Britain is to send the author of today's landmark review on global warming to try to win American hearts and minds to the urgent cause of cutting carbon emissions - as it emerged yesterday that the government has already signed up former US vice-president Al Gore to advise on the environment.

Sir Nicholas Stern, who this morning publishes an authoritative report on climate change warning that inaction could cause a worldwide recession as damaging as the Depression of the 1930s, will lobby politicians and business people in America at the turn of the year.

In a separate development, the environment secretary, David Miliband, said the government was discussing imposing green taxes. But the Treasury, which commissioned Sir Nicholas's study, stressed: "The key message of Stern is that international action is required ... The chancellor decides on taxes and he will do so in the pre-budget report and budget."

The government hopes the review will gain traction in the US because it focuses on the economic case for change. Sir Nicholas's analysis warns that doing nothing about climate change will cost the global economy between 5% and 20% of GDP, while reducing emissions now would cost 1%, equivalent to £184bn.

He argues that international negotiations to find a successor to the Kyoto protocol on reducing greenhouse gases must be accelerated, starting at UN talks in Nairobi next month.

The prime minister has said any such agreement needs the support of the US, which refused to join Kyoto because it said it would harm the economy. The White House said last night that it had not read the report. But Kristin Hellmer, the White House counsel on environmental quality, said: "The president has said from the beginning that climate change is a serious issue, and he is taking action on it."

She disputed charges from scientists that the administration had been hostile to the concept of global warming, and that it had set back international efforts to limit greenhouse gases by rejecting the Kyoto treaty.

Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a US group, suggested the only prospect for a policy shift before the next presidential election in 2008 would be if a delegation from the vast majority of US business - including the coal, utilities and car manufacturing industries - lobbied the White House for action. But he added of today's review: "It is a benchmark in a long process that is going to continue after the release."

Jonathan Porritt, director of the government's independent watchdog, the Sustainable Development Commission, added: "I think it is on a par with the influence of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the way in which the scientific evidence that they have marshalled has bit by bit obliged politicians to get into a much more pro-action stance on climate change."

Hopes of a political consensus on green taxes were raised yesterday as David Cameron, the Tory leader, told the BBC he would be prepared to impose taxes on aviation. His remarks followed the publication of a leaked memo from Mr Miliband urging Mr Brown to consider tough levies on flights, motoring and inefficient household appliances.

It is a testament to the power of money that Nicholas Stern's report should have swung the argument for drastic action, even before anyone has finished reading it. He appears to have demonstrated what many of us suspected: that it would cost much less to prevent runaway climate change than to seek to live with it. Useful as this finding is, I hope it doesn't mean that the debate will now concentrate on money. The principal costs of climate change will be measured in lives, not pounds. As Stern reminded us yesterday, there would be a moral imperative to seek to prevent mass death even if the economic case did not stack up.

But at least almost everyone now agrees that we must act, if not at the necessary speed. If we're to have a high chance of preventing global temperatures from rising by 2C (3.6F) above preindustrial levels, we need, in the rich nations, a 90% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030. The greater part of the cut has to be made at the beginning of this period. To see why, picture two graphs with time on the horizontal axis and the rate of emissions plotted vertically. On one graph the line falls like a ski jump: a steep drop followed by a shallow tail. On the other it falls like the trajectory of a bullet. The area under each line represents the total volume of greenhouse gases produced in that period. They fall to the same point by the same date, but far more gases have been produced in the second case, making runaway climate change more likely.

So how do we do it without bringing civilisation crashing down? Here is a plan for drastic but affordable action that the government could take. It goes much further than the proposals discussed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown yesterday, for the reason that this is what the science demands.

1. Set a target for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions based on the latest science. The government is using outdated figures, aiming for a 60% reduction by 2050. Even the annual 3% cut proposed in the early day motion calling for a new climate change bill does not go far enough. Timescale: immediately.

2. Use that target to set an annual carbon cap, which falls on the ski-jump trajectory. Then use the cap to set a personal carbon ration. Every citizen is given a free annual quota of carbon dioxide. He or she spends it by buying gas and electricity, petrol and train and plane tickets. If they run out, they must buy the rest from someone who has used less than his or her quota. This accounts for about 40% of the carbon dioxide we produce. The remainder is auctioned off to companies. It's a simpler and fairer approach than either green taxation or the EU's emissions trading scheme, and it also provides people with a powerful incentive to demand low-carbon technologies. Timescale: a full scheme in place by January 2009.

