Berlin zoo reluctantly seeks new home for its growing star attraction as it cannot afford cost of larger enclosure

An ant species that forms huge supercolonies and infests gardens and parks is marching rapidly across Europe and will soon invade the UK, according to entomologists who are monitoring its spread.

The colonies can swell to 10 or 100 times the size of those of common garden ants and scientists warn that they can cause significant damage to plants.

"When I saw this ant for the first time, I simply could not believe there could be so many garden ants in the same lawn," says Prof Jacobus Boomsma at the University of Copenhagen, one of its co-discoverers almost 20 years ago.

"We reckon it's only a matter of time before [it invades the UK]."

The invasive garden ant or Lasius neglectus was first identified in 1990 when it was found infesting an entire neighbourhood in Budapest, Hungary.

"This ant basically looks like the garden ant that everybody knows, so you don't really become suspicious if you see a few of those crawling around because they are everywhere," he said. It has since become a major pest in central Europe and has spread as far as Jena in Germany, Ghent in Belgium and Warsaw in Poland.

Boomsma and his team think it is moved around by the horticultural trade because it hides inside plant pots. "That is the most reasonable hypothesis for how these ants get transported because the ants themselves have lost the ability to fly so they are very poor disbursers," he said.

In research published today in the journal PLoS One, the team used genetic techniques to work out where the ants originated and what makes them so successful at taking over new regions. One reason is that they are able to form super-colonies.

The ants occupy many interconnected nests with many queens. Because they are related, the ants in these nests do not show territorial aggression. When they reach new locations the parasites that usually keep the ants in check are no longer there, so they are able to expand their colonies rapidly.

"We found that invasive garden ants developed from species in the Black Sea region that have natural populations with small networks of interconnected nests with many queens that mate underground and don't fly.

"It is now becoming clear that rather many ant species share this lifestyle, so it is no surprise that a number of them have become invasive pests with giant super-colonies based on the same principles," said Dr Sylvia Cremer, at the University of Regensburg.

Dr Jes Pedersen, a co-author at the University of Copenhagen, said: "The future will therefore see many more ants become invasive, so it is about time we understand their biology. This study is a major step in that direction."

Much of the damage that the invasive garden ant causes is connected with the herds of aphids that it tends. The ants have a symbiotic relationship with the aphids in which the aphids provide sugary food while the ants provide protection from predators.

With the ants around, aphid populations expand to large numbers causing damage to plants and releasing sticky secretions that create a mess on parked cars. Because the ant colonies are so large they can cause a nuisance by invading homes and spoiling food.

Invasive ants have caused much more significant damage in other countries. The imported red fire ant, which has a nasty sting, causes $750m (£500m) of damage in the US each year to crops and livestock. The Argentine ant has spread along 6,000km of coastline in southern Europe, exterminating many local insects.

• Wildlife
• Gardens
• Zoology

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Press the starter button underneath the steering wheel, and the only way you'd know the Mini E is ready for action is the lights winking on the dashboard. Even as it begins to move, the experience is eerily silent, like coasting down a hill.

On the road the Mini E is a quick mover, and its tight steering keeps it nimble in traffic. BMW claims the car should handle like a normal Mini, despite being 20% heavier, and it certainly accelerates like one: put your foot down and you'll be pinned back in your seat.

Power arrives with none of the time lags that plague automatic gearboxes and, on more than one occasion, was punchy enough to make the front wheels spin out on the test route around a snowy Munich.

The suspension, hardened to stop all that extra battery weight bouncing around, makes cornering perfectly level, but, I suspect, less fun and agile at higher speeds.

It's not until you reach a long straight that you can get some noise out of the Mini E. Put your foot down, and the motor gives out a satisfying whine to let you know it's doing some work, its pitch rising and falling with how hard you jab at the accelerator.

It is difficult to tell, from performance alone, that you're in an electric car. The only time it really shows is when you take your foot off the accelerator for the first time - and you find yourself thrown forward as the Mini E's automatic regenerative braking springs into action, the car slowing down dramatically even before you touch the brake pedal.

This automatic braking is there to recycle the energy that would otherwise be wasted as heat into electricity for the battery. Despite this, until batteries become smaller and more efficient, it will have a range limited to 150 miles.

For city drivers on short commutes, school runs, or shopping trips, that range is probably more than enough.

City pedestrians, though, might need some more time to get used to that eerie (lack of) noise.

