The National Emergency Briefing outlines the need for urgent action to address environmental crisis, says PAUL DONOVAN, warning that there’s no time to indulge the arguments of the fossil-fuel-funded climate-change deniers
EVEN in Earth’s high northern-latitude forest, climate change is predicted to make wildfires more frequent and severe.
Earth’s far north hosts the boreal forest, a vast green belt that stretches from North America to Siberia. The boreal forest is one of the world’s largest CO₂ sinks. Over the past few thousand years it has removed around one trillion tonnes of carbon from the air, storing it in the trees and soil. Because of the large amount of carbon stored in the boreal forest, fires here can release much more CO₂ into the air than forest fires elsewhere, amplifying climate change.
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
Reaching co-operation is supposed to be the beginning, not the end, of global climate governance, argues LISA VANHALA
Gin Lane by William Hogarth is a critique of 18th-century London’s growing funeral trade, posits DAN O’BRIEN
BLANE SAVAGE recommends the display of nine previously unseen works by the Glaswegian artist, novelist and playwright