3. Introduce a new set of building regulations, with three objectives. A. Imposing strict energy-efficiency requirements on all major refurbishments (costing £3,000 or more). Timescale: in force by June 2007. B. Obliging landlords to bring their houses up to high energy-efficiency standards before they can rent them out. Timescale: to cover all new rentals from January 2008. C. Ensuring that all new homes in the UK are built to the German Passivhaus standard (which requires no heating system). Timescale: in force by 2012.

4. Ban the sale of incandescent lightbulbs, patio heaters, garden floodlights and other wasteful and unnecessary technologies. Introduce a stiff "feebate" system for all electronic goods sold in the UK, with the least efficient taxed heavily and the most efficient receiving tax discounts. Every year the standards in each category rise. Timescale: fully implemented by November 2007.

5. Redeploy money now earmarked for new nuclear missiles towards a massive investment in energy generation and distribution. Two schemes in particular require government support to make them commercially viable: very large wind farms, many miles offshore, connected to the grid with high-voltage direct-current cables; and a hydrogen pipeline network to take over from the natural gas grid as the primary means of delivering fuel for home heating. Timescale: both programmes commence at the end of 2007 and are completed by 2018.

6. Promote the development of a new national coach network. City-centre coach stations are shut down and moved to motorway junctions. Urban public transport networks are extended to meet them. The coaches travel on dedicated lanes and never leave the motorways. Journeys by public transport then become as fast as journeys by car, while saving 90% of emissions. It is self-financing, through the sale of the land now used for coach stations. Timescale: commences in 2008; completed by 2020.

7. Oblige all chains of filling stations to supply leasable electric car batteries. This provides electric cars with unlimited mileage: as the battery runs down, you pull into a forecourt; a crane lifts it out and drops in a fresh one. The batteries are charged overnight with surplus electricity from offshore wind farms. Timescale: fully operational by 2011.

8. Abandon the road-building and road-widening programme, and spend the money on tackling climate change. The government has earmarked £11.4bn for road expansion. It claims to be allocating just £545m a year to "spending policies that tackle climate change". Timescale: immediately.

9. Freeze and then reduce UK airport capacity. While capacity remains high there will be constant upward pressure on any scheme the government introduces to limit flights. We need a freeze on all new airport construction and the introduction of a national quota for landing slots, to be reduced by 90% by 2030. Timescale: immediately.

10. Legislate for the closure of all out-of-town superstores, and their replacement with a warehouse and delivery system. Shops use a staggering amount of energy (six times as much electricity per square metre as factories, for example), and major reductions are hard to achieve: Tesco's "state of the art" energy-saving store at Diss in Norfolk has managed to cut its energy use by only 20%. Warehouses containing the same quantity of goods use roughly 5% of the energy. Out-of-town shops are also hardwired to the car - delivery vehicles use 70% less fuel. Timescale: fully implemented by 2012.

These timescales might seem extraordinarily ambitious. They are, by contrast to the current glacial pace of change. But when the US entered the second world war it turned the economy around on a sixpence. Carmakers began producing aircraft and missiles within a year, and amphibious vehicles in 90 days, from a standing start. And that was 65 years ago. If we want this to happen, we can make it happen. It will require more economic intervention than we are used to, and some pretty brutal emergency planning policies (with little time or scope for objections). But if you believe that these are worse than mass death then there is something wrong with your value system.

Climate change is not just a moral question: it is the moral question of the 21st century. There is one position even more morally culpable than denial. That is to accept that it's happening and that its results will be catastrophic, but to fail to take the measures needed to prevent it.

There is a "global warming" on other planets in our solar and that means what? Yes there are times when it was much warmer or colder on our planet and we had lots of natural ice ages already. So we are moving into a hotter period now and thats natural? That could be possible but thats not the problem we face today.

Fact is we are close to have 8 billion humans on earth, fact is our resources on earth are limited and also fact is that its getting hotter and hotter every year. (If its a natural thing or not really doesnt matter). We are already more or less destroying our world. Less and less fish in our oceans and we're deforesting the rainforest. Soon enough we wont have enough food for half of the ppl on the world anymore, even the rich countries will have watershortage in the summer and you can notice that already, farmers in germany or france and I'm sure in the middle of the usa aswell complain about to hot summers and watershortage.

We leave all the food production to big corporations these days. The whole system is profit related and even surplus is chucked away to keep the prices high. I tend a vegetable patch in croatia and for it's size, it sustains our family (about 12) there for all their needs (except exotic fruits and veg). The size of it is about 30 square meters. There are also many natural methods for farms to be productive without the aid of artificial fertiliser and herbicides etc. My house in croatia has a rainwater tank which can hold up to 8000 litres. This is just a simple example on how we dont need to rely on others even with having a full time job.

