Howard: climate change attracting too much attention: In a speech today (Monday), Prime Minister John Howard said he did not believe climate change was the overwhelming moral challenge of our time, as Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has suggested. He declared he would not sub-contract his climate change policy to the European Union by supporting emissions targets like those proposed by the Labor Party. The 7.30 Report

China delays climate-change plan indefinitely: China has delayed indefinitely its national “action plan” on climate change, which was due to be released on Monday, after exhaustive consultations among ministries in Beijing and provincial and local governments. No explanation was given for the move, although global warming is causing increasing international concern about the country’s high-speed, economic growth model.  Financial Times

Deepwater fish growing slower due to global warming: Changes in ocean temperature have altered the growth rates of commercially harvested fish over the past century … Analysing the ear bones of 555 commercially caught fish to determine age, the researchers, led by Ronald Thresher of CSIRO-Australia, report that warmer temperatures in the south-west Pacific Ocean have enabled shallow-water fish to grow faster, perhaps making them more resilient to commercial exploitation. Monga Bay

Not with a buzz, but a whimper: The most familiar plea made by environmentalists warning us of the imminent disappearance of this or that species is a question: how will we explain the absence of the polar bear, or the manatee, or a certain species of eagle, to our children? …. However, the creature I’m most worried about right now is not a mammal. It’s an insect: the humble bee. Huffington Post

Hunters kill one of last surviving Amur leopards: Hunters in Russia’s far east have shot and killed one of the last seven surviving female Amur leopards living in the wild, WWF said on Monday, driving the species even closer to extinction. Last week environmentalists said there were only between 25 and 34 Amur leopards still living in the wild. AlertNet

An island made by global warming: The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland’s enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming. Several miles long, the island was once thought to be the tip of a peninsula halfway up Greenland’s remote east coast but a glacier joining it to the mainland has melted away completely, leaving it surrounded by sea. Independent