Is the US finally about to get real about climate change? The draft G8 communiqué for this month’s meeting in Italy suggests so, with the text agreeing emissions should peak by 2020 and temperature rise be limited to +2C. If Obama sanctions this, it will be the first time the US has agreed to either premise.

Biodiversity continues to decrease at an unacceptable rate and the commitment to reduce the rate of loss by 2010 will not be met, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says. It warns that a third of amphibians, a quarter of mammals and one-in-eight birds are threatened with extinction.

One problem with trading carbon credits against standing rainforest is that most of the countries which might benefit are poor – and corruption is rife. An early example of the downside appears to be Theo Yasause, Papua New Guinea’s Office of Climate Change director, suspended over multi-million deals using unverified credits to other people’s forests.

Odd Spot: Soay, a breed of Scottish sheep native to the island of Hirta, are shrinking – they’ve decreased in size some five percent since 1985, and climate change is blamed for this bizarre effect.  

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