• Green technology
• Travel and transport
• Automotive industry

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To a casual observer, it looks no different from a standard modern Mini, the British classic reimagined, to great plaudits, by BMW. But look closer and there's something different about the Mini E, the latest addition to the range.

For a start, there are no back seats. And instead of a grease-caked engine under the bonnet there is a neat and clean arrangement of motors, pipes and electronics. On the dashboard, the rev counter is gone, replaced by a dial to show how much power is left in the car's on-board battery. But perhaps the most noticeable thing is the Mini E's lack of noise: step on the accelerator and the car moves off with only the faintest whisper.

Two years in the making, the all-electric Mini E was unveiled at BMW's headquarters in Munich this week. It has arrived just as the EU agreed to slash emissions standards for cars and the UK science minister, Paul Drayson, called on British industry to take electric vehicles into the mainstream to help the country meet ambitious targets to cut carbon emissions.

About 22% of the UK's carbon emissions come from transport, with 13% of these from private cars. According to a study for the Department for Transport, widespread adoption of electric vehicles capable of a range of 50km or more could cut road transport carbon emissions in half.

"When people get out of the Mini E they smile," said Patrick Muller, the engineer at BMW who led the project. "People hear 'electric car' and everybody has a golf cart in mind or something with a flimsy plastic body. Here you get a full-blown car."

The Mini E is powered by a 150kW electric motor fed by a lithium-ion battery, giving it the equivalent of around 200 horsepower. With a top speed of 95mph, the car will travel 150 miles on a full charge and go from zero to 60mph in 8.5 seconds - equivalent to a standard Mini Cooper.

BMW will produce just 500 of the cars at first, destined for urban trials in California, New York and New Jersey. These cars, available to lease early next year for around $850 per month, will be followed by a further trial of 50 cars in Berlin in the summer. A dozen of the cars in the European trial could come to the UK.

"The urban application is the ideal way to find out about everyday use and all-day capability of electric vehicles," said Alexander Thorwirth, BMW's marketing and operations manager. "We want to investigate the habits of users ... and how electric driving works."

Friends of the Earth's senior transport campaigner,Tony Bosworth, said electric cars had a significant part to play in the solutions needed to cut carbon emissions. "However, battery performance must improve, and the electricity should come from renewable energy sources."

The manufacturers claim the Mini E retains the nimble handling of its petrol and diesel-based cousins, but the performance comes at a cost: the back seats have been replaced by the 250kg battery pack, making the Mini E not only a two-seater but also heavier than standard cars.

To squeeze as much range as possible out of the Mini E's batteries its brakes act as power generators, topping up the batteries as the car slows down with energy that would otherwise be wasted as heat. The battery has a life of around 100,000 miles and can be fully charged in under two hours from a high-power socket. A standard household socket will recharge the battery in around 10 hours.

The Mini, designed by Alec Issigonis, first rolled off the production line in 1959. The current model, which still retains many of the original's distinctive features, remains an iconic vehicle.

Mini enthusiasts welcomed the new car. Paul Mullett, editor of the mini2.co.uk website, said there had been much excited discussion as soon as rumours of the Mini E began circulating earlier this year. "I think it's a step in the right direction," he said. "It helps the whole move to alternative fuels as well. If a brand like Mini start using the technology and they get more people interested, it gets more real as opposed to more obscure, smaller start-ups that people maybe don't know."

The Mini E trial cars will be built at the dedicated Mini factory in Oxford before being shipped to BMW headquarters in Munich to have the electric drive trains and batteries fitted. BMW plans to use the results in the US and Europe to inform the conversion of the remainder of its cars into lower-carbon alternatives.

The Mini E is among the first fruits of BMW's Project i, aimed at making cars of the future more environmentally friendly. "We don't think the internal combustion engine is going to disappear in the next five years, that's clear, but we need to open up alternatives," said Muller.

Last month the government announced a £100m package to accelerate the development and deployment of low-carbon vehicles in the UK. It included £20m to buy electric and low-carbon vans for public sector organisations.

• Travel and transport
• Automotive industry
• Carbon emissions
• Green politics
• Transport policy
• Green technology
• Climate change

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Letter: Our own government is trying to wriggle out of its climate commitments

The CBI warned yesterday that government would not meet its ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions unless it introduced bolder policies including new financial incentives, but said the global economic crisis was no reason for either side to slam the brakes on.