Would the world's largest science teacher's organization ignore climate change education? (Why did the NSTA say no to free "An Inconvenient Truth" DVDs?)

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) has spurned 50,000 free DVDs of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and is squandering a golden opportunity to educate tens of millions of youth in the United States! Why? This 55,000-member organization of teachers and scientists could use Al Gore's film to orchestrate the single most influential educational goal in human history: the awareness and subsequent solving of climate change. There is no denying the escalating list of climate change evidence: from the potential extinction of polar bears and retreating glacial environments to the increase of global temperatures in unison with increased carbon dioxide levels.

Laurie David, a producer of the film "An Inconvenient Truth," helped to broker a "sweet deal" for the NSTA. Sitting in an LA warehouse are 50,000 free DVDs just waiting to be given out to every member of the NSTA. No strings, no catches, just a clear and simple agenda: provide teachers with a spectacular and scientifically acclaimed production to engage millions of students nationwide. And the NSTA says, "No?"

Is the NSTA placing economic expediency over "true science education"; does it fear the alienation of funders such as Exxon and the fossil powerhouse the American Petroleum Institute? Laurie David, who is also the founder of StopGlobalWarming.org, received an email refusal of the free teaching materials from the NSTA that is ominous and foreboding.

The NSTA wrote that acceptance of the DVDs would place an "unnecessary risk upon the (NSTA) capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." Also in the email, NSTA claimed that it didn't want to offer "political" endorsement of the film and saw "little, if any benefit to NSTA or its members" in accepting the free DVDs. No benefit to teachers? Science teachers across the country are under-funded, overworked and often grab onto free lessons and materials as a matter of "educational survival 101." What I find despicable is that the NSTA is fully aware of that need and, sadly, often aids and abets the "fossil fuel cartels." The NSTA often denies or misleads on climate change and provides teachers with everything from "coal coloring books" to misleading videos such as "Fuel-less: You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel." Simply stated, the NSTA's refusal to distribute Al Gore's film is an unmitigated disaster that will tarnish its reputation as a "broker" of credible science materials, while squandering a prolific moment in educational history: the chance to allow students to become energy pioneers.

I wrote in Commondreams.org about this dilemma, and three special sentences come to mind from a July 7, 2005, piece in which I write an open letter to the NSTA executive director about the distribution of corporate-sponsored materials via the NSTA: In a recent NSTA annual report document, Exxon Mobil Foundation President Edward Ahnert explains its "partnership" with the NSTA clearly. "NSTA is such a natural partner for us. No other organization has the ability to reach thousands of teachers who share Exxon's commitment to improving science education." The question that begs to be answered, Mr. Wheeler, is this: can you trust Exxon?

Exxon recognizes the incredible power of distributing its materials to teachers. ExxonMobil makes no apologies for its anti-climate change stance; it funds "misinformation campaigns" like the American Petroleum Institute's (API) 1998 "Science Education Task Force" created to debunk climate change, and publishes ads in newspapers to cast doubt on climate change. And the NSTA has the brazen nerve to state that it expressed concern over taking Al Gore's movie because of "special interests?"

The NSTA's own admittance about refusing the Gore DVD because it would place "unnecessary risk" upon their own capital campaign speaks volumes about the mess we are in and must correct. Big oil and climate despoilers own the airways and advertising sections of magazines with their "half-truths" about climate and continued demand for using coal, oil and gas. Look at Scientific American's first four pages (December 2006). It shamelessly has a Chevron spread that pushes use of oil tar sands and states "Oil, natural gas and coal have been the energy workhorses for the last 100 years, and will continue to play a crucial role in the next 100 years." Or how about BalancedEnergy.org with teenage television actors urginging "Learn about coal!" Go to the site and see the preverbal cool teenager, holding a skateboard named Adam, stating that he is "pretty stoked" and that he "learned more about American coal" and, lastly, "thankfully, we can have it all" with coal!

Will 10,000-14,000 teachers return home with more oil and coal propaganda after attending the NSTA national conference March 29-April 1, 2007, in St. Louis? Know this: teachers go to these conferences for ideas and materials. The ongoing joke about attending a NSTA conference is this, "Bring two suitcases: one for your clothes and one for all the freebies!"

