Summers are becoming increasingly dangerous, especially in cities where the warming effects of tall buildings, concrete and asphalt send temperatures soaring. But there might be a simple, potentially inexpensive way to put a chill on urban heat: retroreflectors.

A study published Monday in the journal Nature Cities found when retroreflective material was installed on buildings, it decreased the surface temperature of those buildings by up to 36 degrees Fahrenheit, and air temperatures by nearly 5 degrees.

Reducing building temperature is “very, very important” for pedestrians at street level, said Elie Bou-Zeid, co-author of the study and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University, “because those walls radiate a lot of heat on you.”

Cooling those surfaces by 36 degrees “will make you feel significantly more comfortable,” he said. “It’s almost like being in the shade.”

Cities are significantly warmer than their surrounding suburbs and rural areas because of the way they are built. Tall buildings, dark roofs, asphalt and concrete absorb the sun’s rays and reflect its energy back into the environment as heat – the so-called urban heat island effect.

Urban designers have started to implement simple solutions to counteract the urban heat phenomenon, including painting roads white, planting more trees and building green roofs. But researchers say using retroreflective materials would have a more powerful cooling effect.

Retroreflectors take advantage of a simple concept: a number of mirrors in the shape of a cube corner reflects light back in the direction it came from. The same can be achieved with a mirror in the shape of a bowl.

They’re used in road signs and bicycle reflectors, for instance, to ensure headlights reflect to drivers’ eyes. They’re also used in running clothes with reflective strips on them. Cats’ eyes have similar, naturally occurring retroreflectors, which is why they appear to glow when you shine a light on them.

Bou-Zeid said retroreflective material could be developed as sheets or coatings to install on city surfaces. Given the material itself is relatively inexpensive, it could be a low-cost solution to an increasingly dangerous phenomenon, as temperatures continue to climb due to planet-warming pollution.

Small-scale versions of the idea have already been tested in the Netherlands and Italy. But there is no large-scale example yet because of how difficult it is to retrofit existing buildings.

Some US cities have taken steps to tackle extreme heat. Los Angeles streets were painted with a grayish-white coating to reflect sunlight and keep air temperatures cooler – just like a light shirt will keep you cooler than a dark one in the hot summer sun. But researchers say this solution is less effective than retroreflective material, which reflects sunlight back toward the sun “and not to other objects on the ground,” Bou-Zeid said.

There is one downside to it, though: It would make winters feel even colder – reflecting sunlight at a time when it’s beneficial – which could create new public health concerns. Bou-Zeid said it might be possible to design reflective materials that “turn off” when needed.

“When it’s very hot during the summer, they become white and reflect a lot back to the sky,” Bou-Zeid said. “When it’s very cold during the winter, they become black and don’t reflect a lot and mostly absorb (the sun’s) energy.”

To help reduce the urban impact of the climate crisis, cities need to implement as many measures as they can to adapt to and mitigate these changes, said Xinjie Huang, the lead author of the study and doctoral researcher at Princeton.

The bodies of five missing skiers were found in the Swiss Alps on Sunday evening, while rescuers are still searching for a sixth person, local police said on Monday.

The group, which included five members of the same family, had set off from Zermatt, a popular ski destination, on Saturday morning and were reported missing in the Tête Blanche region, according to police in the canton of Valais.

The skiers were aged between 21 and 58, according to an earlier police statement reported by Reuters. The family members were from the Valais canton, while the sixth person is from the canton of Fribourg. Police did not reveal the identities of the dead skiers, whose bodies were found in Tête Blanche on Sunday, Reuters reported.

Police said they were alerted by a family member who was meant to collect the group in the village of Arolla on Saturday afternoon and had become concerned when they failed to arrive.

Search-and-rescue operations were launched on Saturday after the skiers went missing near the 3,706-meter-high (12,159 feet) Tête Blanche pass, en route to the village of Arolla. However, “very poor” weather conditions made operations “extremely delicate,” police said in a statement on Sunday.

“At 5:19 p.m., a member of the group managed to contact the emergency services. This call enabled him to be located in the Tête Blanche pass area, at an altitude of around 3,500 meters” (around 11,480 feet), police said.

“A storm in the southern Alps and the danger of avalanches prevented helicopters and rescue columns from approaching the area,” police continued, adding that a team of five experienced rescuers attempted an overland approach from Zermatt overnight, but they had to give up at an altitude of over 3,000 meters (9,843 feet) due to “very poor weather conditions and the risks involved.”