Richard Lambert, the director-general of the main employers' body, said he supported a ministerial drive to tackle climate change and cut greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 but the right framework for investment needed to be in place if the private sector was to develop the necessary technologies.

"We must not let the global economic crisis become an excuse for inaction on climate change. Now more than ever, we need to secure a binding EU climate change deal, or the opportunity to make the transition to a low-carbon economy will slip through our fingers," he added.

The government had made a promising start by setting up a new Department for Energy and Climate Change plus creating a new planning act. But 300 wind farms still awaited planning approvals, companies needed incentives to cut non-carbon emissions and further financial help was needed to speed-up the insulation of homes, Lambert said at a special climate change conference organised by the CBI and attended by Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary.

Miliband praised Lambert and other business leaders for setting the pace on green initiatives. Britain would continue to lead the way on climate change and he insisted it was not the time now for the European Union to row back on previous commitments when it met to discuss climate change at Poznan in Poland next week.

• Climate change
• Carbon emissions

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A pair of swans flew through the last day of November. The air was still and cold and the swans' wings sounded like fingers rubbed against wet glass. The sun struggled out of fog a couple of hours before and there was only half an hour of daylight left when the swans went by. The trees had stopped dripping and it was one degree above freezing. The last couple of days had been lost in a freezing fog and the landscape was touched by the genius of frost. This had been an air not a ground frost, and everything above the green and muddy brown surface of the earth was sugared in rime.

Grass stems, hedge twigs, hawthorn berries, tree branches, all had a wing of ice along their leeward edges up to 50mm thick. Spider webs looked like white plastic. Prickly margins of holly leaves were decorated like something in a Christmas card. Dog rose hips had ice trails like tiny scarlet comets. An arctic wind had left its aerodynamic signature on everything that could not move.

Some things were moving. Through the fog, a mixed flock of chaffinch, great and blue tits in a tall dense hedge, redwings in hawthorns above the quarry, a mistle thrush in a sweet briar, all moved with a quiet secrecy. A shotgun sounded like a door slamming in the fog far away. Although visibility was down to a couple of hundred metres, less at times, the low sun pierced through for moments of wonder. Then, hedges and groups of trees looked as if they were covered in dazzling white blossom.

On the dip slope of Wenlock Edge where the sun did appear, the fields and hedges began to thaw a little. But in the woods of the scarp slope, a fogbound, frozen world persisted in a stillness broken only by a roll of breeze or squirrels chasing through trees sending a skitter of ice from high branches. Swan-white with a brutal beauty, winter, in case we've forgotten, is the old original superpower.

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President Lula announces plan to significantly slow the rate of the rainforest's destruction by 2017

Imperialist leanings

First, he described the green movement as "too narrow, too technical, too anti-business, too depressing, often too dowdy" in his book Capitalism: As If the World Matters. Now Jonathon Porritt is at it again. The ex-Friends of the Earth chief has launched a stinging attack on Greenpeace on his website, after the group failed to publish an article he penned on overpopulation. "They have just told me they can't use it - too controversial apparently," he writes. "If ever an article's core hypothesis (in this case, that environmental NGOs are both gutless and less than honest in addressing population issues) was borne out by its editorial treatment, then this has to be it." Ouch. Here's an extract from the offending piece: "The willful ignorance of environmentalists is one of the reasons why funding for family planning and reproductive healthcare has been falling over the last decade." John Sauven, director of Greenpeace, says the article could still be published, despite being "unbalanced and out of kilter with what the real issue is". He says it should address issues of equity and consumption in the west, rather than population growth in developing countries: "I'd want to publish my own article next to it. This is a Greenpeace publication and people could pick it up and think we're a bunch of imperialists."

The future is brown

Sick of the phoney overuse of the word green by polluting companies? Eco web-site Off Grid has an idea. It's launched "a campaign to switch to the word 'brown' - think the Brown party and Brownpeace". It says: "We need something the marketers will never want to appropriate - and that's why brown may be the new green. It's the colour of the Earth, of dirt - it reminds us that things smell as they compost, it reassures us that we do not necessarily need to put on a clean white shirt to go to work."

A quiet Cubby hole

Three cheers for the Forestry Commission, which has marked the sad death of Cumbrian wildlife stalwart John Cubby by renaming a Lake District tarn after him. Cubby, who died last year, was head wildlife ranger at the commission's Grizedale Forest Park for over 30 years. The former Low Fell Tarn, in a quiet corner of the forest, with its wildfowl, deer and other woodland creatures, will now be forever known as Cubby's Tarn.

