The transition to electric vehicles should be moving apace, but it is not. And why? Incompetence, expedience and cowardice
This is how it works. An industry puts tremendous effort into resisting change: lobbying governments, mobilising the media, pouring money into junktanks. It argues that a transition would threaten jobs, or damage the national interest, or harm poor people, while what it really fears is the cost of retooling its plants or developing new protocols. Then, when the inevitable cliff edge approaches, it whines that change is coming too soon. For reasons beyond its control, it isn’t ready, so the government must delay its plans.
This is what triggered the Dutch nitrate crisis, and the UK’s repeated “emergency” exemptions from the ban on a devastating class of pesticides. Now the same dynamic is driving the UK’s crisis over the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). The result is that, as the global climate summit, Cop31, begins, it looks as if our gift to the world will be a major, predictable and entirely avoidable increase in the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/11/2026 - 01:00
11/11/2026 - 00:00
Conservationists relocate 3,400 one-flowered wintergreens, a species estimated to have lost more than half its UK population in the past 50 years
Thousands of one of Britain’s rarest wildflowers have been moved to safety from an eroding Scottish shoreline where they were at risk of falling into the sea.
Conservationists rescued 3,400 one-flowered wintergreen plants at Culbin Forest in Moray, in an effort to protect a species estimated to have lost more than half its UK population in the past 50 years.
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11/10/2026 - 10:01
Conservation group acquires former US president’s family farm with plans to transfer it to the state in 2028
Jimmy Carter’s family farm has been acquired by a group dedicated to permanently protecting the south-west Georgia land where the late former president’s conservation ethic took hold, officials announced on Monday.
A statement from the Conservation Fund said it plans to open Carter’s family farm – on about 2,458 acres (995 hectares) outside his home town of Plains, Georgia – to the public for hunting, fishing and other outdoor recreation as soon as 2027, with the group set to transfer the land to the state’s natural resources department in 2028.
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11/10/2026 - 08:00
Skagway’s 1,100 permanent residents are caught between a boom time – when the ships bring more than a million tourists – and a lull in winter
October comes to the small Alaska coastal town of Skagway like a sigh. The shops that were bustling throughout the crazed tourist season are reducing their opening hours or beginning to close. The hordes of employees sleeping in overcrowded bunkhouses are leaving or have left.
The crowds of cruise passengers who have filled the streets since April, wearing lanyards emblazoned with the names of their ships, have dwindled to a trickle. Soon, they will all be gone. Snow is visible on the nearby mountains.
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11/10/2026 - 07:08
Former US secretary of state says most nations are ‘stumbling along’ while Beijing has ‘hugely accelerated’
Cop31 live – latest updates
China is leading the world in moving away from fossil fuels, and the rest of the globe – including the US – must now follow, the former US secretary of state John Kerry has told the Guardian, as Cop watchers wonder exactly how China is going to approach this year’s climate summit.
As Cop31 opens – this year the climate conference is in Turkey – there is plenty of speculation about whether China will finally step into the leadership role that it has long avoided. In its latest “five-year plan” adopted in March 2026, China for the first time pledged to “actively participate in and lead global climate governance”. Cop31 could provide the first indications Beijing is ready to put that rhetoric into action, something it has historically been reluctant to do.
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11/10/2026 - 02:57
Host Turkey celebrates new oilfields as UN climate summit prepares to host world leaders from more than 90 countries
We’ve just heard from Patricia Espinosa, the former UN climate boss (succeeded by Simon Stiell) and now we are hearing from former US secretary of state and climate ambassador, John Kerry.
Kerry has congratulated Brazil for keeping the fossil fuel transition issue alive, and the room has erupted in cheers.
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11/10/2026 - 01:45
In today’s newsletter: As global leaders gather in Turkey for the UN climate summit, both doubts and hope surround what the annual talks can achieve
Good morning. After another year of unprecedented droughts, floods and wildfires driven by human-caused global heating, 91 heads of government will meet tomorrow in Turkey to discuss the climate crisis. They will do so against a backdrop of global instability and conflict.
But as high-ranking officials and civil society campaigners settle in for a fortnight of speeches, protests and labyrinthine negotiations at the UN’s 31st annual climate conference, Cop31, many are asking what the point is.
UK | Russell Brand was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison on Monday after a judge praised his victims’ bravery and accused him of living “unhindered by the rules by which decent people live”.
US | Donald Trump, Elon Musk and prominent finance moguls have expressed their support for embattled Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, as the head of the world’s most valuable chip company faces an internal investigation over a romantic relationship with an alleged Chinese spy.
Russia | US officials said they would seek a “final end” to the war between Russia and Ukraine, beginning with trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday in the first substantive negotiations between the two countries since February.
Technology | Palantir lobbied a health minister to consider extending its AI technology into GP records, stretching its reach into the NHS in a way doctors fear could undermine trust with patients.
Climate | Soaring oil and gas prices following the war in Iran have encouraged people to look beyond fossil fuels, leading to an easing of climate-damaging carbon emissions this year.
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11/09/2026 - 23:07
Beekeepers say they are fielding a record number of calls from people needing assistance in removing swarms
Engulfing parked cars and blanketing inner-city street signs – New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, is in the midst of an unusually large bee swarming season, that experts say has been exacerbated by a milder than usual winter.
The Auckland Beekeepers Association says it is fielding five to 10 calls a day, requesting assistance to remove swarms of bees – with individual members of the association being contacted for help as well.
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11/09/2026 - 20:00
However, authors of a comprehensive assessment to be presented at Cop31 warn talk of a global turnaround premature
Cop31 live – latest updates
Soaring oil and gas prices following the war in Iran have encouraged people to look beyond fossil fuels, leading to an easing of climate-damaging carbon emissions this year.
Carbon dioxide from oil, gas and coal is forecast to flatline for 2026, based on data from the year so far, according to a comprehensive assessment by scientists. Emissions from burning oil alone will drop by 2% as drivers economise on fuel use and flock to electric vehicles instead.
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11/09/2026 - 13:42
Key environmental groups come out against bipartisan Baaja bill over fears it could spur datacenters and ICE jails
The Senate on Monday advanced bipartisan legislation aimed at speeding up permitting reviews for datacenters and other infrastructure projects, in the first major action since last week’s election that soundly repudiated Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.
It’s a bill that would make it easier to build big infrastructure projects in America – everything from fossil fuel pipelines to transmission lines that would add more clean energy to the grid. And it would roll back environmental and social protections to achieve this goal. That is why climate advocates are torn over the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs act (Baaja).
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