The end of the world as we know it: After the hottest year on record for Victoria, and with a few scorchers already under the belt in 2008, most Victorians seem to have headed to the coast. Where better, then, to re-read Neville Shute’s On the Beach. Set in Melbourne, Shute’s novel explores humanity’s last months after a nuclear war that has annihilated the northern hemisphere, leaving radioactive fallout drifting inexorably southward, extinguishing all in its path and with Melbourne the last temporary refuge. Published in 1957, at the height of the Cold War, Shute’s novel was immediately a best seller. In 1959, Stanley Kramer made it into a Hollywood movie starring Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck. The film helped catalyse the 1960s anti-nuclear movement. Five decades later, the book remains enthralling and unmitigatingly bleak. The Age

Birds facing ‘climate catastrophe’: European birds face potentially “catastrophic” consequences of climate change as warmer temperatures reduce the areas suitable for them to live in, conservationists have warned. Three quarters of Europe’s nesting birds are set to see their ranges shrink by the end of the century as temperature rises push their distribution an average of 340 miles north east, the Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds showed. The RSPB warned bird species distribution would shrink by an average of a fifth and would only overlap with their current ranges by 40% if temperatures rose by just under 3C above pre-industrial levels. Metro

Greenland opens to oil firms: Rising temperatures are giving Greenland the opportunity to tap into billions of barrels of oil and gas trapped under ice. Greenland, a self-governed province of Denmark that’s roughly the size of Saudi Arabia, plans to auction off rights to crude-oil and natural-gas reserves officials believe will become feasible to exploit once the ice recedes. The island is setting a delicate balance for itself as both a bellwether to environmentalists looking for evidence of global warming, and as the latest frontier for oil and gas companies. Forbes

EU to allow poorest members to raise CO2 emissions: The European Commission will propose allowing the poorest new central European member states to increase greenhouse gas emissions by up to 20 percent by 2020 over 2005 levels under a major energy and climate change plan to be unveiled next week, EU sources said on Monday. The sources said the 15 old member states would bear the brunt of cuts required to meet the 27-nation European Union’s goal of an overall reduction of 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, with national targets set according to GDP per capita. A draft document from the EU executive says the effort — the Commission has excised the term “burden” — should be shared “based on the principle of solidarity among member states.” Reuters

Weathering the storms: Once again the people of Mozambique are facing serious flooding with thousands of square miles submerged and tens of thousands of people displaced. The floods are the result of exceptional and sustained rainfall across southern Africa, the heaviest since records were first kept more than a century ago. Mozambique’s misfortune is to lie between the coast and the massive central plateau: rain that falls in six or more neighbouring countries has to find its way to the sea through Mozambique, which is straddled by four massive rivers, the greatest of which, the Zambezi, is the focus of the worst flooding. Guardian