News stories by Analysis by Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Nov 03 (IPS) - "Greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are higher than ever, and we're seeing more and more extreme weather and climate events….We can't prevent a large scale disaster if we don't heed this kind of hard science."

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 22 (IPS) - Acting on climate change will not hurt domestic economic growth, and in fact is more likely to boost growth, most analyses now show.

Global leaders will gather next week in Durban, South Africa to determine how to cap global warming at two degrees Celsius. This limit would entail de facto agreement to a global carbon budget of no more than 660 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions between now and 2050, climate science says.

All the analysis and commentary about safety and security on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 ignored by far the biggest ongoing threat to global security: climate change.

The United States' biggest environmental groups put aside their differences last week to make an urgent intervention on the country's addiction to oil. The first step on the long road to recovery, they say, is to stop the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline that will 'mainline' the world's dirtiest oil from northern Canada into the U.S. heartland.

Political will is all that's needed to bring electricity to the 2.5 billion people with no or unreliable access to power, or to feed the one billion who go hungry every day, or to finally begin to slash carbon emissions to avoid dangerous climate change, or just about any other global problem.

If we're lucky, by the time a tough but fair international treaty to meet the climate change challenge is finalised, it will be largely unnecessary. The snail's pace of negotiations certainly gives countries plenty of time to understand the financial, social and environmental advantages of kicking their dangerous addiction to fossil fuels.

The G8's failure to make meaningful commitments on climate last week pushes the world ever closer to global climate catastrophe, experts warn. Without commitments to take action, there is little comfort in G8 countries' agreement to keep overall global warming below 2.0 degrees Celsius.

The roof of our house is on fire while the leaders of our family sit comfortably in the living room below preoccupied with 'political realities' -- that was essentially the message from 1,000 scientists from around the world along with northern indigenous leaders gathered in Quebec City for the International Arctic Change conference that concluded last weekend.