I am an environmental science teacher of 26 years and I have a steamer trunk of materials from NSTA's past conferences:

Project Learning Tree's Energy module, supported by API's Red Cavaney who wants ANWR opened, opposes the Kyoto Treaty, and wants more public land opened to energy exploration.

Lesson plans, coloring books, free coal samples from the American Coal Foundation - minus any substantive discussion, let alone mention of climate change.

Lessons and videos from a group that was called the "Greening Earth Society," funded by the Western Fuels Association. The message of the film was firm and academically clear: There is no human-induced climate change.

Our youngest teachers need help to plan and write lesson plans, to engage students in critical, scientific scenarios like climate change and to help those students face those challenges with facts in hand. The NSTA is the logical leader on this front with its prestige and deep pockets. Will the NSTA tacitly sit back and even conspire with the likes of ExxonMobil to fill this void? ExxonMobil and Monsanto and the American Petroleum Institute have little interest in providing science data: instead, they see flooding our schools with their "dubious science" as the last component of a major PR effort to continue profits and damn the consequences.

Climate change is an environmental challenge of epic proportions. Humans have never faced a dilemma that could so radically change the face of the planet: not just ecologically, but economically and culturally. Students, as our youngest citizens, have always been the targets of our civic-minded democracy that is fostered by our public education system in the United States. Our free public education system is bound by law and moral compass to provide students (via their teachers) with a world-class education that bestows the tools of critical thinking and access to factual data. The hope is that those tools grow our democracy and equip our children to be ecologically fluent as well as become civic-minded voters who can read, write and invest in our political system.

It is not too late for Gerald Wheeler and the NSTA to find the courage and educational moral high ground by accepting those 50,000 free DVDs sitting in an LA warehouse. If you are a teacher, student, parent or citizen: please email Gerald Wheeler at gwheeler@nsta.org and tell him that the special interest that would benefit from those DVDs would be our children! Ask the NSTA via Mr. Wheeler to reconsider their alliances with the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil and Project Learning Tree. How can it be educationally sound to allow big industry at your conferences and receive your "education awards" but not to discuss climate change? Find the emails to your favorite "Big Green organization" (from the Sierra Club to Audubon to Defenders of Wildlife) and ask them: "Why aren't you in the schools giving out sound, ecological data and why aren't you at the NSTA conferences?"

People like Al Gore and Laurie David are providing an invaluable tool that could be used not just in science, but also in health, economics, history and English classes. Learning about the current state of the climate should be akin to learning the ABCs or basic math. "An Inconvenient Truth" has the hard data all American kids need to know and act on. Just as recycling became a national mindset through the lessons taught by teachers and brought home by children, climate change can be solved. Doesn't the world's largest science teachers organization owe this to our children?

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John F. Borowski is a science teacher of 26 years; his pieces have appeared in the New York Times, UTNE Reader, Counterpunch, Commondreams and many other sites. He can be contacted at jenjill@peak.org and urges you to email Gerald Wheeler.

At hundreds of screenings this year of "An Inconvenient Truth," the first thing many viewers said after the lights came up was that every student in every school in the United States needed to see this movie.

The producers of former vice president Al Gore's film about global warming, myself included, certainly agreed. So the company that made the documentary decided to offer 50,000 free DVDs to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for educators to use in their classrooms. It seemed like a no-brainer.

The teachers had a different idea: Thanks but no thanks, they said.

In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other "special interests" might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn't want to offer "political" endorsement of the film; and they saw "little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members" in accepting the free DVDs.

Gore, however, is not running for office, and the film's theatrical run is long since over. As for classroom benefits, the movie has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading climate scientists worldwide, and is required viewing for all students in Norway and Sweden.

Still, maybe the NSTA just being extra cautious. But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.

That's the same Exxon Mobil that for more than a decade has done everything possible to muddle public understanding of global warming and stifle any serious effort to solve it. It has run ads in leading newspapers (including this one) questioning the role of manmade emissions in global warming, and financed the work of a small band of scientific skeptics who have tried to challenge the consensus that heat-trapping pollution is drastically altering our atmosphere. The company spends millions to support groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute that aggressively pressure lawmakers to oppose emission limits.

It's bad enough when a company tries to sell junk science to a bunch of grown-ups. But, like a tobacco company using cartoons to peddle cigarettes, Exxon Mobil is going after our kids, too.

And it has been doing so for longer than you may think. NSTA says it has received $6 million from the company since 1996, mostly for the association's "Building a Presence for Science" program, an electronic networking initiative intended to "bring standards-based teaching and learning" into schools, according to the NSTA Web site. Exxon Mobil has a representative on the group's corporate advisory board. And in 2003, NSTA gave the company an award for its commitment to science education.

