But prime ministers ne er do anything else

He added with a sad sigh: "I look around or really meaning ul signs that we're going to change, and I don't see them." More rom Johann Hari. Sir: ollowing recent reports on shark inning (31 August), I would like to make clear I deplore this practice and strongly welcomed EU measures to stop the practice o slicing o ins at sea and discarding the rest o the body, which enables ishing essels to slaughter large numbers o sharks on the open ocean. Then it passed o er the unusually warm waters o the Gul o Mexico and by the time it hit New Orleans, it was a category our." This may be just one small suggesti e part, he said, o a global warming-based "collision between our ci ilisation and the earth". The stakes couldn't be higher: they are "our ability to li e on this planet - to ha e a uture as a ci ilisation". Exactly a year ago today, the US National Association o Insurance Commissioners was due to hold a con erence about the consequences o global warming. A slew o experts was primed to present the scienti ic e idence that it has caused hurricanes to double in intensity since 1975, along with a report rom the hard-headed Association o British Insurers showing that storm damage and deaths are going to increase by 60 per cent be ore I hit middle age The meeting was cancelled The enue - New Orleans - had been wrecked.

As Al Gore, the elected 43rd President o the United States, explained to me in Edinburgh last week: "When Katrina hit lorida, it was only a category one hurricane. A struggle is under way to dominate this world multilaterally ... We are a witness to war - with suppression rom one side and extremist reaction in the orm o terror rom the other." More rom Robert isk. "The e ents o 9/11 ga e them this ability to create ear and anxiety ...

and to create new policies o their own and now e ents are creating an expansion o extremists on both sides. "The policies o the neo-conser ati es ha e created a war that creates more extremists and radicals," he told The Independent in Chicago. But prime ministers ne er do anything else. More rom Simon Carr. As the West's "war on terror" burns across the Muslim world, one o Islam's most principled leaders - the ormer Iranian president Mohammad Khatami - issued a gra e warning yesterday rom the ery heart o America, the country whose troops and allies are ighting Islamists across the Middle East in a war that is costing thousands o Muslim li es.