EU aims for moral high ground with swingeing climate change package: A blueprint for tackling global warming was put on the table yesterday by the EU, which challenged the US and other big polluters worldwide to join the battle against climate change. Setting out plans for the world’s first significant low-carbon economy, the EU ordered swingeing cuts in greenhouse gas emissions which included challenging targets for Britain. Under draft legislation unveiled by the European commission, 20% of Europe’s energy mix is to come from renewable sources by 2020, while Europe’s biggest polluting industries must slash their emissions by 21% against 2005 levels by the same deadline. Guardian

Climate change: The latest hot issue: Next week, representatives of 17 of the world’s biggest economies – and biggest emitters of greenhouse gases – are to gather in Honolulu, Hawaii to discuss how they can tackle climate change in the coming decades. The meeting is the initiative of George W. Bush, US president, and will be the second in a series of meetings intended to forge agreement on some of the key questions facing governments in dealing with climate change. Mr Bush surprised the world last year by calling the meetings, in the first major initiative on climate change of his presidency. Financial Times

Climate change ‘will lead to warfare over food and water’: Climate change will have a long-term impact on the nation’s security as wars break out over food and water supplies around the world, a report said yesterday. Hundreds of millions of environmental refugees will seek new places to live, with many of them heading for Britain, according to the report for the Oxford Research Group. The report said that security services would be challenged increasingly by the number of refugees, and the Government would need to consider stronger border controls. Protests against companies that continued to emit greenhouse gases were possible as climate change intensified and they might even provoke riots. Times Online

Warming may reduce hurricanes hitting U.S.: Rising ocean temperatures linked to global warming could decrease the number of hurricanes hitting the United States, according to new research released on Wednesday. The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, challenges recent research that suggests global warming could be contributing to an increase in the frequency and the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. At the same time, it reaffirmed earlier views that warmer sea waters might result in atmospheric instabilities that could prevent tropical storms from forming. Atlantic storms play a pivotal role in the global energy, insurance and commodities markets, particularly since the devastating 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, which hammered U.S. oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. Reuters