Climate change poses a threat to all ecosystems. In the case of the wetland ecosystem, not only will the water bodies and their economic benefits be lost; they could directly contribute to climate change by releasing a large amount of trapped greenhouse gases. That assessment from scientists taking part in the Eighth Wetlands Conference held in Brazil by INTECOL, the International Association for Ecology, will hopefully stir governments into action. It is vital that they r ecognise the gravity of the problem and act to stop the degradation, draining, and land-filling of wetlands.

Indian scientists seek clarity on nitrogen emissions if emissions of reactive nitrogen gases (oxides of nitrogen and ammonia, but especially nitrous oxide) ever get hitched to the international debate on global warming, in the form of a

Sinking with biofuel: A study by the Finnish Environment Institute found that increased logging could eliminate Europe

In the late 1980s and very early 1990s, when scientists worldwide began to highlight global warming as a problem that needed urgent attention, pointing to carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning as the most potent cause, there emerged a counter-discourse that laid the blame of global warming squarely on another greenhouse gas, methane. Then in 1990, the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA)

Listening to the earth scientists at the Tallberg Forum speaking about the likely calamities caused by global warming, I had the sensation of entering a parallel universe. It is a universe where an adaptive and inventive human race has grown to over six billion people, created bountiful and rich civilisations built on fossil fuels, and has emerged as the most important specie to geologically alter the planet. Man-made greenhouse gas has placed the earth in a slow cooker. In this parallel universe, the phrase

The climate-change prime minister loses some green points

Your happiness matters to earth
Moises Velasquez-Manoff

Overall, people around the world have grown happier during the past 25 years, according to the most recent World Values Survey (WVS), a periodic assessment of happiness in 97 nations. But the survey, based at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research in Ann Arbor, also underscore that, beyond a certain point, material wealth doesn't boost happiness.

Bob Dylan said it best: "The answer is blowin' in the wind.' While politicians and environmentalists have been busy arguing about how best to require that greenhouse gases be curtailed, the world around them has changed.

The precipitous rise in oil and gas prices over the past year has made the debate on greenhouse gas emissions moot. The reduction in the output of those gases will move forward at warp speed, not because of rules, regulations and cap-and-trade decrees but because of free markets and economics.