A New Leaf

Billion-tree effort launches as new climate reports issued

Ooh, we love reports. A new one from a team of European scientists says the Arctic and Antarctic are linked by powerful currents, creating a "climate seesaw" that connects the fates of the poles and could help scientists predict the effects of polar warming on climate. A second, U.N.-commissioned report scolds rich countries for providing a "woefully inadequate" response to poor countries' desperate need to adapt to climate-change effects already being felt. "The adaptation agenda is somewhere between embryonic and heavily underdeveloped," says lead author Kevin Watkins. And a third report -- OK, this one isn't a report. But we do love it: Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai launched a project yesterday that will fight climate change by planting a billion (carbon dioxide-absorbing) trees in 2007. "Anybody can dig a hole, anybody can put a tree in that hole and water it," the Nobel Peace Prize winner says. "And everybody must make sure that the tree they plant survives."