There is an urgent need to bring down the rising carbon emissions and switch over from the dirty fossil fuels to clean alternative energy sources. Leaders of the developed and developing nations completely agree over this plan of action but, sadly, the agreement between the two ends there. Both parties agree that they have got to act quickly but none is willing to take the initiative on the economic front of the fight against climate change.

Under the Kyoto Protocol the onus of controlling and bringing down the carbon emissions was on the developed nations with the help of tools like the national carbon registry and the emission permits whereas the developing nations were not obligated to any emission cuts. Now that the talks for a new climate treaty have started to gain momentum the developed nations want the developing countries to reduce their carbon emissions under that treaty. And although the developing countries recognize their responsibility in the fight against climate change they are unwilling to bear the full economic burden of the same.

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On Friday, however, the Clean Coal Carolers ceased to exist. Thanks to an overwhelming voice of discontent with the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s (ACCCE) marketing ploy, the cute little lumps of coal were retired just about as fast as they popped up. The page once reserved for the carolers (http://www.americaspower.org/carolers) now redirects to a post on the ACCCE blog, lamenting that it was “time for them to head home for the holidays.” From the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC to the pages of environmental blogs across the net, the Clean Coal Carolers were ridiculed into nonexistence.

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See also:

From Second Life to Real Life: Global Warming Activism in the Metaverse
UN’s De Boer Warns of Devastating Impacts if We Don’t Act on Climate Change

[Editor's note: In a recent piece about the Poznan climate talks and their existence in the virtual world of 'Second Life' I ended with a plea for more information; a plea answered by journalist Richard Elen.]

Green Options readers are probably not the only people who will be struck by the irony of an intended attendee at the Poznan Climate Talks being unable to leave Stansted Airport on his decidedly anti-environmental RyanAir flight because of climate protestors closing the runway. In many ways, flying to an environmental conference makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution.

I was always very conscious, in attending the UN Climate Negotiations in the run-up to Kyoto (which were often held in Geneva) that flying to conferences was a bad idea. Even driving there, or best of all going by train where possible, was exacerbating a problem we were there to try to do something about.

In those days, some 15 years ago, however, there were few other options. Video conferencing existed but it required going to a specially-equipped location and cost a lot of money. You were limited to one small group making a presentation to another small group. And while the Internet made it much easier to get information out of a conference, it did not initially help you a great deal to get in.

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The European Parliament reached a landmark deal on Tuesday by agreeing to meet 20 percent of Europe’s energy needs with renewable sources by 2020. Meeting in Brussels in advance of the EU climate summit later this week in Poznan, Poland, representatives of 27 EU member states hammered out the bold agreement, despite it being almost derailed by two substantial challenges.

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Late last week, several Polish skiers and snowboarders slid down a ramp covered by snow trucked in by the WWF and handed a petition to Polish Environment Minister Macjiec Nowicki in Poznan. Looking beyond the carbon footprint of trucking-in a ton of snow, it’s great to see unusual players getting involved in these important global climate change talks.

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And maybe someone can tell me more about Second Life, how you use it, and how it might be used in the setting of environmental politics.

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The UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland is ground zero for world leaders looking to take the next steps in tackling global warming. The international conference is aimed at negotiating a new agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, and to be finalized in Copenhagen in December of 2009.

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To celebrate the record-breaking environmental achievement, the driver arrived at the World Climate Change Conference in Poland and plowed through a wall of Styrofoam, releasing some of the only harmful emissions on the car’s 32,000-mile trip.

Louis Palmer, 36, drove the “solar taxi” through 38 countries, picking up celebrities and global officials for short legs along the way. Palmer says his passengers included U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Monaco’s Prince Albert, Hollywood filmmaker James Cameron, and Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

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As negotiations get under way in earnest at the two-week United Nations Climate Conference in Poland, recent surveys suggest a majority of people in both developing and industrialized nations seek substantive action on global warming and want their governments to agree on carbon emission targets.

The survey was commissioned by the HSBC Climate Partnership, a partnership of business and environmental groups. 12,000 people were surveyed in 12 countries and territories including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States.

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The UN Climate Conference in Poznan, Poland, starting today is raising hopes and fears across the green spectrum. As reported in the Christian Science Monitor.

A year-long push to devise a new global climate-change treaty – one that picks up where the Kyoto Protocol leaves off – gets under way Monday in Poland, with delegates from more than 190 nations set to resume grappling with the thorny issues of how much more to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and who will pay.

The talks, in their first round, are focused on reducing human influence on climate from occurring, according to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). More or less, this means keeping global warming to about 2 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels by the end of the century. Expectations however are low for this meeting.

President-Elect Obama’s pledge to reduce greenhouse gases to pre 1990 levels in the next 12 years notwithstanding, this group has a lot of challenges ahead. This first round of talks is primarily to develop working groups to tackle the various issues surrounding climate change in both developed and developing countries. But, with the global economic crisis on everyone’s mind, it will be hard to keep the conversation on track and work toward lower carbon emissions.

And while they are working to devise ways to reduce carbon emissions, they’ll create quite a few. AFP reports:

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