So much for special interests and implicit endorsements.

In the past year alone, according to its Web site, Exxon Mobil's foundation gave $42 million to key organizations that influence the way children learn about science, from kindergarten until they graduate from high school.

And Exxon Mobil isn't the only one getting in on the action. Through textbooks, classroom posters and teacher seminars, the oil industry, the coal industry and other corporate interests are exploiting shortfalls in education funding by using a small slice of their record profits to buy themselves a classroom soapbox.

NSTA's list of corporate donors also includes Shell Oil and the American Petroleum Institute (API), which funds NSTA's Web site on the science of energy. There, students can find a section called "Running on Oil" and read a page that touts the industry's environmental track record - citing improvements mostly attributable to laws that the companies fought tooth and nail, by the way - but makes only vague references to spills or pollution. NSTA has distributed a video produced by API called "You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel," a shameless pitch for oil dependence.

The education organization also hosts an annual convention - which is described on Exxon Mobil's Web site as featuring "more than 450 companies and organizations displaying the most current textbooks, lab equipment, computer hardware and software, and teaching enhancements." The company "regularly displays" its "many ... education materials" at the exhibition. John Borowski, a science teacher at North Salem High School in Salem, Ore., was dismayed by NSTA's partnerships with industrial polluters when he attended the association's annual convention this year and witnessed hundreds of teachers and school administrators walk away with armloads of free corporate lesson plans.

Along with propaganda challenging global warming from Exxon Mobil, the curricular offerings included lessons on forestry provided by Weyerhaeuser and International Paper, Borowski says, and the benefits of genetic engineering courtesy of biotech giant Monsanto.

"The materials from the American Petroleum Institute and the other corporate interests are the worst form of a lie: omission," Borowski says. "The oil and coal guys won't address global warming, and the timber industry papers over clear-cuts."

An API memo leaked to the media as long ago as 1998 succinctly explains why the association is angling to infiltrate the classroom: "Informing teachers/students about uncertainties in climate science will begin to erect barriers against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future."

So, how is any of this different from showing Gore's movie in the classroom? The answer is that neither Gore nor Participant Productions, which made the movie, stands to profit a nickel from giving away DVDs, and we aren't facing millions of dollars in lost business from limits on global-warming pollution and a shift to cleaner, renewable energy.

It's hard to say whether NSTA is a bad guy here or just a sorry victim of tight education budgets. And we don't pretend that a two-hour movie is a substitute for a rigorous science curriculum. Students should expect, and parents should demand, that educators present an honest and unbiased look at the true state of knowledge about the challenges of the day.

As for Exxon Mobil - which just began a fuzzy advertising campaign that trumpets clean energy and low emissions - this story shows that slapping green stripes on a corporate tiger doesn't change the beast within. The company is still playing the same cynical game it has for years.

While NSTA and Exxon Mobil ponder the moral lesson they're teaching with all this, there are 50,000 DVDs sitting in a Los Angeles warehouse, waiting to be distributed. In the meantime, Mom and Dad may want to keep a sharp eye on their kids' science homework.

Traveling is expensive ... in carbon dioxide. Since October 17th, the SNCF [French national railroad company] offers an "eco-comparer" on its Internet home page. A software program calculates the price, the length of the trip and the number of kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted into the atmosphere for each of four transportation methods: the train, an airline, a low-cost airline, and using a personal vehicle.

According to this comparer, savings do not necessarily add up to ecology. For a one way Lyon-Lille trip, a person traveling alone will spend 150 Euros going by train, 146 Euros going by plane, and 239 Euros with his car. But - according to the railway company - the train trip emits 6 kg of carbon only, versus 165 kg for the plane and 277 kg for the car.

Trips by several people at once pose more dilemmas. Thus, for a one way Paris-Strasbourg trip for four people, the train remains very competitive with respect to CO2 emissions, but no longer the least bit competitive in terms of the Euro price, which the car wins by a wide margin.

20 Euros per Ton

For Air France-KLM president Jean-Cyril Spinetta, an Airbus's CO2 emissions are "20-40 percent less than what is given by the site." The Public Agency for the Environment and Energy Conservation (Ademe), which effected the calculations on behalf of the SNCF, confirms its data.

For its part, the company Climat Mundi proposes that individuals and small and medium-sized companies financially compensate for their annual emissions as large companies already do [in Europe]. On their home page, a little calculator invites the Internet user to gather data about his recent air travel, the type of vehicle he drives, the number of kilometers he drives, and his annual consumption of oil or natural gas for heating.

