More than hot air required

An excellent, 30,000 word New Yorker investigation into climate change earlier this year concluded that it was curious that a technologically advanced civilisation should decide to destroy itself.

Tomorrow the Guardian is publishing a 36-page supplement explaining and examining the issue described by the prime minister, Tony Blair, as the world's most important long-term problem.

Climate change will be one of the main items on the agenda at next week's G8 meeting of world leaders in Gleneagles in Scotland and many will be watching what moves the Bush administration makes on the issue. The US has been attacked over its apparent scepticism that climate change is a grave threat and its refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty on reducing emissions of carbon dioxode.

In an interview in today's Financial Times, the environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, claims that Britain's chairmanship of the G8 has already been a success because of increased awareness of climate change in the business world.

She is today making a presentation at an insurance industry conference in which she will suggest that businesses that take action now to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide will be in a prime position to profit from the regulation of greenhouse gases.

But rather less upbeat today was former Labour cabinet minister Stephen Byers, and US Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, who are co-chairs of the International Climate Change Taskforce.