Sitting in her north London restaurant, Juliette Banner pours herself a glass of what is probably the most expensive tap water in the world.

When in 1997 my home became the first in London to export solar electricity to the national grid, my dream was that millions of others would quickly follow. Accountancy firm KPMG had produced a report stating that solar electricity was technologically competitive with oil, but needed a mass market to be economically competitive. Since then, Germany has installed over 300,000 home renewable energy systems. But the UK has barely managed 10,000. The result: installation costs in Germany are now half those in the UK.

Four hundred kangaroos on Australian Defence Department land have won a last-minute reprieve, after a public outcry at a planned mass slaughter.