Choking China: The struggle to clear Beijing's air
As pollution levels return to normal in China's capital after a record-breaking month of smog, what can be done to banish the smog?
New Scientist
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Top science body calls for geoengineering 'plan B'
THE back-up plan for saving the world is no longer a joke. This week, a major scientific institution has published a comprehensive review of possible ways to engineer the climate to reverse global warming. The UK Royal Society's review of geoengineering will make it difficult for governments to ignore the issue.
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Pain-free animals could take suffering out of farming
With "hormone-free", "cage-free" and "antibiotic-free" becoming common labels on our supermarket shelves, might "pain-free" be the next sticker slapped onto a rump roast? As unlikely as that may seem, progress in neuroscience and genetics in recent years makes it a very real possibility. In fact, according to one philosopher, we have an ethical duty to consider the option.
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Roads to rainforest ruin
"The best thing you could do for the Amazon is to bomb all the roads." That might sound like an eco-terrorist's threat, but they're actually the words of Eneas Salati, one of Brazil's most respected scientists. Thomas Lovejoy, a leading American biologist, is equally emphatic: "Roads are the seeds of tropical forest destruction."
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Climate tipping point defined for US crop yields
While news reports and disaster movies remind us about tipping points for Arctic melt and sea level rise, some things closer to home get less attention. Take food supply: new modelling studies show that there are climate tipping points here too, beyond which crop yields will collapse.
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Triumph of the commons: Helping the world to share
Seven billion people into one planet won't go, unless we learn to harness our better natures, says social psychologist Mark van Vugt.
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Universal vaccine could put an end to all flu
The flu virus mutates so rapidly that our immune systems can't keep up. But experimental vaccines could change all that
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E. O. Wilson: We must save the living environment
Saving Earth's biodiversity will take nothing less than an IPCC for species, says the world's leading biologist and ant guru E. O. Wilson.
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How psychology can help the planet stay cool
Insights from marketing and psychology can encourage us all to do our bit to combat global warming.
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Positive thinking for a cooler world
The threat posed by climate change is all too real, but some of the solutions are all in the mind. That's the message from work in the field known as conservation psychology, which is beginning to show how people can be encouraged to change their lifestyles to cut greenhouse gas emissions. (Editorial)
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Future trucks: Cleaning up the kings of the road
Super-streamlining, pothole power and heat recycling: a spate of innovation is about to transform diesel-guzzling trucks into green giants.