India snubs West on climate change: India will not curb its Greenhouse gas emissions as long as the West continues to treat it as a ‘second-class global citizen’ with less right to pollute than the developed world, a senior Indian environment official has said. Pradipto Ghosh, who retired last month as India’s environment secretary and now sits on a committee advising India’s Prime Minister on climate change, warned that the West must “get serious” about its own cutting of emissions if it wanted progress on the issue. Telegraph

Tuvalu envoy takes up global-warming fight : Earlier this spring in New York, the United Nations Security Council held a special session to take up the issue of climate change. For the first time, the UN was defining global warming as a threat to the security of nations — every bit as dangerous as war or nuclear weapons. Among those who spoke was one of the newest ambassadors to the UN, Afelee Pita, from the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. His nation is made up of nine, low-lying coral islands. He said it’s absolutely correct to think of climate change as a threat to the security of his country. National Public Radio (US)

98% of Indonesian orangutan habitat gone in next 15 years: Indonesia is losing more than 2.1 million hectares (5.2 million acres) of forest a year to illegal loggers, states a new report from the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP). The report, which estimates the value of illicit timbering at $4 billion annually, warns that 98 percent of Indonesia’s lowland forests will be gone by 2022, putting species like the orangutan at risk of extinction in the wild. Monga Bay

The woes of Kilimanjaro: Don’t blame global warming: The “snows” of Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro inspired the title of an iconic American short story, but now its dwindling icecap is being cited as proof for human-induced global warming. However, two researchers writing in the July-August edition of American Scientist magazine say global warming has nothing to do with the decline of Kilimanjaro’s ice, and using the mountain in northern Tanzania as a “poster child” for climate change is simply inaccurate. Phys.Org