The operation included special units of the Cantonal Police, including a mountain group and technical and telecommunication officers, as well as rescuers from the Rescue Organization for the Canton of Valais (OCVS) and the Swiss Air Force.

The Zermatt-Arolla hiking route is part of the famous Haute Route trail between Chamonix, France, at the foot of Mont Blanc, and the base of the Matterhorn in Zermatt, Switzerland.

Catherine, Princess of Wales has taken responsibility and apologized for an edited official photograph that was recalled by a number of international news agencies over concerns it had been manipulated.

Kate said she was sorry for “any confusion” caused by the image, after her “experiment” with photo editing caused scrutiny for Kensington Palace and increased confusion over Kate’s extended absence from the public eye.

The photograph, released Sunday to mark Mother’s Day in the UK, was the first official picture of Kate since she underwent abdominal surgery in January.

But hours after it was released by Kensington Palace, four major photo agencies issued “kill notices,” expressing concerns it had been edited.

Catherine wrote on X: “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused.”

But the palace did not provide any further details on what aspects of the image Catherine was attempting to edit, or whether the picture released was a composite that combined multiple photographs from the same shoot.

The family traditionally releases a family photo on Mother’s Day, but this year’s image came amid a backdrop of intrigue and confusion over Kate’s extended absence following her January operation.

Those questions were briefly dispelled on Sunday by the release of the image, which Kensington Palace said was taken by William, Prince of Wales.

The Associated Press noted that “at closer inspection it appears that the source has manipulated the image.” Agence France-Presse said it had withdrawn the photo due to “an editorial issue.”

In a note to clients the agency wrote: “It has come to light that this handout photo… issued by Kensington Palace today of the Princess of Wales and her kids had been altered and therefore it was withdrawn from AFP systems.” 

PA Images and Getty Images also “killed” the photo.

The palace has faced mounting public pressure to share more information about the future Queen in recent weeks, but it has taken a firm line on protecting her privacy.

She is not scheduled to make any official appearances until after Easter.

There are constant reminders in our everyday surroundings of the many chapters of life that have unfolded on Earth.

Rocks and dirt preserve evidence of the epochs that came before ours, such as the oldest known fossilized forest on the planet where unusual trees once grew 390 million years ago.

Fossils reveal the diversity of life that has flourished and disappeared over millennia, and graves tell the stories of humans who lived through unimaginable hardship centuries ago.

The one constant about life on Earth is that it changes continuously. Even scientists can’t agree on whether or not a new chapter of Earth’s history has begun.

While it may seem impossible to bring long extinct creatures back to life, scientists are achieving breakthroughs that could enable a comeback, perhaps in the not so distant future.

Back to the future

An ambitious plan to genetically engineer a woolly mammoth — a giant that hasn’t roamed Earth in 4,000 years — has taken another step toward reality.

Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas-based company aiming to create a mammoth hybrid that looks exactly like its extinct counterpart, has reprogrammed cells from an Asian elephant. The species is the closest living relative to the woolly mammoth.

The now modified cells could eventually be used to help the hybrid mammoth grow a woolly coat and develop other traits needed to survive in the Arctic.

The company believes that resurrecting the woolly mammoth could possibly help restore the vulnerable Arctic tundra, which is at risk as the world warms.

Across the universe

The far-reaching infrared gaze of the James Webb Space Telescope has spied a mysterious galaxy that existed when the universe was only 700 million years old — in its adolescence, astronomically speaking.

The discovery surprised scientists, who found that it was the oldest “dead” galaxy ever observed, and it stopped forming stars almost as soon as star birth in the universe began.

Violent interactions between stars or black holes can deprive galaxies of the gas needed to form stars, but so far, no theories explain exactly what happened in this distant galaxy.

Curiosities

Bread and cheese are among the best culinary pairings, but perhaps not when the bread in question is 8,600 years old and the cheese is known for its pungent aroma.

Archaeologists discovered a palm-size spongy residue at an ancient oven structure in Turkey and determined that it was an uncooked round of fermented bread made in 6600 BC, making it the world’s oldest known loaf.

Meanwhile, France’s favorite Camembert cheese may be facing an extinction crisis.

The fungus used during the cheesemaking process, which gives Camembert both its distinct smell and rich flavor, is in short supply, causing connoisseurs to worry that Camembert’s days are numbered.

Fantastic creatures

Strolling through Earth’s forests 120 million years ago would have afforded a familiar sight amid an otherwise dinosaur-dominated landscape: birds. Well, that is, until the feathered creatures opened their beaks to reveal rows of teeth.

