Developing countries, including China and India, are unwilling to sign up to a new global climate-change pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 because the rich world has failed to set a clear example on cutting carbon emissions, according to the United Nations’s top climate official.
Rising food prices could spark worldwide unrest and threaten political stability, the United Nations’s top humanitarian official warned on Tuesday after two days of rioting in Egypt over the doubling of prices of basic foods in a year and protests in other parts of the world.
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/ 31 October 2007
Scientists warned this week that global warming will be "stronger than expected and sooner than expected", after a new analysis showed carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere much faster than predicted. Experts said the rise was caused by soaring economic development in China, and a reduction in the amount of carbon pollution soaked up by the world’s land and oceans.
A UK supermarket aims to tell its consumers how much pollution is caused by the goods they buy. David Adam reports.
A critical meltdown of ice sheets and severe sea level rise could be inevitable because of global warming, the world’s scientists are preparing to warn their governments. New studies of Greenland and Antarctica have forced a United Nations expert panel to conclude there is a 50% chance that widespread ice sheet loss "may no longer be avoided" because of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
A radical plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions by rationing the carbon use of individuals is being drawn up by British government officials. The scheme could force consumers to carry a swipe card that records their personal carbon allocation, with points knocked off each time they buy petrol or tickets for a flight.
European officials are under mounting pressure to tighten the pollution limits on European industry in the second phase of its flagship emissions trading scheme. Such a move is essential, critics said, to restore the scheme’s credibility and to make a meaningful contribution to tackling climate change.
Flowerbeds and hanging baskets are banned, but patios are legitimate. The driveway is allowed, although the car parked there is off limits. And commercial vehicles can still be cleaned, except for taxis, which count as private motorcars. Confused? Millions of home-owners in the United Kingdom were recently, as sweeping hosepipe bans came into force across London.
Humans have provoked the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65-million years ago, according to a United Nations report that calls for unprecedented worldwide efforts to address the slide. The report paints a grim picture of life on Earth, with declining numbers of plants, animals, insects and birds across the globe.
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/ 24 October 2005
Scientists working in Antarctica have discovered an alarming rise in sea temperature that threatens to disrupt populations of penguins, whales, seals and a host of smaller creatures within a few decades. The new study shows the ocean west of the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by more than a degree since the 1960s