The cost of emissions is calculated on the basis of 20 Euros per ton of CO2, a price fixed "as a function of our purchase cost for carbon credits, against which we apply a margin to cover our infrastructure costs," specifies Eric Parent, Associate Director for Climat Mundi.

In a little car that consumes 8 liters of gas per 100 kilometers [roughly 31 mpg], 20,000 kilometers traveled results in 4.34 tons of CO2 and costs 87 Euros. A round trip between Paris and New York emits 2.56 tons of CO2 and costs 51 Euros. "That may seem expensive, but remains affordable if you compare the emissions price to that of the ticket, hotel, and meals," notes Mr. Parent, who adds that setting up the rate tables "properly allows the individual to become aware that up until now, no one has been paying the cost of his own emissions."

The consumer who wants to compensate for his contribution to climate change can buy "CO2 reductions" from Climat Mundi, which the company commits to investing in environmental projects such as improving the energy efficiency of Jamaican villages or channeling biogas in Australia.

Climat Mundi's main clients are companies concerned about their image. But the pages designed for individuals are consulted more frequently.

The first piece of research to calculate a carbon footprint for the average British citizen has detailed the precise environmental damage each of us causes.

A study by the government-funded Carbon Trust puts the annual carbon footprint of the average Briton at 10.92 tons of CO2 - roughly half of the 19 tons of CO2 produced each year by the average American. The research also demonstrates that our leisure and recreation pursuits - activities as diverse as watching a football match or taking a trip to the seaside - account for most of our emissions, rather than a lack of insulation or a predilection for 4x4 cars.

The figures are published at a time when the Government is under intense pressure to take firmer action on climate change, with a raft of environmental measures outlined by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, in his pre-Budget report this week.

The individual impact we make on the climate has tended to be diluted by carbon emission figures generated by the Office of National Statistics which detail emissions at source - electricity production, for example, or primary manufacturing. But the Carbon Trust's figures takes the overall emission figure and, using a University of Surrey model, reallocates them to the point of consumption. The data reveals an annual carbon footprint for each of 11 kinds of consumer need. That is then divided by the size of the population of Britain.

Nearly a fifth of the average British citizen's 10.92 tons of CO2 - 1.95 tons - is emitted through recreation and leisure: everything from holiday trips by car and visiting a gym, which has substantial emissions, a trip to a leisure centre where the swimming pool is heated, watching television and enjoying live evening sport under floodlights.

The importance of minimising carbon emissions from our homes is also reinforced by the figures, which show the average British citizen contributes 1.49 tons of CO2 a year through the heating of his or her home.

In the third category, 1.39 tons of CO2 are generated by food and catering. That includes everything from emissions generated directly by cooking and food use - refrigerating, freezing and cooking - plus the indirect emissions from the production of food and drink products and services. Production includes raw material cultivation, packaging production, manufacturing, distribution, disposal and recycling. Together, the top three categories account for a half of our individual carbon emissions.

Consideration of food miles, use of efficient fridges and rejecting items with too much packaging can help but the message from the Carbon Trust is clear: we are not expected to cut out many or all of these activities, but we can think more broadly about where we might reduce our carbon footprint. " This piece of work is about making people aware that everything they do involves carbon emissions and not just flights and heating their homes," said Euan Murray, strategy manager at the Carbon Trust.

The trust's research reflects the "I Count" ethos of the Stop Climate Chaos organisation, whose rally at Trafalgar Square last month was the biggest environmental protest Britain has seen.

"Cynics are gradually accepting that individual actions can make a different when it comes to tackling climate change," Ashok Sinha, director of Stop Climate Chaos, said yesterday. "We just have to look at the split in terms of the impact of individual actions and those of government."

Though individual actions cannot have the impact that reducing aviation fuel use and power station emissions, the "I Count" campaign's work has been highly effective in communicating knowledge of the inividual emission savings we can make.

For instance, 2kg of carbon can be saved for every journey under three miles for which we walk and don't use the car, while 30kg can be saved by switching the power off at nights in your house and 2,300kg by switching the office to recycled paper.

Fourth in the Carbon Trust's list of personal carbon emissions is " household activities", on which we each emit 1.37 tons a year. That includes lighting, household appliances such as vacuum cleaners and DIY equipment, the electricity used to produce household furnishings and electricity used to create the building itself (from making bricks, to delivering furniture).

