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In 2009, China's estimated 300 million smokers consumed a staggering 2.3 trillion cigarettes: more than the number smoked in the next four top tobacco-consuming countries—Indonesia, Japan, Russia, and the United States—combined. The health toll is enormous as well: Tobacco causes roughly 1 million deaths in China each year, including 100,000 fatalities blamed on secondhand smoke, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). If tobacco use is not curtailed, WHO warns, China’s death toll could rise to 3 million each year by 2050.

The nation’s capital, Beijing, is taking that chilling message to heart. On 28 November, the Beijing Municipal Government adopted a ban on smoking in all indoor public places—"with no loopholes and no exemptions," crowed Bernhard Schwartländer, the WHO representative in China, in a press release. The new law will take effect on 1 June 2015.

Research has identified, for the first time, how global warming is related to the amount of carbon emitted.

​A team of researchers from the universities of Southampton, Bristol and Liverpool have derived the first theoretical equation to demonstrate that global warming is a direct result of the build-up of carbon emissions since the late 1800s when human-made carbon emissions began. The results are in accord with previous data from climate models.

The theoretical equation reveals the complex relationship between carbon dioxide levels and the ocean system. Burning fossil fuels increases atmospheric carbon dioxide levels leading to global warming and the greenhouse effect, which is partly offset by the oceans taking in both heat and carbon.

A coalition of the UK’s airlines, airports, manufacturers and air navigation service provider NATS, has launched its latest industry road map, which considers the opportunities for sustainable aviation fuels. The Sustainable Aviation (SA) research identifies the potential for a 24 per cent reduction in aviation carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and the generation of £265 million in economic value plus the creation of 4,400 jobs in the UK over the next 15 years.

Scientists have presented the most comprehensive evidence to date that climate extremes such as droughts and record temperatures are failing to change people’s minds about global warming. Instead, political orientation is the most influential factor in shaping perceptions about climate change, both in the short-term and long-term, said Sandra Marquart-Pyatt, a Michigan State University sociologist and lead investigator on the study.

According to recent projections, the number of people living on Earth could exceed ten billion by the end of this century. Now, a new study has examined what it would take to reverse that unrelenting growth and achieve a sustainable population that is less threatening to biodiversity and ecosystems around the world. Short of a global catastrophe, scientists say, the only way to halt this population momentum is to institute a planet-wide one-child policy within a few decades.