Back then, toothy birds were the norm. But researchers have unearthed a fossil of a newfound species, dubbed “Attenborough’s strange bird” in honor of the British naturalist Sir David Attenborough, that was an oddball because it was toothless.

The discovery of the robinlike bird is changing the way scientists think about the complicated story of avian evolution.

Separately, an eagle-eyed amateur paleontologist out for a stroll with his dog happened to spot an exposed bone that led to the discovery of a nearly complete titanosaur skeleton connected from skull to tail.

A long time ago

Scientists have used a uniquely celestial method to determine that ancient humans were in Europe 1.4 million years ago.

Pebbles buried within a quarry in Ukraine along with stone tools found beneath layers of earth underwent analysis for radioactive particles locked inside the mineral grains.

In the distant past, when the rocks were still at the surface, cosmic rays, or charged particles that travel across the universe and land on Earth, had penetrated the stone, creating the radioactive markers that help researchers determine how long the archaeological layer was buried.

The freshly dated artifacts are the earliest known evidence of hominins in Europe. The team is still trying to determine exactly which species of early human made the tools, but the study findings have provided clues.

Explorations

Grab a cup of coffee and catch up on these fascinating reads:

— Towering pyramid-like star dunes are some of the tallest features in Earth’s deserts, and researchers have uncovered evidence that the distinctive mounds began forming thousands of years ago.

— A 13-year-old may have cracked the code on how ancient Greek inventor Archimedes’ fabled “death ray” could have harnessed sunlight to burn ships.

— Did you glimpse the 2017 total solar eclipse? Expect this year’s eclipse on April 8 to be different in several key ways, including duration and visibility of the celestial event.

Two police stations near Haiti’s National Palace were attacked by armed individuals Friday night, as gang violence in the Caribbean nation’s capital of Port-au-Prince continued to spiral.

The Haitian capital has been gripped by a wave of highly coordinated gang attacks on law enforcement and state institutions in what gang leader Jimmy Cherizier has described as an attempt to overthrow Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s government.

Armed groups have burned down police stations and released thousands of inmates from two prisons, and Cherizier has warned of “a civil war that will end in genocide” if the prime minister does not step down.

The US State Department arranged for the evacuation of non-essential personnel from the US embassy overnight due to “heightened gang violence.” US Southern Command said in a statement Sunday the move was consistent with “standard practice for Embassy security augmentation worldwide.”

“Our Embassy remains focused on advancing U.S. government efforts to support the Haitian people,” US Southern Command said, adding that the evacuation helps to “allow our Embassy mission operations to continue.”

President Joe Biden approved the operation, according to a National Security Council spokesperson, and remains “deeply concerned” about the situation.

Henry has had difficulty returning to the country since leaving for Kenya last week to sign an agreement for a Kenyan-led multinational mission to restore security back home.

On Friday, Haitian police union Synapoha encouraged all police officers to reinforce their police stations. “We need to stay united to not lose our symbol, the police. The leadership needs to put adequate support for all the units,” the union said.

The violence comes just a day after intruders broke into Port-au-Prince’s Caribbean Port Services (CPS) terminal, a major player in Haiti’s food import supply chain.

But the UN said Friday the police had been “able to push back coordinated gang attacks on key infrastructures, including the airport.”

“We remain deeply concerned by the rapidly deteriorating security situation amid ongoing gang violence and sporadic confrontations between heavily armed gangs and police forces in some parts of Port-au-Prince,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, said.

The Haitian government has decreed a state of emergency will run until April 3 in the country’s West Region and the capital Port-au-Prince and a curfew will remain in force until March 10.

The chaos in Haiti has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in the past few days, adding to the more than 300,000 already displaced by gang violence.

The head of Doctors without Borders in Haiti said she is concerned about the civilian displacement, pointing to the lack of necessities.

Hospitals have been targeted by gangs. Only one public hospital is still operating in Port-au-Prince’s metropolitan area, according to an official from the country’s Civil Protection.

Pierre Espérance, Executive Director of NGO the Haitian Human Rights Defense Network, called Haiti’s situation “chaotic” with “no end in sight” and said the country had “completely collapsed.”

Canada said a protest lasting 90 minutes broke out in front of its embassy on Thursday, with a burning tire being thrown over the outside gate, while the US has said it’s looking into “contingency options” at its embassy.