We emit a further ton of emissions each year simply by the clothing and footwear we consume. The figure includes emissions from the chemical processes used to manufacture and transport the items, emissions from water heating and wet appliances used in cleaning, drying and pressing clothes

A further 0.81 tons is created by commuting, another category in the data, and 0.68 through aviation. Education accounts for 0.49 tons, including the production of books and newspapers.

The new footprint has been launched after research earlier this year by the Carbon Trust showing that two thirds of consumers are more likely to buy products and services with a low carbon footprint.

The Carbon Trust is working with Walkers, Trinity Mirror, Boots and Marks & Spencer to undertake a carbon audit of their supply chains. But individual actions are only a part of reducing carbon emissions. Inherent in the 'I Count' philosophy is the idea that if individuals take action then Governments will be morally bound to follow suit.

A combination of global warming and the El Niño weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, one of Britain's leading climate experts has warned.

As the new year was ushered in with stormy conditions across the UK, the forecast for the next 12 months is of extreme global weather patterns which could bring drought to Indonesia and leave California under a deluge.

The warning, from Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was one of four sobering predictions from senior scientists and forecasters that 2007 will be a crucial year for determining the response to global warming and its effect on humanity.

Professor Jones said the long-term trend of global warming - already blamed for bringing drought to the Horn of Africa and melting the Arctic ice shelf - is set to be exacerbated by the arrival of El Niño, the phenomenon caused by above-average sea temperatures in the Pacific.

Combined, they are set to bring extreme conditions across the globe and make 2007 warmer than 1998, the hottest year on record. It is likely temperatures will also exceed 2006, which was declared in December the hottest in Britain since 1659 and the sixth warmest in global records.

Professor Jones said: "El Niño makes the world warmer and we already have a warming trend that is increasing global temperatures by one to two tenths of a degrees celsius per decade. Together, they should make 2007 warmer than last year and it may even make the next 12 months the warmest year on record."

The warning of the escalating impact of global warming was echoed by Jim Hansen, the American scientist who, in 1988, was one of the first to warn of climate change.

In an interview with The Independent, Dr Hansen predicted that global warming would run out of control and change the planet for ever unless rapid action is taken to reverse the rise in carbon emissions.

Dr Hansen said: "We just cannot burn all the fossil fuels in the ground. If we do, we will end up with a different planet.

"I mean a planet with no ice in the Arctic, and a planet where warming is so large that it's going to have a large effect in terms of sea level rises and the extinction of species."

His call for action is shared by Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser, who said that 2006 had shown that the "discussion is now over" on whether climate change is happening. Writing in today's Independent, Sir David says progress has been made in the past year but it is "essential" that a global agreement on emissions is struck quickly. He writes: "Ultimately, only heads of state, working together, can provide the new level of global leadership we need to steer the world on a path towards a sustainable and prosperous future. We need to remember: action is affordable - inaction is not."

The demands came as the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the United Nations agency that deals with climate prediction, issued a warning that El Niño is already established over the tropical Pacific basin. It is set to bring extreme weather across a swath of the planet from the Americas and south-east Asia to the Horn of Africa for at least the first four months of 2007.

El Niño, or "the Christ child" because it is usually noticed around Christmas, is a weather pattern occurring every two to seven years. The last severe El Niño, in 1997 and 1998, caused more than 2,000 deaths and a worldwide damage bill of more than £20bn.

The WMO said its latest readings showed that a "moderate" El Niño, with sea temperatures 1.5C above average, was taking place which, in the worst case scenario, could develop into an extreme weather pattern lasting up to 18 months, as in 1997-98. The UN agency noted that the weather pattern was already having "early and intense" effects, including drought in Australia and dramatically warm seas in the Indian Ocean, which could affect the monsoons. It warned the El Niño could also bring extreme rainfall to parts of east Africa which were last year hit by a cycle of drought and floods.

Its effect on the British climate is difficult to predict, according to experts. But it will probably add to the likelihood of record-breaking temperatures in the UK.

The return of El Niño

Aside from the seasons, El Niño and its twin, La Niña, are the two largest single causes of variability in the world's climate from year to year.

Both are dictated by shifts in temperature of the water in the tropical Pacific basin between Australia and South America. Named from the Spanish words for "Christ child" and "the girl" because of their proximity to Christmas, they lead to dramatic shifts in the entire system of oceanic and atmospheric factors from air pressure to currents.

A significant rise in sea temperature leads to an El Niño event whereas a fall in temperature leads to La Niña.

