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Jessica Aldred visits Reykjavik to find out how Iceland is tapping into its renewable energy resources as it prepares for a low-carbon future

For tourists relaxing in the hot springs of Iceland's famous Blue Lagoon, just outside the capital Reykjavik, the issues of climate change and energy security are not likely to be occupying most bathers' minds. But what many visitors may be surprised to know is that the hot water they are sitting in is part of a remarkable journey by one country from oil dependence to a world leader in harnessing renewable energy.

Iceland's stunning scenery, with its bare, lava-strewn flats, snow-capped mountain ranges, glaciers, volcanoes and hot springs, is due to its location on one of the earth's major fault lines, the mid-Atlantic ridge. While this landscape is attracting an increasing number of tourists each year, the country's geographical peculiarities also mean that Iceland is the only country in the world that can claim to obtain 100% of its electricity and heat from renewable sources.

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· Spy exposed after leaving easy-to-follow trail
· BAA refused involvement in 'James Bond' tactics

When former Oxford student "Ken Tobias" volunteered in July to help anti-aviation group Plane Stupid, he was accepted with only a few reservations. He seemed committed to the cause of reducing aviation emissions, but as members of the group which occupied the roof of parliament last month recalled yesterday: "There was something not quite right about him."

In retrospect, it is easy to see why. Tobias was yesterday exposed as Toby Kendall, a corporate spy who works as "an analyst" for C2-i International, the UK's premier "special risk management" and investigation company. He was also accused of acting as an agent provocateur, and planting stories to discredit activists.

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Ethical shopping just got more complicated. The idea that only local produce is good is under attack. There is growing evidence to suggest that some air-freighted food is greener than food produced in the UK. Robin McKie and Caroline Davies report on how the concept of food miles became oversimplified - and is damaging the planet in the process

Mike Small and his wife, Karen, sat down last Thursday to a dinner of smoked fish pie crusted with mashed potato and served with purple-sprouting broccoli, an unremarkable family meal except for one key factor: every ingredient came from sources close to their home in Burntisland, Fife. 'The fish was Fife-landed, while the potatoes and broccoli were grown on nearby farms,' he says.

Nor was this a one-off culinary event. For the past six months Mike and Karen and their two children, Sorley and Alex, have consumed only food and drink bought in their home district.

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Quickly would be a good idea, if you need one. "Some local authorities provide sandbags in an emergency," explains Paul Gainey in the Environment Agency's southwest office, the area currently most at risk of flooding, "but they have limited supply, so it's probably best to get your own."

The simplest way, of course, is to take your credit card down to the nearest DIY store that stocks them - but not all do, and transport can be difficult. Alternatively, if you have a lot of empty bags, you can also order a sack of builder's sand online from any of the major DIY chains. "Last year when there was flooding we did see people buying those," says a B&Q spokeswoman.

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This year's winner, James Nathan, will follow a well-trodden path to fame and culinary glory

Nathan, 34, who plans to open his own restaurant - 'going from a career that made people miserable to one that makes people happy' - has found inspiration in the good fortune enjoyed by his forerunners.

Since her 2005 win, Thomasina Miers, 31, has written a cookery book, fronted her own cookery-cum-survival series The Wild Gourmets, is starring in another, A Cook's Tour of Spain, which begins on Channel 4 on 20 March, writes a national newspaper column and has opened her own Mexican restaurant, Wahaca, in Covent Garden, London.

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Cash-free peace pilgrimage to Gandhi's birthplace comes to an early end

He set off on the first leg of his epic journey with a fanfare of publicity, not to mention an appropriately alternative farewell pre-dawn party on Bristol docks featuring drummers and someone playing a conch shell.

Mark Boyle's idea was to walk to Mahatma Gandhi's birthplace without a penny in his pocket, relying on the kindness of strangers for food and shelter to prove that a better world without money really was possible.

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With recent reports downplaying the possibility of biofuels as a solution to climate change, Giulio Sica wonders why there has been no mention of hemp as an alternative crop

Why has hemp been ignored as a biofuel? Photograph: Corbis

The Royal Society, the European Commission and the UK government have all managed, in the last few days, to take the wind out of the sails of the biofuel industry, publishing reports that suggest biofuels could be causing more harm than good, the crops not being as environmentally friendly as first thought, with the Commons environmental audit committee calling for a moratorium on biofuel targets until more research can be done.

