The House of Commons environmental audit committee questions whether Tony Blair and his colleagues “appreciates the magnitude and urgency” of cutting carbon emissions – epolitix.com reports.

And its report also calls for more money to:

The chariman of the committee, Conservative politician Tim Yeo, says government research shows that cabon dioxide emissions from transport will be no lower in 2050 than in 1990.

This is despite targets to cut emissions as a whole by at least 60 per cent over a similar number of years.

Mr Yeo (left) accused the government’s Department for Transport of a “lack of ambition”.

He also called for changes in taxes to encourage people and businesses to do things which help the environment, such as:

Pictures: www.sxc.hu (main) and www.timyeo.org.uk

Government’s throughout the world will spend £200million a year on research into developing more resilient crops and farming more successfully in trickier conditions – reports the Guardian.

The move is an attempt to avoid the threat of widespread hunger and economic disaster if global temperatures rise.

Robert Zeigler, director general of the International Rice Research Institute, believes climate change would make it harder to reduce poverty and feed growing populations.

“The livelihoods of billions of people will be severely challenged as crop yields decline,” he said.

Picture: www.sxc.hu

A director at ScottishPower was so impressed with former US vice-president Gore’s book, The Inconvenient Truth, that he convinced the firm to spread the message about the dangers of climate change – the Scotsman reports.

ScottishPower’s Stephen Dunn said: “It’s actually quite a simple book, telling a simple story about the world and what we are doing to it and how we have the opportunity to improve it. That sort of very personal picture of what we are doing struck home with me. The film is equally powerful.”

The company, which runs windfarms as well as a coal-fired power station, is prepared to pay for cinemas to show the film and is negotiating with the Scottish Executive to get support so that Scottish schoolchildren can go to see the acclaimed documentary narrated by Gore (pictured).

Picture: www.algore.org

The Democratic Party, which won power in mid-term elections from the president’s Republican Party, will use their new influence to change the way America approaches climate change – the BBC reports.

The new head of the influencial Senate energy committee, Jeff Bingaman, said: “We have an opportunity to put an emphasis on issues of clean energy, renewable energy, global warming, climate change, in a way that wasn’t possible during the last several years.”

He supports national limits on greenhouse gases set by the government.

Mr Bush has previously been unwilling to tackle environmental issues in a way which satisfies popular international opinion and he refused to support the Kyoto agreement which puts limits on gases released in countries around the world.

As leader of the globe’s biggest polluter he argues that limits would harm the US economy and he instead hopes advances in technology will lead to goods and industry which release lower emissions.

But the two parties will need to co-operate to get laws passed.

Raymond Kopp, an analyst at environmenal think tank Resources for the Future, said: “If you stake out an extreme position you’ll pass nothing. The Democrats have got to put in place sound policy, start it slow and give it a chance to ramp up over time.”

Picture: www.sxc.hu

Philip Fearnside, of the National Institute for Research in the Amazon, told Nature magazine that in the first 10 years of a typical hydroelectric power station’s life it will produce four times more carbon than a comparable fossil-fuel plant would emit.

And the Observer reports that scientists will tell a meeting of the United Nations science body Unesco that building dams to produce power causes harmful levels of methane to be released.

This is because the dams trap organic material which rots in reservoirs, releasing carbon dioxide as well as the more harmful methane.

Other scientists say that after a few years hydroelectric plants produce relatively few greenhouse gas emissions.

Picture: La Tasajera hydroelectric plant in Barbosa, Colombia. From: www.sxc.hu

The US government is required to produce a national assessment on global warming every four years under a law passed in 1990.

But the last such report was published at the end of President Bill Clinton’s rule in 2000.

The polically sensitive assessment was released with little publicity, reports the The Arizona State, and warned that without efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, temperatures in the western US could rise by 8 to 11 degrees by the 2090s.

The Center for Biological Diversity, in Arizona, along with Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, have brought the legal action.

The White House says it is not working on another national assessment. It says organisation it set up in 2002, the US Climate Change Science Program, has begun producing 21 reports which satisfy the spirit of the law.

Kent Laborde, of the US Climate Change Science Program, said: “It’s more important to have good, solid, credible science that is the basis of public policy, rather than something that is done for the sake of expediency.”

But Kassie Siegel, of the Center for Biological Diversity, said: “What the law requires is a national assessment, something usable and accessible. A bunch of reports doesn’t really help this.”

Picture: White House photo of George Bush by Eric Draper