Won for all

And three cheers more for the Tree Musketeers, and not just for their great name. The London-based conservation group's sterling efforts to plant, protect and care for trees in the borough of Hackney have been recognised this week with an award from the mayor's office. The group's 10-year mission, including the replanting of Stoke Newington Common, has been carried out with no core funds or paid workers. All for none, if you like.

Soaring cost

Just how much of the ozone layer are we willing to sacrifice to tackle global warming? Some real-life rocket scientists in the US have discovered that the exhaust fumes from their noisy toys could be having a much worse impact on ozone than anybody realised. The effect is trivial compared to CFC-like chemicals, but if the number of launches were to grow (to launch a giant mirror in space, say) then so would the resulting ozone destruction. Experts will tell the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco later this month that launching enough rockets to build "mirrors or sunshade" could wipe out up to one-fifth of the ozone - five times the total amount destroyed by human activity to date. "It is not clear" that this would be acceptable, they deadpan.

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Despite forecasting an oil supply crunch and soaring prices, industry watchdogs are sticking to the line that production can go on rising. David Strahan reports

Qatar has asked Kenya to lease it 40,000 hectares of land to grow crops as part of a proposed package that would also see the Gulf state fund a new £2.4bn port on the popular tourist island of Lamu off the east African country.

The deal is the latest example of wealthy countries and companies trying to secure food supplies from the developing world.

Other Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have also been negotiating leases of large tracts of farmland in countries such as Sudan and Senegal since the global food shortages and price rises earlier this year.

The Kenyan president, Mwai Kibaki, returned from a visit to Qatar on Monday. His spokesman said the request for land in the Tana river delta, south of Lamu, in north-east Kenya was being seriously considered.

"Nothing comes for free," said Isaiah Kabira. "If you want people to invest in your country then you have to make concessions."

But the deal is likely to cause concern in Kenya where fertile land is unequally distributed. Several prominent political families own huge tracts of farmland, while millions of people live in densely packed slums.

The country is also experiencing a food crisis, with the government forced to introduce subsidies and price controls on maize this week after poor production and planning caused the price of the staple "ugali" flour to double in less than a year.

Kibaki said that Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani was keen to invest in a second port to complement Mombasa, which serves as a gateway for goods bound for Uganda and Rwanda and is struggling to cope with the large volumes of cargo.

By building docks in Lamu, Kenya hopes to open a new trade corridor that will give landlocked Ethiopia and the autonomous region of Southern Sudan access to the Indian Ocean. Kabira said that if the financing was agreed, construction of the port would begin in 2010.

Qatar, which has large oil and gas revenues, imports most of its food, as most of its land is barren desert and just 1% is suitable for arable farming. It has already reportedly struck deals this year to grow rice in Cambodia, maize and wheat in Sudan and vegetables in Vietnam.

Much of the produce will be exported to the Gulf. Qatar's foreign ministry in Doha did not return calls today, but Kabira said that its intention was to grow "vegetables and fruit" in Kenya.

The area proposed for the farming project is near the Tana river delta where the Kenyan government owns nearly 500,000 hectares (1.3m acres) of uncultivated land.

But a separate agreement to allow a local company to grow sugarcane and build a factory in the area has attracted fierce opposition from environmentalists who say a pristine ecosystem of mangrove swamps, savannah and forests will be destroyed.

Pastoralists, who regard the land as communal and rear up to 60,000 cattle to graze in the delta each dry season, are also opposed to the plan.

"We will have to ensure that this new project is properly explained to the people before it can go ahead," said Kabira.

The sudden rush by foreign governments and companies to secure food supplies in Africa has some experts worried. Jacques Diouf, director general of the UN's food and agricultural organisation (FAO), recently spoke of the risk of a "neo-colonial" agricultural system emerging.

The FAO said some of the first overseas projects by Gulf companies in Sudan, where more than 5 million people receive international food aid, showed limited local benefits, with much of the specialist labour and farming inputs imported.

A deal struck last month by Daewoo Logistics and Madagascar to grow crops on 1.3m hectares of land also attracted strong criticism. While the South Korean firm has promised to provide local jobs and will have to invest in building roads and farming infrastructure, it is paying no upfront fee and has a 99-year lease.

