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| Obama: Rally the world for climate deal next month BEIJING (AP) -- President Barack Obama, with China's leader at his side, lifted his sights Tuesday for a broad interim accord at next month's climate conference that he said will lead to immediate action and "rally the world" toward a solution on global warming.... hosted.ap.org |
Biologists save fish after landslide A gigantic landslide that buried a highway, uprooted homes and rerouted a river in Washington state's Cascade Range left hundreds of smaller victims: fish. rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Europe Pledges Billions in Climate Funding The offer of about $3 billion is an attempt to help the chances of reaching a deal at climate talks. feeds.nytimes.com |
Giant Amazon fish 'under threat' There may be more than one species of giant fish in the Amazon, and all are threatened by overfishing, scientists say. news.bbc.co.uk |
Snow has proved a real ice-breaker At last, the cold snap has given us Brits an excuse to do what comes naturally: help each otherThe man walked out of the chemist's shop, lost his footing and hit the ice with a crack that the two women inside at the fragrance section said they heard. Amazingly, he was OK, but his face registered that look of astonishment caused by only a bullet or the speed with which you are brought from confident upright locomotion to the incredibly hard ground in an ice fall. He picked himself up and brushed snow off while the two assistants cooed concern from the doorway and told him that he should put old socks over his Wellington boots because that would make them grip better, advice I somehow felt was not welcome.A beat later came the more interesting information, delivered with regretfully folded arms: they could not clear that particularly icy patch outside the shop because they had been told that it would make the business liable for any injury suffered subsequent to the clearing of said icy patch. We wondered if I cleared the path without colluding with the chemist's owner whether he would still be liable, which they thought was an interesting legal point but they weren't willing to test it.I phoned the council to find out if this was true but no one had managed to get to work. Then the Scottish first minister, Alex Salmond, clarified things by saying that it was "utter nonsense that clearing the bit in front of your house means you can be sued if someone falls over", which must be true of the rest of the country too because it is only sensible; and surely we cannot absent-mindedly have deprived ourselves of the pleasure of helping each other or ourselves.From a week spent doing very little except walking, digging people out and gritting pathways, I realise that snow melts us; that ice turns out to be the icebreaker and that on the whole people love to help each other and are doing so most of the time, a point that goes almost unnoticed in our pessimistic account of society. The snow provides the pretext and makes it all much more obvious, as people shop for one another, drag cars from ditches, push them in supermarket car parks, offer an arm to an elderly stranger, and exchange glances and commonplaces about the extraordinary change that this frigid, alien beauty has wrought in us.Helping each other still comes as naturally to the British as humour, buying birdseed or digging allotments. During the first snows, drivers going down a treacherous hill into a Gloucestershire village at night were met by four or five individuals with lanterns, who guided the cars through the passable bits. Nobody knows who they were: they appeared like figures from a 19th-century ghost story and then vanished. All this week I saw owners of four-wheel drive vehicles rather hopefully patrolling the roads for people to help. Despite the snow storm on the top of the Cotswolds last Monday afternoon, every passer-by stopped to help a rather dithering bloke who was trying to drive back to Hertfordshire and had placed some dead grass under his tyres to get him up the side road.Not everyone knows how to say thank you, which I suspect is also a rather modern British thing. My friend Tom, who was pushing cars outside his local supermarket, reckoned that only 50% of drivers thanked him, which sounds a little low to me. After I and my philosopher neighbour had helped free a Tesco delivery van on an icy hill, he drove to the top, turned round and stopped his vehicle to get out and shake our hands despite the risk of becoming stuck again. Something else I noticed during the day of clearing a path and drive is that people are full of unreserved views and advice. They were divided into roughly three categories: those who say "you can do my drive/path when you've finished that!" in the fond belief that they are the first to make the remark; those who announce man-made global warming is a hoax; and those who suggest I am making things worse and should leave it to the council.But gratitude is not the point: connecting with your neighbours is one dividend of this extraordinary weather, particularly in a society that we are told by officials and politicians lacks cohesion, or is completely broken. It is at times like this that, despite their claims, we see that help and thoughtfulness can never be properly mediated by local authorities. Though we are tempted to believe that safety can be guaranteed by a fellow with a clipboard, the pavement outside the chemist or the news of another 10 or 15 centimetres proves it can't, and demonstrates we have to think for ourselves more, which, when it comes down to it, is in defiance of the dependency and helplessness that authorities subconsciously encourage in us all.Since I was a boy in the hard winter of 1963, snow has always seemed to be a mild blow against authority. It still makes me incredibly happy to see 20 teenagers, who have missed their first day at the local secondary school, sliding down a slope reserved by a disagreeable landowner for pheasant shooting. He may own the land but he doesn't own the snow on it or the extraordinary beauty of the landscape. Unsupervised, the kids were there last week in the perishing cold until well into the dusk and then they tramped home, flushed and excited, and on the way they saw a kestrel hanging like a iron crucifix in the sky, using the light of the snow to hunt for mice. It's been a terrific week for some.WeatherHuman behaviourHenry Porterguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |