The world is spending half a trillion dollars on fossil fuel subsidies every year, according to a new report. The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) says rich countries are spending seven times more supporting coal, oil and gas than they are on helping poorer nations fight climate change. Fuel subsidies to US farmers amounted to $1bn in 2011 says the ODI. Some countries including Egypt, Morocco and Pakistan, have subsidies bigger than the national fiscal deficit. The new report calls on the G20 to phase out the payments by 2020. While there is no globally agreed definition of what a fossil fuel subsidy actually is, the report draws on a range of sources from the International Monetary Fund to the International Energy Agency. It details the range of financial help given to oil, coal and gas producers and consumers from national governments and through international development. What emerges is a complicated web of different types of payments in different countries. In the United States, for example, the government in 2011 gave a $1bn fuel tax exemption to farmers, $1bn for the strategic petroleum reserve and $0.5bn for oil, coal and gas research and development. Germany gave financial assistance totalling 1.9bn euro to the hard coal sector in the same year. And the UK gave tax concessions worth £280m in 2011 for oil and gas production. Pakistan is a country with the second highest number of children out of school in the world. It has some of the worst nutrition, maternal mortality and child health indicators.

Virginia's dying marshes and climate change denial

      'Ghost trees' are victims of rising sea levels  

Dying wetland trees along Virginia's

coastline are evidence that rising sea levels threaten nature and humans, scientists say - and show the limits of political action amid climate change scepticism. Dead trees loom over the marsh like the bones of a whale beached long ago. In the salt marshes along the banks of the York River in the US state of Virginia, pine and cedar trees and bushes of holly and wax myrtle occupy small islands, known as hummocks. But as the salty estuary waters have risen in recent years, they have drowned the trees on the hummocks' lower edges. If - when - the sea level rises further, it will inundate and drown the remaining trees and shrubs, and eventually sink the entire marsh. That threatens the entire surrounding ecosystem, because fish, oysters and crabs depend on the marsh grass for food.