New Zealand Herald: We are heading for hell in a fossil-fuelled handcart, spinning towards implosion. Planet Earth is not able to keep pace with humanity's demands nor cope with its wasteful by-products. And the gap - the "ecological overshoot" - is growing. This bleakest of prognoses for our planet's future comes from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which this week released its ninth Living Planet Report. It is a cry for help (if anyone is listening): * Biodiversity - the number and range of species - is in freefall,...

SciDev.Net: Talks on the proposed outcome document for nations to sign at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Brazil next month (20-22 June), have been marked by divisions on some of the key concepts such as a green economy, and the institutional framework for sustainable development -- as well as individual words and phrases. The latest round of 'informal-informal' negotiations in New York this month (27 April--4 May) finished with little agreement and the outcome document was running...

Inter Press Service: The latest session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), taking place May 15-25 in the former German capital Bonn, is the perfect opportunity to reaffirm the enormous and growing body of scientific expertise on policies to tackle global warming. During the current session, attended by hundreds of scientists, environmental activists, and government delegates from all over the world, the UNFCCC ? the agency tasked with fulfilling the obligations of the Kyoto Protocol...

Associated Press: And the heat goes on. Forecasters predict toasty temperatures will stretch through the summer in the U.S. And that?s a bad sign for wildfires in the West. The forecast for June through August calls for warmer-than-normal weather for about three-quarters of the nation, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration said Thursday. The warmth is expected south of a line stretching from middle New Jersey to southern Idaho. Only tiny portions of northwestern U.S. and Alaska are predicted to be...

LiveScience: Warming climate may mean less rainfall for drought-sensitive regions of the Southern Hemisphere, a new study says. Hundreds of species of unique South African plants may be affected. "The link between climate change and rainfall in certain latitudes can have large effects on ecosystems," said Paul Filmer, of the National Science Foundation, which funded the work, said in a statement. "Plants, for example, may be able to grow in a wider area, or conversely, be squeezed up a mountain or onto a peninsula....

SAPA: Fynbos, a vegetation found only in the Western Cape, is under serious threat from climate change, according to recent findings by a team of scientists. University of Cape Town professor Michael Meadows and others found that winter rainfall for the province would decrease as the planet warmed due to a build-up of greenhouse gases. Some projections estimated that annual rainfall would reduce between 10 to 30 percent in winter rainfall zones by 2050, threatening more than 5500 endemic plant species....

EurActiv: Arnaud Montebourg, the newly-appointed French minister for "industrial revival" who has built a reputation for his fierce attacks against globalisation, has promised to revive old plans by Nicolas Sarkzoy for a carbon tariff at the EU's borders, an idea previously rejected as protectionist among France's European partners. "We must demand reciprocity," Montebourg told French public television during his first interview as minister, saying he will revive plans for a carbon tariff at the EU's borders...

United Press International: Scientists say climate records from Australasia show there are no other warm periods in the last 1,000 years that match the warming experienced since 1950. A study led by researchers at the University of Melbourne used a range of natural indicators including tree rings, corals and ice cores to study Australasian temperatures over the past millennium and compare them to climate model simulations. "Our study revealed that recent warming in a 1000-year context is highly unusual and cannot be explained...