By Alex Massie, Richard Spencer and Rahul Bedi
    The Telegraph UK

    Wednesday 01 November 2006

    United States

    The White House offered a cool response to the review, acknowledging that it was a "contribution" to the study of global warming but declining to endorse its findings.

    The US energy industry was less cautious, accusing Nicholas Stern of producing a report that owed more to "science fiction" than economic reality. "The Stern report is fun with numbers for political purposes. It's easy to make guesses; it's harder to pin down reality," said an industry spokesman.

    Analysts in Washington said the report demonstrated the difficulty of forecasting the economic impact of climate change. "When it comes to the science of climate change, we hear a lot about consensus but the consensus argument disappears when you move into the economic cost of global warming."

    "You can find almost as many benefits as you can costs" said Jerry Taylor, an expert in energy policy at the Cato Institute. "The Book of Revelations scenarios offered in the press don't stand up."

    Although President George W Bush has asked for more funds to be spent on energy research next year, the federal government currently spends just half as much on the subject as it did in 1979.

    By Larry Elliott
    The Guardian UK

    Tuesday 31 October 2006

New technologies and removal of barriers to change seen as key factors.

    The Stern review makes it clear that there is more to reducing the risks from global warming than making consumers pay more for long-haul flights or the use of gas-guzzling cars: "Three elements of policy for mitigation are essential: a carbon price, technology policy and the removal of barriers to international change. Leaving out any one of these elements will significantly increase the costs of action."

    Sir Nicholas's starting point is that the world needs to put a price on carbon. Economic theory says prices are set by the forces of demand and supply, but the report says global warming represents the failure of the market on a colossal scale.

    The reason is that the price of a cheap flight to eastern Europe or of a bunch of hothouse flowers flown in from east Africa does not include the cost to the environment. By international agreement, airline fuel is exempt from tax.

    "Greenhouse gases are, in economic terms, an externality," the report says. "Those who produce greenhouse gas emissions are bringing about climate change, thereby imposing costs on the world and on future generations, but they do not face the full consequences of their actions themselves."

    By George Monbiot
    The Guardian UK

    Tuesday 31 October 2006

The government must go further, and much faster, in its response to the moral question of the 21st century.

    It is a testament to the power of money that Nicholas Stern's report should have swung the argument for drastic action, even before anyone has finished reading it. He appears to have demonstrated what many of us suspected: that it would cost much less to prevent runaway climate change than to seek to live with it. Useful as this finding is, I hope it doesn't mean that the debate will now concentrate on money. The principal costs of climate change will be measured in lives, not pounds. As Stern reminded us yesterday, there would be a moral imperative to seek to prevent mass death even if the economic case did not stack up.

    But at least almost everyone now agrees that we must act, if not at the necessary speed. If we're to have a high chance of preventing global temperatures from rising by 2C (3.6F) above preindustrial levels, we need, in the rich nations, a 90% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030. The greater part of the cut has to be made at the beginning of this period. To see why, picture two graphs with time on the horizontal axis and the rate of emissions plotted vertically. On one graph the line falls like a ski jump: a steep drop followed by a shallow tail. On the other it falls like the trajectory of a bullet. The area under each line represents the total volume of greenhouse gases produced in that period. They fall to the same point by the same date, but far more gases have been produced in the second case, making runaway climate change more likely.

Continue below for some brilliant suggestions by Mr. Monbiot. 

    By Colin Brown and Rupert Cornwell
    The Independent UK

    Tuesday 31 October 2006

    Washington - Climate change has been made the world's biggest priority, with the publication of a stark report showing that the planet faces catastrophe unless urgent measures are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

    Future generations may come to regard the apocalyptic report by Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist at the World Bank, as the turning point in combating global warming, or as the missed opportunity.

    As well as producing a catastrophic vision of hundreds of millions fleeing flooding and drought, Sir Nicholas suggests that the cost of inaction could be a permanent loss of 20 per cent of global output.

    That equates to a figure of £3.68 trillion - while to act quickly would cost the equivalent of £184bn annually, 1 per cent of world GDP.

    Across the world, environmental groups hailed the report as the beginning of a new era on climate change, but the White House maintained an ominous silence. However, the report laid down a challenge to the US, and other major emerging economies including China and India, that British ministers said cannot be ignored.

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    By Clayton Sandell
    ABC News

    Friday 27 October 2006

Democrats and Republicans say stop funding global warming doubters.

    Washington - ExxonMobil should stop funding groups that have spread the idea that global warming is a myth and that try to influence policymakers to adopt that view, two senators said today in a letter to the oil company.

    In their letter to ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., appealed to Exxon's sense of corporate responsibility, asking the company to "come clean about its past denial activities."

    The two senators called on ExxonMobil to "end any further financial assistance" to groups "whose public advocacy has contributed to the small but unfortunately effective climate change denial myth."

    Phone calls to ExxonMobil were not immediately returned to ABC News.

    An upcoming study from the Union of Concerned Scientists reported that ExxonMobil funded 29 climate change denial groups in 2004 alone. Since 1990, the report said, the company has spent more than $19 million funding groups that promote their views through publications and Web sites that are not peer reviewed by the scientific community.

    By Amy Lorentzen
    The Associated Press

    Wednesday 25 October 2006

    Gary Larsen, who grows corn and soybeans in western Iowa, is among a growing number of farmers who are concerned about the potential effects of global warming.

    Like Larsen, many in the agriculture industry are developing or adopting new technologies and farming methods to brace for the possibility of widespread drought and crop-pounding storms.

    The industry has been especially aggressive in breeding and developing crops that more efficiently use soil moisture and nutrients and developing pest-resistant and drought-tolerant crops.

    "We don't know how the world could actually turn out, but doing absolutely nothing and sticking your head in the sand is not an option," said Larsen, a 63-year-old grandfather who lives near Elk Horn.