphins, whales, sea lions and turtles are turning up in large numbers on the beaches of the famous peninsula in a phenomenon that has experts scrambling to execute more rescue operations than ever before. The cause? Changing tides.
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12/28/2024 - 07:00
Birmingham City University thinktank imagines new approach to urban areas and land use across the region
“When I show people this, they think it’s Mordor,” says landscape architecture professor Kathryn Moore with a smile.
She is pointing at a map of the West Midlands. But instead of buildings, roads and a sprawling canal network, this map shows the natural hills and undulations that lie below the human-made architecture.
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12/28/2024 - 06:59
Call for illicit market to be taken out of hands of criminals as numbers continue to fall drastically due to poaching
International trade in rhino horns should be legalised, a leading wildlife expert has urged.
Writing in the research journal Science, Martin Wikelski argues only carefully monitored, legitimate transactions in horns can save the world’s remaining species of rhinoceros.
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12/28/2024 - 00:00
Conservationists issue warning as figures show three-quarters of SSSI sites have had no recent assessments
Conservationists have said wildlife could be “disappearing in the dark” after figures showed that three-quarters of England’s most precious habitats, wildlife and natural features have had no recent assessment of their condition.
The warning follows the publication of figures covering assessments of protected natural sites known as sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) in the last five years. SSSIs are legally protected because they contain special features such as threatened habitats or rare species, and together they cover more than 1.1m hectares (2.7m acres), about 8% of England’s land area.
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