Gas flaring in 20 of the world's leading oil-producing countries contributes as much to climate change as a major economy like Italy, new estimates show.

While flaring has been cut by 30% since 2005, $50bn worth of gas is still wasted annually, the World Bank said on Wednesday.

New satellite analysis of the flares – that are a by-product of oil drilling and which commonly light the night skies in oil fields around the world – suggests that bans and fines in some countries and the introduction of technology in newer oil fields has significantly reduced the pollution and waste in some countries, but has failed in others.

"It's a mess, a bloody mess," was farmer Carol Wainwright's blunt assessment. "The government's messed the whole thing up. It's disgusting. They've put us through all this, promised they're going to sort out the problem and then at the last minute they give up."

For once, people on both sides of the debate agreed. Whether they were for the badger cull or opposed to it, they tended to agree the policy had been badly botched. "I can't believe that at the very last moment they've said it's not going ahead," said Wainwright, who farms in the planned cull area in Gloucestershire. "It's a disgrace."

Steve Jones, a farm manager in the Forest of Dean and a vocal critic of culling, said he had thought the shooting would at least begin. "I thought it would be derailed. But I thought the train would at least get out of the station," he said. "This just goes to show how flawed the cull was. Public opinion is against it, science is against it, common sense is against it."

Many Americans are bracing for high heating bills this year, but the frosty New England winter won't put a chill on Erik Fey and Kathleen Rutty-Fey's energy budget. The Feys are one of many families reducing their costly household oil or gas dependence by turning to a traditional fuel with newfound popularity: wood.

The Feys first used a wood stove to supplement heat in their New Hampshire home, then migrated to sustainable wood pellets and have never looked back. "I was hooked immediately: no more wood piles, or chopping wood; no more wood critters crawling around inside, or wood debris scattered on the floor," Kathleen said. "And it made sense to use the leftovers from wood use and production. We were feeling very green about our decision."

Extinctions during the early Triassic period left Earth a virtual wasteland, largely because life literally couldn't take the heat, a new study suggests.

Between 247 to 252 million years ago, Earth was reeling from a mass extinction called the end-Permian event. The die-off had wiped out most life on Earth, including most land plants. The planet was baking, and life at the Equator struggled to survive.

Plants gobble up carbon dioxide, which warms the planet. So without them, Earth became "like a runaway greenhouse—it [started] to get out of control," said study co-author Paul Wignall, a paleontologist at England's Leeds University.