Mercedes-Benz and other big manufacturers want to overturn the EU’s 2035 ban on petrol cars. This would be as disastrous for jobs as for the climate
There is something rather old-fashioned about the way Germany views its car industry. When the prime minister of Bavaria, Markus Söder, calls the car the destiny of Germany and the heart of its economy, and says that “without the car, collapse is imminent”, the vehicle he seems to be describing is one with a combustion engine, running on fossil fuels or their derivatives. This nostalgic attachment to the heavy-duty, polluting industries of the 20th century is now colliding with the urgent realities of the climate crisis.
Earlier this month, heads of European automotive companies gathered in the Berlaymont building, the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels, for a meeting with its president, Ursula von der Leyen. German car manufacturers came with two demands: to reverse the EU ban on the manufacture of new cars with CO2-emitting combustion engines that is due to come into force in 2035, and to loosen the annual quotas they have to meet for sales of electric vehicles between now and 2035.
Tania Roettger is a journalist based in Berlin
This article was amended on 29 September 2025 to remove a potentially misleading reference to cleaner “fuels” in the final paragraph
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/28/2025 - 23:00
09/28/2025 - 08:09
Vast tract of park that is home to 114 mammal species, including critically endangered black rhino, affected
Namibia has begun deploying hundreds of soldiers to fight a fire that has burned through a third of the vast Etosha national park, one of Africa’s largest game reserves, officials said.
The park in the north of the largely desert country is home to 114 species of mammals, notably the critically endangered black rhinoceros, and is a major tourist attraction.
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09/28/2025 - 02:39
Queensland premier says he won’t protect whales ‘at the expense of one single human’
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Queensland’s premier said the state is “not for turning” on its plan to expand shark netting, and won’t put protecting whales “at the expense of one single human”.
A mother and baby humpback were discovered trapped in shark netting near Rainbow Beach on Saturday, the eighth and ninth whales to become entangled in nine days.
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09/28/2025 - 01:00
Two years after the tree was cut down, the National Trust says it wants to turn a sense of loss ‘into a sense of hope’
Artists are being asked for ideas to create a “nationally important” work from the wood of the illegally felled Sycamore Gap tree which, organisers hope, will be galvanising and inspiring.
The National Trust has revealed details of a huge creative commission, offering the chance for artists, organisations or creative agencies to use half of the tree’s timber to produce something incredible.
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09/27/2025 - 10:00
From supermarkets to restaurants, rising meat costs amid tight supply and strong demand are hitting Americans hard
If beef is what’s for dinner, expect to pay more for it.
The classic combination of tight supply and strong demand has pushed US cattle and beef prices to record highs, and there is little end in sight with farmers reluctant to expand their herds and selling off high-priced heifers to dig them out of debt.
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09/27/2025 - 08:00
Concerns over whether gas generators are making fair profits are prompting fresh proposals to reform the system
Travel 18 miles north of London and the grey bulk of a gas power plant comes into view near Rye House railway station in Hertfordshire.
Rye House power station has generated electricity since 1993, making it Britain’s longest-serving such power plant still in the market. But it also produces some of the most expensive electricity in the country.
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09/27/2025 - 06:00
Sentient Media reveals less than 4% of climate news stories mention animal agriculture as source of carbon emissions
Food and agriculture contribute one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions – second only to the burning of fossil fuels. And yet the vast majority of media coverage of the climate crisis overlooks this critical sector, according to a new data analysis from Sentient Media.
The findings suggest that only about a quarter of climate articles in 11 major US outlets, including the Guardian, mention food and agriculture as a cause. And of the 940 articles analyzed, only 36 – or 3.8% – mentioned animal agriculture or meat production, by far the largest source of food-related emissions.
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09/27/2025 - 06:00
Humans have helped save the great apes from extinction, but are now the biggest threat to their survival as they compete for land in east Africa’s Virunga mountains
• Photographs by Badru Katumba for the Guardian
It is sunrise on mount Muhabura, an inactive volcano on the Ugandan-Rwandan border, and Dr Benard Ssebide is in a rush to find a family of mountain gorillas before the tourists arrive. A mass of ferns, vines and thistles encroaches on the path, and the guides hack through brambles with machetes. Above, the forest whistles in the wind, glowing in the morning light.
“The higher you go, the more the mountain pushes back,” Ssebide says, pausing for breath.
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09/27/2025 - 00:00
Consider the annihilation of agricultural land alongside the genocide – and grasp the chilling totality of this attempt to eliminate all life
A landless people and a peopleless land: these, it appears, are the aims of the Israeli government in Gaza. There are two means by which they are achieved. The first is the mass killing and expulsion of the Palestinians. The second is rendering the land uninhabitable. Alongside the crime of genocide, another great horror unfolds: ecocide.
While the destruction of buildings and infrastructure in Gaza is visible in every video we see, less visible is the parallel destruction of ecosystems and means of subsistence. Before the 7 October atrocity that triggered the current assault on Gaza, about 40% of its land was farmed. Despite its extreme population density, Gaza was mostly self-sufficient in vegetables and poultry, and met much of the population’s demand for olives, fruit and milk. But last month the UN reported that just 1.5% of its agricultural land now remains both accessible and undamaged. That’s roughly 200 hectares – the only remaining area directly available to feed more than 2 million people.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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09/26/2025 - 10:00
Murray Watt says ‘it’s not the government’s intention to stop old growth logging’ as Greens and academics press for total halt
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The Albanese government is being urged to end old growth logging “at a minimum” in order to meet a 2035 emissions reduction target recommended by the Climate Change Authority.
One of Australia’s most respected forest scientists, Prof David Lindenmayer, of the Australian National University, has also written to the authority questioning why it did not go further in its advice and recommend an end to all native forest logging.
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