• Food
• Kenya

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European leaders have agreed a deal relaxing new rules to cut car pollution and reduce the penalties for the automotive industry if their vehicles continue to spew out high levels of carbon dioxide, while setting a more ambitious longer-term target for slashing emissions from new cars.

Under the deal reached by French officials and members of the European parliament late on Monday, the big European car companies will be given a longer leeway to reduce CO2 emissions from new cars while fines levied on those breaking the new law have been dramatically cut.

Green pressure groups denounced the deal as capitulation to the powerful car lobby led by Germany. But EU officials, MEPs and European governments hailed the agreement as a breakthrough in a crucial part of the EU's ambitious climate change package.

"This is one of the most important results the EU is bringing to the [UN climate change] conference in Poznan," said Guido Sacconi, an Italian socialist MEP who led the negotiations with the French government that currently holds the EU presidency.

Monday night's agreement comes the week before a major EU summit which is supposed to approve the European climate change package aimed at cutting greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020. The complex negotiations surrounding four pieces of legislation which are to make the targets binding for 27 countries and European industries have hit several hurdles.

Frantic mediation is going on in Brussels, with the French haggling with the parliament and with the 27 governments over renewable energy commitments, the EU's emissions trading scheme, the auctioning of permits for the scheme, whether or not they should be free or which industries should be exempted. Another thorny issue is over how to finance around a dozen pilot carbon capture and storage schemes, which would bury the emissions from coal-fired power stations.

Poland and eight other central European countries are in an insurrectionary mood, complaining that wealthy western Europe should bear the brunt of the package, that their electricity bills will rocket if they sign up for the scheme and that Poland in particular is being unfairly penalised because 94% of its electricity is coal-based.

Italy is also threatening to block agreement on the grounds that the package will prove too expensive at a time of economic recession. Germany is also driving a hard bargain.

"This will go down to the wire at the summit," said an EU diplomat.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is to go to Gdansk on the Baltic coast at the weekend to try to finesse a compromise with the nine central European countries in what a senior Polish official described as "the moment of truth".

Despite the air of tension and nervousness in Brussels, the agreement on car pollution suggests that Sarkozy will cobble together an overall package that preserves the key targets – a 20% reduction in greenhouse gases with 20% of Europe's energy mix also coming from renewable sources by 2020.

The conflicts are not over the targets, but over how to achieve them and how to divide the costs and burdens.

In the case of the rules for car emissions, the initial proposals from the European commission last year called for all new cars were to emit 130g/km of carbon dioxide by 2012, as an average across a manufacturer's fleet. That compares to current levels of almost 160g. Cars are responsible for around 10% of Europe's CO2 emissions.

Under the compromise now reached, the targets are being staggered over three years – two=thirds of cars are to reach that target by 2012, three-quarters by 2013, 80% by 2014 and all by 2015.

Fines on companies exceeding the target were to have kicked in at €20 per excess gram on a rising scale, but are now to start off at €5.

Yesterday's deal also set a new and lower target of 95g/km for emissions by 2020 - that had not been stipulated in the draft legislation.

Smaller or niche car manufacturers that produce only high emission vehicles, such as the UK's Jaguar and Landrover, will be able to ask for special "derogations" exceeding the mandatory targets as long as they reduce emissions by 25%.

• Travel and transport
• Carbon emissions
• Climate change
• Fossil fuels
• Automotive industry
• Europe

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Stephanie Mangold: America's big three car makers are begging for a bailout. But had they made the right choices they wouldn't be in dire straits

Europe's biggest onshore wind farm plugged itself into the grid today to provide enough electricity for up to a million people in northern Portugal.

A total of 120 windmills are dotted across the highlands of the Upper Minho region of Portugal as one of western Europe's poorer nations continues to forge its reputation as a renewables champion.

"Europe's largest onshore wind farm is now fully operational," a spokeswoman for France's EDF Energies Nouvelles, which co-owns the farm, announced this morning.

The two megawatt turbines on each windmill deliver electricity to a single connection point with the electricity grid and should supply around 1% of Portugal's total energy needs.

A second, smaller wind farm is already functioning nearby, giving a combined output of 650 gigawatt hours per year. "That is above 1% of national consumption," said Nuno Ribeiro da Silva, head of the VentoMinho company that runs the farm.

