Environment

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US farmers are rejecting multimillion-dollar datacenter bids for their land: ‘I’m not for sale’

Families are navigating the tough choice between unimaginable riches and the identity that comes with landWhen two men knocked on Ida Huddleston’s door last May, they carried a contract worth more than $33m in exchange for the Kentucky farm that had fed her family for centuries.According to Huddleston, the men’s client, an unnamed “Fortune 100 […]

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Claims that AI can help fix climate dismissed as greenwashing

Industry using ‘diversionary’ tactics, says analyst, as energy-hungry complex functions such as video generation and deep research proliferateTech companies are conflating traditional artificial intelligence with generative AI when claiming the energy-hungry technology could help avert climate breakdown, according to a report.Most claims that AI can help avert climate breakdown refer to machine learning and not

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Why did I get a £100 parking fine when charging my electric car?

The charger firm claimed the site operated 24 hours a day, but the parking operator had different ideasI charged my electric car at the 24-hour Mer EV charging station in my local B&Q car park.I then received a £100 parking charge notice (PCN) from the car park operator, Ocean Parking. It said no parking is

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Elon Musk’s xAI faces second lawsuit over toxic pollutants from datacenter

NAACP alleges artificial intelligence firm is violating Clean Air Act and polluting Black communities in MississippiElon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI is facing a second lawsuit alleging it is illegally emitting toxic pollutants from its enormous datacenters, which house its supercomputers and run the chatbot Grok.The new pending suit alleges xAI is violating the Clean

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‘A different set of rules’: thermal drone footage shows Musk’s AI power plant flouting clean air regulations

Images confirm xAI is continuing to defy EPA regulations in Mississippi to power its flagship datacentersElon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its datacenters with unpermitted gas turbines, an investigation by the Floodlight newsroom shows. Thermal footage captured by Floodlight via drone shows xAI is still burning gas at a facility in Southaven,

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Workers’ collectives are the bee’s knees | Brief letters

Hive mentality | AI fantasies | Foreign trains | Andrew Mountbatten-WindsorChris Payne’s description of the working of a beehive: shared goals, decentralised decision-making, autonomous workers acting for the collective good and, most of all, honest communication as the model for a “very successful business” sounds identical to a socialist-inspired cooperative (Office buzz: UK employers turn

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‘We’re being turned into an energy colony’: Argentina’s nuclear plan faces backlash over US interests

Push to restart uranium mining in Patagonia has sparked fears about the environmental impact and loss of sovereignty over key resourcesOn an outcrop above the Chubut River, one of the few to cut across the arid Patagonian steppe of southern Argentina, Sergio Pichiñán points across a wide swath of scrubland to colourful rock formations on

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The lithium boom: could a disused quarry bring riches to Cornwall?

Known as ‘white gold’, lithium is among the most important mined elements on the planet – ideal for the rechargeable batteries used in tech products. Can Europe’s largest deposit bring prosperity to the local community?It looks more like the past than the future. A vast chasm scooped out of a scarred landscape, this is a

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Electric ​cars ​go ​mainstream as ​adoption ​surges ​across ​rich and ​developing ​nations

A wave of affordable Chinese-made EVs is accelerating the shift away from petrol cars, challenging long‑held assumptions about how transport decarbonisation unfolds• Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereLast year, almost every new car sold in Norway, the nature-loving country flush with oil wealth, was fully electric. In prosperous Denmark,

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Artists can’t buy into these fantasy houses | Brief letters

House price fantasies | Coyote confirmation | Premier Inns | Longevity advice | ApostrophesI always regard the house prices in your fantasy house hunt feature with wry amusement. After all, it is supposed to be fantasy. However, last weekend’s selection made my blood boil (Homes for sale to inspire artists in England – in pictures,

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