The cause of the phenomenon is not fully understood but in an El Niño "event" the pool of warm surface water is forced eastwards by the loss of the westerly trade winds. The sea water evaporates, resulting in drenching rains over South America, particularly Peru and Ecuador, as well as western parts of the United States such as California.

Parts of the western Pacific, including Indonesia and Australia, suffer drought. The effects can last for anything from a few weeks to 18 months, causing extreme weather as far afield as India and east Africa.

The co-relation with global warming is as yet unclear. Archaeological evidence shows El Niños and La Niñas have been occurring for 15,000 years. But scientists are investigating whether climate change is leading to an increase in their intensity or duration.

One of the world's leading experts on climate change has warned that the Earth is being turned into a "different planet" because of the continuing increase in man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.

In an interview with The Independent, Jim Hansen, who was one of the first scientists to warn of climate change in scientific testimony to the US Congress in 1988, claimed that we have less than 10 years to begin to curb carbon dioxide emissions before global warming runs out of control and changes the landscape forever.

Last year, Dr Hansen, director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies, part of Columbia University in New York, complained that Nasa public relations officials appointed by the Bush administration had tried to gag him by limiting his access to the media. But in talking to this newspaper he was outspoken, warning that there are already worrying signs that global warming is beginning to trigger dangerous "positive feedbacks" within the climate, which can accelerate the rate of climate change.

Dr Hansen said: "We just cannot burn all the fossil fuels in the ground. If we do, we will end up with a different planet. I mean a planet with no ice in the Arctic, and a planet where warming is so large that it's going to have a large effect in terms of sea level rises and the extinction of species."

Positive feedbacks in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere are already starting. One is the loss of sea ice, which means less sunlight and heat is reflected back into space, making the Arctic even warmer. Another is the release of methane from the frozen tundra. Methane gas is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, Dr Hansen said.

"The greatest concern is that positive feedbacks at high latitudes do in fact seem to be coming into play. We can't just let those feedbacks get out of control or we will have passed a tipping point," he said.

"If we go another 10 years, by 2015, at the current rate of growth of CO2 emissions, which is about 2 per cent per year, the emissions in 2015 will be 35 per cent larger than they were in 2000. But if we want to get on a scenario that keeps global temperature in the range that it's been in for the last million years, we would need to decrease the emissions by something of the order of 25 per cent by the middle of the century, and by something like 75 per cent by the end of the century."

The continuing rise in carbon dioxide emissions and average global temperatures is on schedule to cause the eventual collapse of the ice sheets on both Greenland and the west Antarctic, with a catastrophic rise in sea levels.

"If we follow business as usual, and we don't get off this course where year by year we're getting larger and larger emissions of CO2, then we'll have large sea-level rises this century and I think that will become more apparent over the next decade or two," Dr Hansen said.

"The last time it was 3C warmer, sea levels were 25 metres higher, plus or minus 10 metres. You'd not get that in one century, but you could get several metres in one century," he said.

"Half the people in the world live within 15 miles of a coastline. A large fraction of the major cities are on coastlines. And the problem is that once you get the process started and well on the way, it's impossible to prevent it. That's why we need to address the issue before it gets out of control."

Many species of animals and plants are not going to cope with rising temperatures, which are causing isotherms - lines of equal temperature - to travel polewards at the rate of 50km a decade, compared with the average rate of species migration of 6km per decade.

"Those species at high latitudes have no place to go to. Many of them will be in trouble. They will effectively be pushed off the planet," Dr Hansen said.

Dr Hansen, who last year received the WWF Duke of Edinburgh Conservation Medal, said that although he is now free to speak out, many other US government scientists feel gagged.

The environmental crisis is the cornerstone for the New World Order.

"Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves."
-- United States Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, April, 1997

Secretary Cohen made this statement at a conference on Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction and U.S. Strategy in his official capacity as the US Secretary of Defense; thus this can be taken as an official position of the United States. Further he used the word "are," not "could," "might" or "maybe sometime in the future." He further added: "It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts." If the United States Secretary of Defense says that the earth and the sky have been turned into weapons, and are being used as such in present time, I believe we should take this statement very seriously.

WEATHER WARFARE: The Military's Plan to Draft Mother Nature is not "conspiracy theory." This book has almost no theory and very little speculation. All the conclusions reached are the logical ones based on the presented facts. This is not "tabloid journalism." This is straight scientific reporting at a layman's level. I present solid evidence from military and scientific sources that intentional environmental modification (EnMod) is the 600-pound gorilla at the global warming debate that everyone is pretending isn't there.