That would provide enough energy for 300,000 homes, or most of the northern city of Viana do Castelo and its surrounding districts, he told the Publico newspaper.

Portugal's mixture of government enthusiasm, subsidies and special tariffs has turned it into one of the focal points of renewables development in Europe over the past five years.

The world's largest solar photovoltaic farm is being built near the southern town of Moura. The Moura solar farm, which will include a research centre, should be twice the size of any other in the world when it is fully up and running in two years time.

Portugal also recently inaugurated the world's first commercial wave power plant in the Atlantic Ocean off Aguçadoura, using technology developed in Scotland.

The country is heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels and has set a target of obtaining 31% of energy needs from renewables by the year 2020. That is more than twice the UK target. It also uses its subsidies policy to insist that manufacturers of turbines and solar panels set up production plants.

"By 2010 we will have 5,000MW of wind energy installed, meaning we will have increased it tenfold in just five years," economy minister Manuel Pinho said. "This is another step towards putting our country in the vanguard of what is being done with renewable energy."

Portugal, which claims to be one of the world's top five renewable energy countries, provides subsidies of up to 40% for new projects.

The world's largest onshore wind farms are in the United States, with the Horse Hollow farm in Texas providing more than 700MW.

These will soon be dwarfed by proposed offshore wind farms of up to 5,000MW each.

• Wind power
• Renewable energy
• Energy
• Portugal

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Barack Obama has put the environment at the top of his agenda and that's exciting, writes Bryony Worthington from Sandbag.org.uk, part of the Guardian Environment Network

Editorial: This a brave, bold step and Gordon Brown is to be congratulated for taking it

Lord Turner has two jobs. The first, as chair of the Financial Services Authority, is to save capitalism. The second, as chair of the committee on climate change, is to save the biosphere from the impacts of capitalism. I have no idea how well he is discharging the first task, but if his approach to the second one is anything to go by, you should dump your shares and buy gold.

His climate change report, published yesterday, is long, detailed and impressive. It has the admirable objective of trying to cap global warming at two degrees or a little more. This, it says, means that greenhouse gas pollution in the UK should fall by 80% by 2050 and by 31% by 2020. But there's a problem. There is no longer any likely relationship between an 80% cut and two degrees of warming. This gets a little complicated, but please bear with me while I explain why Turner's proposal is about as likely to stop runaway climate change as the Maginot Line was to hold back the Luftwaffe.

The 80% cut he recommends for the UK more or less matches a global target of 50% by 2050. A 50% global cut, the report says, would make roughly two degrees of warming a "central expectation" and would reduce the probability of four degrees (which it calls "extremely dangerous climate change") to less than 1%.

Turner claims that to keep the temperature rise close to two degrees, the world's greenhouse gas emissions must peak in 2016 then fall by either 3% or 4% a year. A 3% rate of decline is most likely to deliver a temperature rise of 2.2 degrees this century; a 4% annual cut would produce about a 2.1 degree rise. That's more or less consistent with his 2050 targets.

So far so good. But a recent paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, using the same sources, comes to completely different conclusions. It agrees that to deliver a reasonable chance of preventing more than two degrees of warming, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere need to stabilise at a maximum of 450 parts per million, carbon dioxide equivalent (ppmCO2e). But it shows that to achieve this, global emissions of greenhouse gases from the parts of the system we can control need to peak by 2015, then fall by 6%-8% a year between 2020 and 2040, leading to "full decarbonisation sometime soon after 2050". Even this, it shows, relies on an optimistic reading of the current data. Turner's suggested cuts are more likely to produce four degrees of warming than two degrees.

The difference between the two reports comes down to this: Turner assumes that greenhouse gases can rise to 500 ppmCO2e before falling back to 450. The other paper shows that this is a dangerous assumption. Not only does this mean that the cut comes far too late but, far from falling back, the enhanced levels in the atmosphere are likely to trigger more emissions as the biosphere starts producing more greenhouse gases than it absorbs. We cannot afford to overshoot.

Last week a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters produced what could be the first hard evidence that runaway global feedback has begun. In 2007 methane levels in the atmosphere, which had previously levelled off, began rising again. The most likely reason is that the Siberian permafrost is melting, as a result of the runaway warming of the Arctic. This wasn't supposed to begin for another 80 years. The great global meltdown appears to have started, yet Turner proposes that we carry on with the old plan as if nothing has changed. We're still digging trenches, even as the sky fills with bomber planes.

