Europe should impose a unilateral cut in greenhouse gas emissions of 30% by 2020, according to climate economist Sir Nicholas Stern. Under the EU’s agreement about how to divide up the cuts that would spell a UK reduction of 42% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels. Lord Stern described this as “challenging but possible”. He [...]

Sea levels are likely to rise by about 1.4m (4ft 6in) globally by 2100 as polar ice melts, according to a major review of climate change in Antarctica. Conducted by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), it says that warming seas are accelerating melting in the west of the continent. Ozone loss has cooled [...]

Something in the frontier ethic of the ‘big country’ still leads many of its residents to declare: ‘Mate, we don’t believe in climate change.’ Australia is the hottest and, bar Antartica, driest continent on Earth. Parts have been embroiled in record drought for the past decade, leaving reservoirs empty and agriculture decimated. Things got so bad [...]

The notorious Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, best known for putting themselves between whalers’ harpoons and their prey, has purchased some speed in the form of a world-record holding powerboat. The Ady Gil, previously known as the Earthrace, will next month launch from Australia to confront Japanese whale-hunting trawlers. As Earthrace, the bio-diesel powered boat went [...]

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world’s peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country’s government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee’s tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and [...]

While penguins may be celebrated in film for their triumphs on land (and aided outside the water during the cold by their compact feathers, including up to 70 feathers per square inch), these intriguing fellas do spend nearly 3/4 of their lives in the water. So what is the key to their success? Chalk it [...]

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In two weeks’ time, seven-year-old Gabriel Anderson will be in the centre of Copenhagen, climbing on to a step to address the crowds at the end of another Performance Family Picnic. Gabriel, his brothers Sid (the family’s two-year-old “head of research”) and Neal, nine, plus his parents, artists and lecturers Gary Anderson and Lena Simic, [...]