Also by bex

Special Conference on July 26th 

In recent news: The Arctic sea ice melt began significantly earlier this year than last year. UK's CO2 emissions higher than official figures, government admits. CO2 emissions up by nearly a fifth in 12 years. Avoiding climate change is affordable, says PWC.

And yet, still, the government plans to build new coal plants and, of course, new runways.

Here's the latest in the Deep Green column from Rex Weyler - author, journalist, ecologist and long-time Greenpeace trouble-maker. The opinions here are his own.

In the 1980s, fishermen caught the last wild Beluga sturgeon from the Sea of Azov, source of prized caviar, and wild sturgeon in the Caspian Sea failed to reproduce. The sturgeon catch plunged by 95 percent, and the cost of caviar soared. Such extraordinary price growth is known as "hyperinflation," or as economist Eric Sprott says, "the caviar syndrome."

This may sound trivial regarding caviar, but hyperinflation turns critical with commodities such as oil, gas, copper, zinc, water, or fine hardwood, all now growing rare on a global scale. Industrial civilization has already depleted the best and most accessible of these resources. Sturgeons might recover if we leave them alone, but copper and oil do not reproduce themselves.

Actor Rula Lenska and journalist Rosie Boycott join other celeb mums in a vigil against Heathrow expansion in Parliament Square

As the date for the government's decision on Heathrow's third runway hurtles towards us (they'll be deciding in June or July, we think), a whole gamut of voices has been speaking out against the agenda for airport expansion that will destroy our chances of slowing climate change.

At the risk of sounding like a bad joke, an actress and a bishop (OK then, an archbishop) have both joined the fray, along with several celebrity mums and the head of the Sustainable Development Commission. Eclectic, eh? They're all calling on the government to shelve its plans for airport expansion.

Yesterday, the 'guardian angel' of Brazil's environment, Marina Silva, threw in the towel and quit her post as Brazil's environment minister. She told President Lula that her efforts to protect the Amazon "were being thwarted by powerful business lobbies".