Environment

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As auto costs rise, will the US miss the golden age of electric vehicles?

Shifting demands and political ideology have left the industry vulnerable to global competition from cheap Chinese carsEarlier this month, an intriguing new Detroit-based electric vehicle startup hit the market – Slate Auto, a Jeff Bezos-backed venture offering something US buyers rarely see these days – a pick up truck billed as “affordable”.Its base price is […]

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We can live without AI, but can we live without clean water? | Letters

Readers respond to an article about Erin Brockovich’s battle against datacentres and voice their fears for the environment What are the benefits obtained from AI’s massive use of electricity and water (‘We’re up against forces that have all the money in the world’: Erin Brockovich on her battle against AI datacentres, 29 June)? Analysis shows

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‘We’re up against forces that have all the money in the world’: Erin Brockovich on her battle against AI datacentres

In 1993, she squeezed a $333m settlement from a Californian energy company in a scandal over contaminated water. Three decades later, she has a new target in her sights – and it’s globalWhen Erin Brockovich woke to find 30 emails from people from the same town, she realised something was going on. People email Brockovich

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A little bird told her: scientist wins $100,000 prize for decoding birdsong

Julie Elie worked out how zebra finches announce who they are, what they are doing and use individual signaturesA scientist who decoded the dictionary that a bird uses to communicate has won a $100,000 prize for making progress towards a world in which humans can talk to the animals – without being met with a

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Datacentres facing increase in global climate-related legal cases, report finds

LSE analysis highlights litigation linked to energy sources, water consumption and air pollutionThe proliferation of datacentres and AI is increasingly at the forefront of environmental litigation around the world from Chile to Ireland, a report has found.In an analysis of about 3,600 climate-related lawsuits filed since 2015, the latest annual review of climate litigation by

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Majority of datacenters are vulnerable to climate threats like floods and fires, study finds

Study warns AI datacenters are vulnerable to the climate hazards that their global greenhouse gas emissions bolsterAmid rising concern that the artificial intelligence boom is fueling the climate crisis, a new report has found that nearly 80% of datacenters are also exposed to extreme climate hazards, including flooding, extreme winds and wildfires.Those impacts are leaving

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How Europe’s EV makers shrank their product to challenge the bloated SUVs

Smaller, cheaper cars built for narrow city streets are becoming more stylish – but require careful design decisionsThe winding backstreets of London, Paris and Rome are a large part of their charm. But they are also a problem for electric carmakers. For a long time, squeezing big batteries into smaller, cheaper cars to fit European

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Can we electrify the world? Ambition takes centre stage in pre-Cop31 climate talks

Apart from effort to electrify, there were geopolitical tensions around climate science and the 1.5C goalElectrifying the world – with electric vehicles, electric heating and cooling, and modernised heavy industry – could be the next biggest step towards phasing out fossil fuels, replacing the 80% of global energy that still comes from hydrocarbons. As using

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Trump’s DoJ intervenes to back Elon Musk in datacenter pollution lawsuit

Justice department urges judge to throw out suit brought by NAACP over xAI’s methane-gas turbines in MississippiThe Trump administration is coming to the defense of Elon Musk in a lawsuit over claims that his artificial intelligence company, xAI, is polluting residential neighborhoods in north Mississippi. The justice department told a federal court late on Monday

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AI could help win ‘race against extinction’ of vital plants, say botanists

Tech is helping to identify and save new specimens and could open ‘genomic goldmine’ of fungi dataThe rise of AI and digitisation could be a turning point in the “race against extinction” faced by botanists trying to identify and save vital plants before they vanish, according to a major report from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.New

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