My reading of the new projections suggests that to play its part in preventing two degrees of global warming, the UK needs to cut greenhouse gases by roughly 25% from current levels by the end of 2012 - a quarter in four years. But how the heck could this be done? Here is a list of measures that could be enacted almost immediately. They require no economic or technological miracles; but they do demand that the government is brave enough to govern.

1 Immediately renegotiate the European Emissions Trading Scheme, imposing a lower cap on carbon pollution and the mandatory sale of all emissions permits to the industries covered by the scheme (currently over 90% are given away).

2 Use the money this raises for:

a. A crash programme for training builders. As the major component of a green new deal - delivering jobs as well as carbon cuts - the government will immediately launch training schemes for tens of thousands of specialist builders, insulators, window-fitters, plasterers and decorators.

b. A home improvement scheme like Germany's, but twice as fast. Every year between January 2010 and 2020, 10% of homes will be fully insulated and fitted with good windows or secondary glazing, at state expense. Landlords will have a legal obligation to join, or lose their right to take tenants. Announce that when the scheme is complete, gas and electricity bills will be subject to an escalating tariff: the more you use, the more you will have to pay for every unit.

3 Announce that incandescent lightbulbs will no longer be sold in the UK from next April. Announce that no fridge or freezer with an energy rating below grade A++, and no other appliance rated below grade A, will be sold from next July.

4 Increase vehicle excise duty for the most polluting cars to £3,000 a year (from the current £400). Use the money this raises to:

a. Start closing key urban streets to private cars and dedicating them to public transport and cycling.

b. Increase the public subsidy for bus and train journeys. Oblige the bus companies to sign contracts providing a wider range of services. Give us the integrated low-carbon transport we have long been promised, in which buses are scheduled to meet trains, buses and trains carry bicycles, and safe cycle lanes connect with each other across entire cities.

c. Train thousands of new coach drivers and public transport operators. Create coach lanes on all motorways and start moving coach stations from the city centres to the motorway junctions, to enable coach travel to become as fast and efficient as car travel. Link them to city centres with dedicated bus lanes.

d. Scrap the airport expansion programme. Set a cap on the number of landing slots, which will fall every year until it reaches 5% of current capacity.

5 Stop the burning of moorland because this exposes and oxidises peat. Grouse shoots (which are mostly responsible) produce a staggering proportion of the UK's emissions.

6 Stop all opencast coal mining and rescind planning permission for new works. Impose stonking taxes on the extraction of all fossil fuels.

Is this enough? No. But it puts us on the right track. It's all a gamble from now on: the only reliable advice is that we shouldn't start from here. But two decades of procrastination ensure that only emergency measures now have a chance of preventing a climate disaster. What Turner's report - polite, measured and impressive as it is - proposes is more procrastination.

monbiot.com

• Climate change
• Carbon emissions

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The road between Blandford and Wimborne runs for two and a half miles under the tall green arches formed by the grand colonnades of beech that William John Bankes laid out in 1835 as part of the Kingston Lacey estate. Counting the trees as you go is a familiar pastime. There were originally 731 - 365 on one side and 366 on the other. But now there are only 541; the trees are suffering from old age. Twenty-one have been felled this year, while 68 others have been treated to prolong their lives.

The National Trust plans to plant hornbeam to reproduce something like the grandeur of Bankes's vision. The horse chestnut trees beside our road, too, have a sad, brittle and lifeless look. They are suffering from bleed canker, and two similarly infected have already been felled in the next village. The same disease has ruined another fine avenue which, like Bankes's, is a feature of a planned landscape on a National Trust estate, this one at Barrington Court, which came into the hands of the trust at the turn of the century. Then the Lyle family took over the lease, undertook the restoration, and, with Gertrude Jekyll's advice, created a model estate. We were shown two drives in cross-shaped formation, bordered by the diseased trees; they suffer from the leaf miner insect, which curls and browns their leaves. But it is the bleeding canker that is fatal. The head gardener pointed to the oozy black patches, marks of the lesions that block the trees' circulation so that the wood dies. There are already gaps where some trees have been felled for safety. The rest will go over the next few years. A National Trust leaflet - "Avenue under attack" - takes a positive view: "People have made their mark on this estate for 500 years, and the restoration of the avenue will be just one more stage in its evolution."

