Michael McCarthy

The people who care for the environment are not scholars and observers, but active defenders. By Michael McCarthy

It is not only in the icefields and glaciers of the Arctic, visited in a blaze of publicity last week by the Tory leader David Cameron, that the signs of global warming can be found.

Four senior ministers will, this morning, make one of the most embarrassing admissions of the Labour Government's nine years in office - that the official policy for fighting climate change has failed.

A crucial global warming "tipping point" for the Earth, highlighted only last week by the British Government, has already been passed, with devastating consequences.

Tony Blair has admitted that the risks of climate change may be more serious than previously thought. The Prime Minister's concern is revealed today in a book that contains compelling evidence from some of the world's leading scientists of the growing threat to the planet.

The Government is contemplating building a new generation of atomic power stations, and the highly radioactive and dangerous waste - mainly spent nuclear fuel from reactors - is an inescapable by-product of their operation.

Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted.

Spectacular growth now biggest threat to environment.

Britain's main opposition parties are uniting today to call for a tough new policy for tackling climate change.

As Hurricane Rita threatens devastation, scientist.

The Scottish crossbill may be going; the black kite may be coming. Climate change appears to be widely affecting Britain's wild birds, a study shows.

It's the year of the apricot. In the remorseless march of global warming, a small golden fruit may make 2005 one of the most significant years for Britain.

The leaders of the world's biggest developing countries, led by China's President, Hu Jintao, will be at Gleneagles this week to begin a vital dialogue with the rich nations about how to join in the fight against global warming.

One in five of Britain's wild flower species is threatened with extinction, according to the most detailed analysis to date of the British flora.

Worldwide production of essential crops such as wheat, rice, maize and soya beans is likely to be hit much harder by global warming than previously predicted, an international conference in London has heard.

Changes to the environment that are sweeping the planet are bringing about a rise in infectious diseases, the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) has warned.

Gigantic changes to the oceans, leading to the extinction of marine life from cod to coral reefs, are likely because of the main greenhouse gas causing global warming, British scientists warned yesterday.

A detailed timetable of the destruction and distress that global warming is likely to cause the world was unveiled yesterday.

Worries about the ice covering the western half first surfaced more than 25 years ago when it was realised that the base rocks are actually well below the level of the sea.

Climate change: report warns point of no return may be reached in 10 years, leading to droughts, agricultural failure and water shortages.

Britain's development and aid agencies joined together yesterday to recognise formally that climate change is the most serious problem facing the poor of the world.

The rate at which global warming gases are accumulating in the atmosphere has taken a sharp leap upwards, leading to fears that the devastating effects of climate change may hit the world even sooner than has been predicted.

The possibility of a "feedback" impetus to global warming, greatly accelerating the process of climate change and obliging us to rip up our present forecasts as too optimistic, lies at the heart of concern about the recent rise in the rate of accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Leading environmentalist urges radical rethink on climate change

Living organisms were keeping the environment benign for themselves, and the Earth was in effect a single giant super- organism. You might even say - and Lovelock did - that the Earth was alive.

As the Kyoto protocol, the world climate change treaty, starts to crumble because of Russian reluctance to ratify it, evidence is mounting of the very threat it is designed to counter.

Britain delivers overwhelming verdict after unprecedented public opinion exercise.

If it isn't proof of global warming at last, it certainly looks like it. As much of Europe burns like a furnace and rivers run dry across the continent, Britain is bracing itself for its own record temperature.

Coral reefs are thought of as "the rainforests of the sea" because of their richness in wildlife, and the figure is equivalent in marine terms to saying that 80 per cent of the Amazon rainforest has disappeared.