Walking through the thick jungle canopy of the Aceh rainforests, a troop of jealously territorial gibbons calls out from the tree tops with shouts that can be heard more than a kilometre away. Down past a row of traditional stilted long houses and beyond a seismic chasm, a family of critically endangered Sumatran tigers lazes around in one of the few open clearings of the forest floor.

Britain's most successful transport campaigner has come top of the first comprehensive list of the country's most effective greens, compiled by The Independent on Sunday.

Air travel is declining for the first time in almost 20 years, The Independent on Sunday discloses today. Airline failures, harder economic times and a dismal airport experience have caused a sharp downturn in the number of travellers boarding planes at British airports.

Top economists and United Nations leaders are working on a "Green New Deal" to create millions of jobs, revive the world economy, slash poverty and avert environmental disaster, as the financial markets plunge into their deepest crisis since the Great Depression.

The phone call came at 6.45 in the morning, waking us in a hired holiday cottage in the Yorkshire Dales. Inevitably I got to my mobile too late, but found a message from the police. Would I call them straight back? My wife, Judy, sat beside me as I rang. "Do you know your children's whereabouts?" came the alarming question. We did. Our daughter, Eorann, was at university. And our son, Owen, had emailed to say he was staying an extra night with friends in Torquay. Were we sure they were not at home, the police continued. We were, but our minds were racing to work out what might have happened. Did we have any pets in the house? The penny began to drop. "Is the house on fire?" I asked.

The caption calls him the "high priest of deceit and global destruction". The picture has him belching fire like a dragon. And who is the subject of this highly personal attack? None other than Al Gore, who last year won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for their success in bringing the climate-change crisis to global public attention.

Green is the hottest buzzword in the design world right now. Designers have inadvertently helped to generate the current environmental crisis because, by creating desirable products, they have helped fuel the global consumer economy and its attendant consumption of resources and pollution. Today, the profession is trying to make amends and, in particular, a new generation of young designers is exploring ways to reduce the negative impact of the goods they create. Yet there is a realisation that the problems are enormous and complex, while many solutions on offer are simplistic: the idea that we can save the planet while continuing with current levels of consumption is not viable. So, many of the most interesting "green" designs today – showcased on these pages – instead draw attention to environmental and social problems rather than proposing solutions. n

This must be the perfect place to interview an eco-campaigner: a hot house in Kew Gardens after closing time. With most visitors departed, the residents are venturing out, and an iguana shuffles calmly across our path. "This is how it should be, isn't it?" whispers Katharine Hamnett. "Eden. A perfect ecosystem. No pesticides, just all the right predators." We wander past skeins of orchids towards some Venus flytraps. "Carnivorous plants," she mutters darkly, "remind me of the fashion industry."

It's always struck me as rather perverse that it's so very easy to get your hands on a stolen bike in London. Just about everyone knows that if you take a trip down to the end of Brick Lane in Shoreditch, east London, on a Sunday morning, you'll find dozens of kids peddling (not pedalling) expensive and often shiny new bicycles for knock-down prices. Yet even though this is common knowledge, the police never seem to do anything about it.

Climate change may soon make the tropics too hot for many native species, which will be forced to head for higher ground to escape the heat, US researchers said yesterday.

About half of the traditional lightbulbs on sale in Ireland will be banned next March, under Government plans announced today.

The Government has been accused of reneging on its commitment to tackle climate change and ignoring local opinion after it stepped in to approve a major expansion of Stansted.

I am feeling slightly apprehensive. A global forum of 8000 environmentalists and conservationists is not familiar territory for a human rights activist like me - but here I am, at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) forum in Barcelona.

An African pancake tortoise is recovering after an operation to remove a bladder stone the size of a small egg which could have killed her.

The UK should cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent by mid-century, the Government's climate change committee recommended today.

Do you know a boss who struts around the office, preening himself and puffing out his chest, showing off a splash of colour – perhaps a red tie? According to a study of male managers, he is behaving like much of the animal kingdom, particularly monkeys and chimpanzees.

In the aquamarine waters off the paradise atolls of French Polynesia a diver comes face to face with one of the world's most impressive creatures: a female humpback whale accompanied by her young calf. These images, captured by the French underwater photographer Yves Lefèvre, show how the two whales happily "dance" with their new friend before continuing on one of the world's most remarkable migrations.

A quarter of the world's mammals are at risk of extinction, the latest global analysis of threatened species revealed today.

More than a fifth of the world's reptiles are threatened with extinction, a new method of monitoring the fortunes of groups of species revealed today.

Ground-level ozone pollution is contributing to hundreds of deaths a year in the UK - and climate change could help make the situation worse, a report from the Royal Society warned today.

Schemes to protect natterjack toads, fritillary butterflies and sharks are to receive funding as part of a £5.5 million programme to help some of England's most threatened wildlife, it was announced today.

A man in a harness is dangling from a tree house 60 feet above the ground. Just visible between the tall beech trees, he rips off the roof and pulls down the slatted walls, letting them crash to the forest floor.

Gordon Brown's Government will become greener as a result of his reshuffle. The promotion of his close ally Ed Miliband, to head a new Department of Energy and Climate Change, shows the Prime Minister is to put an increased priority on global warming.

It is less than two months since Prince Charles was on the receiving end of a fusillade of scientific, political and commentariat criticism for voicing, yet again, his concerns about GM crops and foods. He was widely accused of "ignorance" and "Luddism"; of being too rich to care about the hungry, and even of trying to increase sales of his own organic produce. It was put about that Gordon Brown was angered by his intervention.

GM crop failures have helped to cause a "truly appalling and tragic" number of suicides among poor farmers in India, Prince Charles has alleged in his most outspoken attack on the technology to date.