CARICOM (the Caribbean Community and Common Market), a regional bloc of 25 countries which works on economic integration, security and social development, is to hold a meeting on Haiti in the Jamaican capital of Kingston on Monday, according to the UN.

Haiti is a member state, but it is unclear if Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry will be at the meeting.

Jim Rogers, Rafy Rivera, Michael Conte and Abel Alvarado contributed to the reporting.

Two police stations near Haiti’s National Palace were attacked by armed individuals Friday night, as gang violence in the Caribbean nation’s capital of Port-au-Prince continued to spiral.

The Haitian capital has been gripped by a wave of highly coordinated gang attacks on law enforcement and state institutions in what gang leader Jimmy Cherizier has described as an attempt to overthrow Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s government.

Armed groups have burned down police stations and released thousands of inmates from two prisons, and Cherizier has warned of “a civil war that will end in genocide” if the prime minister does not step down.

The US State Department arranged for the evacuation of non-essential personnel from the US embassy overnight due to “heightened gang violence.” US Southern Command said in a statement Sunday the move was consistent with “standard practice for Embassy security augmentation worldwide.”

“Our Embassy remains focused on advancing U.S. government efforts to support the Haitian people,” US Southern Command said, adding that the evacuation helps to “allow our Embassy mission operations to continue.”

President Joe Biden approved the operation, according to a National Security Council spokesperson, and remains “deeply concerned” about the situation.

Henry has had difficulty returning to the country since leaving for Kenya last week to sign an agreement for a Kenyan-led multinational mission to restore security back home.

On Friday, Haitian police union Synapoha encouraged all police officers to reinforce their police stations. “We need to stay united to not lose our symbol, the police. The leadership needs to put adequate support for all the units,” the union said.

The violence comes just a day after intruders broke into Port-au-Prince’s Caribbean Port Services (CPS) terminal, a major player in Haiti’s food import supply chain.

But the UN said Friday the police had been “able to push back coordinated gang attacks on key infrastructures, including the airport.”

“We remain deeply concerned by the rapidly deteriorating security situation amid ongoing gang violence and sporadic confrontations between heavily armed gangs and police forces in some parts of Port-au-Prince,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, said.

The Haitian government has decreed a state of emergency will run until April 3 in the country’s West Region and the capital Port-au-Prince and a curfew will remain in force until March 10.

The chaos in Haiti has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in the past few days, adding to the more than 300,000 already displaced by gang violence.

The head of Doctors without Borders in Haiti said she is concerned about the civilian displacement, pointing to the lack of necessities.

Hospitals have been targeted by gangs. Only one public hospital is still operating in Port-au-Prince’s metropolitan area, according to an official from the country’s Civil Protection.

Pierre Espérance, Executive Director of NGO the Haitian Human Rights Defense Network, called Haiti’s situation “chaotic” with “no end in sight” and said the country had “completely collapsed.”

Canada said a protest lasting 90 minutes broke out in front of its embassy on Thursday, with a burning tire being thrown over the outside gate, while the US has said it’s looking into “contingency options” at its embassy.

CARICOM (the Caribbean Community and Common Market), a regional bloc of 25 countries which works on economic integration, security and social development, is to hold a meeting on Haiti in the Jamaican capital of Kingston on Monday, according to the UN.

Haiti is a member state, but it is unclear if Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry will be at the meeting.

Jim Rogers, Rafy Rivera, Michael Conte and Abel Alvarado contributed to the reporting.

Several major news agencies have withdrawn an image distributed by Kensington Palace showing Catherine, Princess of Wales, and her children, saying they believe the photo has been manipulated.

The photograph was the first officially released image of the princess since she underwent abdominal surgery in January. The image was released on Sunday along with a message from the princess thanking the public for its support while marking Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom.

The Associated Press noted that “at closer inspection it appears that the source has manipulated the image.”

AFP said it had withdrawn the photo due to “an editorial issue.” The image “may no longer be used in any manner. Please immediately remove it from all your online services,” AFP said.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

The Irish government conceded on Saturday that it had lost two referenda to change what it called “sexist” language in the constitution in an embarrassing defeat.

Ireland went to the polls on Friday in votes deliberately timed to coincide with International Women’s Day to replace two constitutional references.

One said that the the family unit was “founded” on marriage, the other that a woman supports the Irish state through “her life within the home.”

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Saturday afternoon said it was clear that the referenda had not passed.

“I think it’s clear at this stage, that the family amendment and the care amendment referendums have been defeated,” Varadkar said at a press conference in Dublin.

Official results for both votes are expected to be announced separately later on Saturday.

