A Virgin for everyone

In true Branson fashion, he takes a dig at the oil companies, which he said had so far “only dabbled” in exploring green energy sources and had placed more emphasis on marketing spin than on research budgets.

Branson joined the growing ranks of global-warming activists by committing $3bn (£1.6bn) to tackle climate change.

The billionaire pledged all profits from his Virgin air and rail interests over the next 10 years to combating rising global temperatures.

However, the estimated $3bn will not go to charities and will be invested in a new branch of his ever expanding Virgin conglomerate called – yes, you guessed it – Virgin Fuels.

Much of the investment will focus on biofuels, an alternative to oil-based fuels and made from plants.

Russian Arctic reserve may save polar bears from extinction - WWF

MOSCOW, June 15 (RIA Novosti) - The creation of the Russian Arctic nature reserve could compensate for the damage to the dwindling polar bear population from global warming, the director of WWF-Russia said on Monday.
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According to the U.S. Geological Survey, two thirds of the world's 25,000 polar bears could die by 2050, as the ice they use to hunt seals melts due to global warming.

BBC - Climate Change: The Blog of Bloom: No more Mr Rice Guy: British farmers sell up to make a 'green' profit

British farmers, crippled by the credit crunch and the high price of grain, fertilizer and diesel, will be glad to hear that the RSPB has chirped up with a fix: why not transform your farm into a nature reserve? The birds and the bees will thank you, and what's more, you'll get thirty quid for every hectare you claw back from dreaded crop. Who knows, you might even make a profit, the RSPB concludes.

There's a teeny-weeny not-so-greeny catch, of course.

If the British farmer stops growing wheat and other food crops, other countries will have to farm even more land and cut down even more forest to keep us fed. Sure, there's plenty of arable land out there dying to be farmed (take the Black Belt of Ukraine, for instance), but as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations points out here, most of it is currently stashed underneath species-brimming, carbon-storing tropical rainforests in South America and Africa: