Tim Flannery nailed it when he reflected that one of the obstacles to decisive action on climate change is that the whole idea of global warming has become a cliché even before it has been understood.

There are many ways to interpret this, ...

An area of the Congo seven times the size of Belgium is under siege by loggers, who leave a legacy of denuded landscapes, displaced people, and fauna without habitat. There are at least 11,000 identified plant species in the country, of which 3,200 are endemic to the DRC.

In my last entry I took a page from the Weather Makers, and cited Tim Flannery’s observation that one of the obstacles to decisive action on climate change is that the whole idea of global warming has become a cliché even before it has been understood.

My example of a cliché was the Kyoto protocol, which people talk about without really paying attention to. Kyoto is largely just a symbol of our feelings about global warming, rather than an indication that we’re ...

No one can have failed to notice the shift in public perception of climate change in the past few months: the scientific debate, dangerously prolonged, is truly over. But this is not in itself a victory for those who are struggling to avert planetary disaster (as I’m sure most readers are well aware). Before there is anything to celebrate, we’ll ...

A note from Australia’s minister of the environment to Zerofootprint founder and CEO Ron Dembo.

In case you were hoping climate change would spare North America…it won’t. The IPCC is releasing a report detailing what North Americans can expect. Expect hot weather, more pollution, and more pollen. Brace yourselves.

Imagine discovering a Roman newspaper from, say, 23 August 410 AD.

On that day, the Goths had the city under siege. They had already demanded, and had been given, five thousand pounds of gold, thirty thousand pounds of silver, four thousand silken tunics, ...

The most familiar plea made by environmentalists warning us of the immanent disappearance of this or that species is a question: how will we explain the absence of the polar bear, or the manatee, or a certain species of eagle, to our children?

It ...

Carbon offsetting provokes a powerful emotional response in some people. They just don’t like the idea that you can pay someone else to mop up your carbon emissions. It smacks of indulgence and cheating. Critics say buying an offset while continuing to fly, or drive an SUV, or live in a mansion with all the lights on, is at ...

One of the biggest problems with offsetting is ensuring ‘additionality’ – proving that the offsets that you are buying in order to counterbalance your carbon emissions would not have happened without yours and other similar contributions. Often the projects sound intrinsically worthwhile – protecting threatened original forest, supporting conversion to renewable energy, installing low energy light bulbs, etc. – and ...