Varadkar had championed the vote as a chance to change “very old-fashioned, very sexist language about women”, according to Reuters.

There was a low turnout reported throughout the day, in some areas less than 30% of registered voters, PA Media reported.

If the votes passed, the constitution was to say the family is based “on marriage or on other durable relationships.”

Religious and socially conservative groups who campaigned for a “No” vote took issue with the concept of a “durable relationship” and argued in support of the constitution’s original wording.

In a charged RTE debate days before the vote, conservative campaigner Maria Steen clashed with the Irish deputy prime minister, Micheál Martin, insisting that “the reality is that the majority of women do the majority of work in the home.”

Ireland’s constitution, published in 1937, was strongly influenced by Catholic social teachings, according to legal scholars. In recent decades Catholic influence has slowly decreased, and the country’s Church has been rocked by a series of abuse scandals involving the clergy.

Ireland has held referendums on a number of social issues in recent years, with voters repeatedly supporting progressive changes to the country’s constitution.

In 2015, voters overwhelmingly supported the legalization of same-sex marriage. Three years later, they cast ballots to end an abortion ban, and in 2019, divorce laws were liberalized after another referendum.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

It was just over a year ago that Toyota appeared to acknowledge it had dropped the ball on electric vehicles. Its CEO, Akio Toyoda, stepped down from his post, painting himself as “an old-fashioned” man unfit to take the world’s biggest carmaker through the electric revolution.

But since then, the Japanese company has done little to embrace a fully electric future, instead sticking firmly to its wildly popular hybrid cars, even though they typically emit more planet-heating pollution than EVs.

Auto experts say the company’s foot dragging on EVs was no fumble, rather, a calculated strategy to give consumers what they want — although EV sales are rising, problems like affordability, battery range and sparse charging stations are dampening growth in demand.

Toyota’s decision to favor hybrids has paid off handsomely: The company is crushing its rivals, including the all-electric Tesla. Globally, it sold 11.2 million cars last year, more than any other automaker. A third were hybrids; fewer than 1% were EVs.

Some experts say Toyota’s lobbying is holding the EV industry back, and Toyota’s plans will have huge implications for global warming. Road transportation accounts for around 25% of global carbon pollution. And as the industry leader, whatever Toyota does, its rivals will consider following.

If Toyota embraced EVs sooner, it would push others in the same direction, said Daniel Sperling, founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California.

“It would put a lot more pressure on Ford or GM to move faster,” he said. “It would pressure EPA to move faster.”

As other automakers start to review their own EV investments, observers are now debating what role EVs and hybrids will have in the future. Those more concerned with the climate crisis are asking a bigger question: what does this all mean for the planet?

Which cars pollute the most?

To know exactly how much planet-warming pollution a car emits, its whole life cycle needs to be taken into account — not only what comes out of the tailpipe, but what it took to build the car and get it to the dealership.

Gas-powered cars, hybrids and EVs all emit roughly the same amount of pollution to manufacture, until you get to producing the battery.

Fully electric cars use large batteries made of materials that require heavy mining. That makes them 40% dirtier to produce on average than hybrid and gas-powered vehicles, one study shows.

But the picture changes over their whole life cycle. Gas-powered cars are the cleanest to make, but are the dirtiest over their lifetimes because their tailpipe pollution is so high.

EVs might be the most carbon intensive to manufacture, but they emit the least carbon pollution over their lifetimes: 40% less than a gas-powered cars. Another study shows that after around two years, the pollution saved by driving an EV offsets the pollution it generated during production.

Hybrids fall in the middle; on average, they produce around 17% more carbon pollution than EVs. But not all hybrids are created equal.

A pure hybrid runs on gasoline and stores excess energy from the brakes, and occasionally from the gas engine, making them more fuel-efficient than regular cars.

Plug-in hybrids, on the other hand, offer the best of both worlds — the reliability and range of a gas car but with less pollution and fuel use, and better affordability than EVs. Plug-in hybrids use EV-like batteries and can typically go for 20 to 40 miles powered by electricity, but they also have fuel tanks and can switch to pure hybrids once the battery is depleted.

Some plug-in hybrids are going head-to-head with EVs on full life cycle pollution. A report from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy showed Toyota’s plug-in hybrid, the Prius Prime SE, is the least-polluting vehicle on American roads, according to its 2024 rankings, even compared to EVs. That’s because of a combination of factors, including the Prime’s weight and shape, which make fuel use more efficient.