• Rural affairs

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You step out of the solar-heated shower, only fill the kettle for one cup of coffee, and wince at the latest electric bill while it boils. In the background, the radio news reports that renewable energy has passed one-third of UK electricity supply. Before going out you turn off the master switch for all your appliances. Then you climb into your electric car for the drive to work. The roads are noticeably quieter, and there have been studies showing asthma admissions are falling as petrol and diesel cars are replaced.

This is a vision of life just over a decade away, painted yesterday in a report by the government's climate change committee. On the surface, life would go on almost as it does now, but underlying the daily routine things could look rather different.

Electricity would increasingly come from renewable sources - at first mostly wind, then later tidal power, biomass burning and geothermal energy. Homes and offices would be insulated to minimise energy loss, and efficient appliances would become the norm. Clean electricity would take over home heating and power a growing number of electric vehicles.

Subtle changes to behaviour would be second nature: turning off appliances, driving a bit slower, wearing a jumper at home, using the cold washing machine cycle, choosing unusual meat cuts over carbon-intensive meats such as beef.

David Kennedy, the climate change committee's chief executive, said: "Let's not underestimate the energy efficiency that gives you more [savings] than lifestyle change, but there are things that can really make a difference, such as simply switching lights off when you leave the room and turning the thermostat down."

There would likely be visible and audible changes: quieter streets, more wind turbines on the horizon, but also, as farmers use less fertiliser, more trout and salmon in rivers, while countryside bird populations should flourish.

Living conditions would not be reduced, said Kennedy. "It's not a question of undermining standards of living; it's not saying don't drive your car or go on holiday. It's about small modifications, and that's useful from a climate change perspective and a personal perspective."

• Climate change
• Green politics
• Carbon emissions
• Carbon capture and storage (CCS)

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Seas surrounding an archipelago near the tip of the Antarctic peninsula are richer in animal life than the Galapagos islands, scientists claim today. Their findings challenge the notion that tropical regions are more rich in species than the poles.

Much less is known about the South Orkney islands than the tropical islands that helped to shape Charles Darwin's thoughts about natural selection on his Beagle voyage.

But according to a study published today by the Journal of Biogeography, the sea around them is teeming with a huge variety of life, disproving the notion that chilly polar waters have a much poorer variety of fauna.

"There has been a long-held belief that the tropics are rich and the polar regions are poor and mid-latitudes are somewhere in between," said Dr David Barnes at the British Antarctic Survey, who led the study, part of the international census of marine life. "This is the first time we've been able to actually look at the fauna of a polar archipelago - it is not actually that poor at all."

Barnes said the reason for carrying out the survey was to establish a baseline from which changes in biodiversity due to global warming could be judged: "This is in the part of the world with fastest change in terms of temperature." The Antarctic peninsula has experienced warming of 3C over the past 50 years. "If you don't know what the fauna is at any one point it is very difficult to detect either species moving in or species moving out," he added.

The survey recorded 1,224 species in 50 different biological classes. The team discovered five new species and one genus - the biological category that is higher than species - that was new to science.

The new discoveries are all sea mosses (bryozoans) or isopods (woodlouse-like animals) but they have not been given names yet.

The team also scoured reports from scientific expeditions and scientific literature going back decades to find every mention of species observed in the region, in an attempt to create the most complete and authoritative list of creatures found there. Barnes's team had to brave biting winds that frequently stopped them working, and watch for attacks by orcas (killer whales) and leopard seals. If either predator came near they had to climb on to the British Antarctic Survey's royal research vessel James Clark Ross or scramble to shore.

"Although that sounds dramatic, weather is a far bigger issue," said Barnes. "It stops us working far more and makes our work far more hazardous ... Sometimes it's much warmer under the water - it's only -1.5 [degrees]!"

Once under water the view is spectacular, said Barnes, who has dived all over the world: "I don't think I've been anywhere where you can see so many different types of major groups of animals all in one place."

As well as diving in the shallows, they also trawled the sea bottom to a depth of 1,500m using nets and a special sled with a sieve that held everything bigger than 0.3mm.

Isles apart

Galapagos 600 miles from Ecuador. Discovered in 1535 by Fray Tomás de Berlanga, Bishop of Panama. Darwin arrived in 1835 during Beagle voyage

South Orkneys 350 miles north-east of Antarctic peninsula. Discovered in 1821 by sealers. Never visited by Darwin

• Wildlife
• Antarctica

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