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· Casting vote throws out sand dune development
· Man who stuck out hopes Trump has got message

In one corner, a world-famous property developer with serious dollars to spend and some of the most prestigious real estate in places such as New York, Chicago and Dubai. In the other, a rag tag of staunch Aberdonian conservationists and a salmon fisherman who has become a local celebrity by refusing to sell his unkempt nine hectares (23 acres) to make way for "the world's greatest golf course".

The billionaire is not used to losing, but he got a bloody nose yesterday. In a surprise decision, Donald Trump's plan to build a £1bn golf resort on a rare and vulnerable stretch of sand dunes on the coast north of Aberdeen was thrown out by councillors.

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The Yangtze river dolphin, until recently one of the most endangered species on the planet, has been declared officially extinct after an intensive survey of its natural habitat. Several other species in China are also facing extinction Continue reading...

The Yangtze river dolphin, until recently one of the most endangered species on the planet, has been declared officially extinct following an intensive survey of its natural habitat.

The freshwater marine mammal, which could grow to eight feet long and weigh up to a quarter of a tonne, is the first large vertebrate forced to extinction by human activity in 50 years, and only the fourth time an entire evolutionary line of mammals has vanished from the face of the Earth since the year 1500.

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Environmental movements: Singer tells the Global Warming College Tour to limit use to one square normally, two to three squares on 'pesky occasions'
Poll: what's your optimal sheet number?

"All I wanna do is have some fun," sang Sheryl Crow once, but it appears her desires have since changed. Now all she wants to do is limit the use of toilet paper to one sheet per visit.

The singer made her declaration in an article for the Huffington Post to help promote her Stop Global Warming College Tour, an 11-date tour explaining the perils of global warming to Americans. Accompanied by Laurie David, activist and wife of comedian Larry David, the pair have been criss-crossing the country in a biodiesel-powered bus spreading the word on the bathroom hygiene of the future.

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Conservationist and campaigner whose Monkey World was a safe haven for primates

Jim Cronin, campaigner against the illegal trade in primates and founder of the animal sanctuary Monkey World, in Dorset, has died aged 55 of liver cancer. Working with primates has a long history of producing strong, even iconoclastic, personalities - from Jane Goodall to Diane Fosse and Karl Amman - and Cronin, an irascible, headstrong and passionate man, was no exception.

Born of Irish-Italian parents, he was brought up on the banks of the Hudson river in Yonkers, near New York. After graduating from St Denis school and Lincoln high school, he took odd jobs as a lift constructor and a removals man before, quite literally, falling into primatology. An accident while moving a grand piano left him with his leg in traction, and when he recovered he took a job looking after the primates at the Bronx zoo.

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The man who pioneered environmental activism claims to be more interested in scaling mountains than in making money. Yet his company has been valued at $500m. How does he combine business and pleasure?

'I've been a businessman for almost 50 years. It's as difficult for me to say those words as it is for someone to admit being an alcoholic or a lawyer.' That's how Yvon Chouinard, entrepreneurial maverick and pioneer of environmental activism, began his business manual, Let My People Go Surfing, published last year. For a reluctant businessman, Chouinard, founder and owner of outdoor clothing company Patagonia, isn't doing badly. In fact, while little known in Britain, he is revered in America among progressive entrepreneurs. His company employs 1,300 people and last year had a turnover of $267m; its innovative clothing is known as the 'Gucci of the outdoors'.

He has been offered up to $500m for his company and has always refused to give it up. But you won't find the 68-year-old behind a desk in the California headquarters. He'd rather be surfing, climbing or fly-fishing. Next weekend, he is giving a keynote talk at the Fort William Mountain Festival, one of the world's leading celebrations of mountain culture, a homecoming of sorts because, in some ways, the eco-activist and entrepreneur owes Patagonia's success to Britain.

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· Looters swoop amid battle to avert ecological disaster
· BMW bikes among cargo lost from stricken ship

Jane and Mary huffed and puffed as they rolled the oak wine cask across the shingle towards the Sea Shanty car park. "Honestly, we just came for a walk and a chat", said Mary, a retired teacher, "but then we saw all this stuff here and the police told us we could help ourselves. So we did."