The Prius Prime is a trophy vehicle for Toyota, because it supports the company’s vision of the future, where consumers have the choice between EVs and these more advanced hybrids.

“Over time, EVs are definitely better, when you look at their overall life cycle, but the challenge is, because they are also considerably more expensive and people can’t necessarily afford them, the number of those vehicles that you can get on the road in the near term is going to be far fewer,” said Sam Abuelsamid, the principal e-mobility research analyst at market intelligence firm Guidehouse Insights.

Of the 14.5 million cars Americans bought last year, just over 1 million were EVs, Abuelsamid said. That means there are millions of people who may not be able to afford EVs but could potentially buy a hybrid, he said. And that would still mean less climate pollution on the road overall.

“Right now, because of supply chain challenges of materials and getting general affordability of electric vehicles down, we can actually have a greater overall (climate) impact from selling more hybrids compared to the number of EVs that we are able to sell today,” he said.

And fully electric cars won’t be truly “green” until the energy that charges them comes from renewable sources, like wind and solar. For now, how much a car pollutes during daily use depends on where it’s located.

Driving an EV in California is nearly five times cleaner in terms of carbon pollution than a hybrid because around half of the state’s electricity is generated from renewables and nuclear energy. Even compared to a plug-in hybrid, an EV emits 2.8 times less pollution in California.

But in West Virginia, where 90% of power is generated from coal, an EV is only marginally cleaner than a hybrid or plug-in vehicle.

Delaying the transition

As the car market moves steadily toward all-electric, Toyota has been lobbying governments for at least three years to slow that transition, according to an analysis of the company’s engagement activities by InfluenceMap, the climate think tank. Toyota has done so in the US, Canada, UK and Australia, among others, the analysis found.

In a 2022 report, InfluenceMap ranked Toyota as the 10th most influential company blocking climate policy action globally out of more than 400 companies in its database.

Such a delay would be a huge win for Toyota, which supplied just 1.3% of the United States’ EVs — but more than 14% of all cars — last year, under the Toyota and Lexus brands, according to Cox Automotive and Kelley Blue Book.

Despite the dominance of hybrids and debate around EVs, demand for fully electric cars is still growing in the US, just not quite as quickly as forecast. The nation crossed a key threshold at the end of last year: 1.2 million electric vehicles were sold — a 46.3% jump from 2022.

That point has been getting lost as some automakers and groups jockey to weaken EPA rules, said Albert Gore, the executive director of EV trade group the Zero Emission Transportation Association.

Aggressive messaging against the EPA’s proposed rule and campaigns against electrification created a “false narrative” that EV demand is falling, Gore said, when it is clearly still rising.

“Once the rule is finalized and we get past the way it has warped the conversation about EVs for the past year, I’m eager for all of us to turn our focus back to the major industrial revolution taking place around the country,” he said.

The company used the same language in a July 2023 letter to the EPA.

In the memo, Toyota Motor North America group vice president of government affairs, Stephen Ciccone, described the EPA’s EV proposal as “draconian,” saying it was: “Bad for the environment. Bad for the country. Bad for the consumer. And bad for the auto industry.”

“Never before in the 120-year history of the US auto industry has an administration used its power more forcibly to dictate the future of the auto industry,” Ciccone wrote in the memo, saying the EPA’s mandate had caused an “existential crisis” in the industry.

“For more than two years, Toyota and our dealer partners have stood alone in the fight against unrealistic BEV mandates,” Ciccone wrote, referring to battery electric vehicles. “We have taken a lot of hits from environmental activists, the media, and some politicians. But we have not — and we will not — back down.”

Toyota confirmed the accuracy of the memo’s contents but did not comment specifically on it.

Akio Toyoda, who still serves as the company’s chairman, once said he couldn’t see more than 30% of the world’s cars being EVs at any time. And that’s where the company’s mid-term plans are now: It says it wants to produce 3.5 million EVs, around a third of its current sales, by 2030. But by that year, many of its competitors are planning to go entirely electric.

Some of Toyota’s own shareholders are pushing back on the company’s negative climate lobbying, including the Danish pension fund AkademikerPension, which said in a letter that Toyota was gaining “a global laggard status on climate action within the auto sector.”

“Toyota is a conservative, cautious company,” UC’s Sperling said. “Their incrementalist approach is to embrace plug-in hybrids. That’s a next step for them, it’s not disruptive in the market and for the consumer. They move slow; they do good engineering. You look at their behavior now — in that context it’s not surprising at all.”