They were not the only ones.

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Wildlife film-maker who pioneered the practice of placing cameras inside birds' nests

Sielmann's rapid rise to fame came when Peter Scott invited him to show his black and white footage of nesting woodpeckers on an early episode of his wildlife series, Look. Sielmann duly turned up for the live broadcast with minutes to spare. The film was shown, and he and Scott discussed its contents.

To everyone's amazement, immediately after the broadcast, the BBC switchboard was inundated with requests to see the film again. Indeed, it was repeated many times over the next few years. Fans included future Beatle Paul McCartney, who was so enthused by the series that he wrote to Scott asking for drawings of birds. Others loved it too. The programme's audience appreciation index matched that of the FA cup final.

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For years, a network of fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies has been claiming that science of global warming is inconclusive. They set back action on climate change by a decade. But who funded them? Exxon's involvement is well known, but not the strange role of Big Tobacco. In the first of three extracts from his new book, George Monbiot tells a bizarre and shocking new story

ExxonMobil is the world's most profitable corporation. Its sales now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits, ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes Aids. So what's its strategy?

The website Exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company's official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled "junk science". The findings they welcome are labelled "sound science".

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The 2003 heatwave killed more than 30,000 people. It was the biggest natural disaster in Europe on record, according to the government's chief scientific adviser. And yet, as temperatures reach new highs, Britain is fretting about dried-out lawns and stuffy offices. Alok Jha looks at the dangers that really lie ahead - and how to survive them

When the human body gets to 42C, it starts to cook. The heat causes the proteins in each cell to irreversibly change, like an egg white as it boils. Even before that, the brain shuts down because of a lack of blood coming from the overworked, overheated heart. Muscles stop working, the stomach cramps and the mind becomes delirious. Death is inevitable.

The gruesome effects of overheating have been largely forgotten as Europe swelters under record temperatures, from southern England's 36.5C to Bosnia's 41C. When weather forecasters predicted that the heat would get more intense across the continent today, most of us heaved a sigh at the thoughts of stuffy trains, sweaty buses, parched lawns and boiling offices. But perhaps we are being complacent.

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Plagues of ladybirds, a hastily drafted drought bill, shared baths and friendships forged over standpipes ... As the first water ban in a decade comes into force, Martin Wainwright remembers the long, hot summer of 1976, while Dominic Murphy offers 20 tips for saving water

I was the newest reporter on the London Evening Standard when the rain last stopped falling in the summer of 1976. I was sent out at short notice to suggest ways of coping with the terrible lack of water. It was slightly desperate and lickety-spit since I was only two weeks out of Bradford and didn't know my Hampstead from my Holborn. But the combined gods of journalism and the weather (usually equally fickle) beamed down and the terrifying editor at the time, Charles Wintour, put the results on the front page.

The cutting is as yellow now as the grass in the parks was then, but the hints I cobbled together then may be helpful as much of Britain faces up to a second blitz of hazy blue days and nights of drifting barbecue smells and murmurs from sleep-outs on neighbouring balconies.

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· At least one fatality
· Flooding in Key West

Huge waves and 125mph winds pounded Florida today as Hurricane Wilma swept across the state after earlier battering large parts of Cuba.

The storm - which has killed more than 20 people in the Caribbean and Mexico - hit Florida's south-west coast this morning, where there were reports of at least one fatality.

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· States urged to prepare for victims of climate change
· Natural disasters displace more people than wars

Rising sea levels, desertification and shrinking freshwater supplies will create up to 50 million environmental refugees by the end of the decade, experts warn today. Janos Bogardi, director of the Institute for Environment and Human Security at the United Nations University in Bonn, said creeping environmental deterioration already displaced up to 10 million people a year, and the situation would get worse.

"There are well-founded fears that the number of people fleeing untenable environmental conditions may grow exponentially as the world experiences the effects of climate change," Dr Bogardi said. "This new category of refugee needs to find a place in international agreements. We need to better anticipate support requirements, similar to those of people fleeing other unviable situations."

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