Transition's Timing Hits Climate Talks - washingtonpost.com

"A full, final, ratifiable agreement just isn't in the cards" next year, said Elliot Diringer, director of international strategies for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "It's really important to have realistic expectations going into Copenhagen, and then there's a chance of success."
...
Klobuchar said in an interview that she and Kerry will tell foreign leaders that "something can and will happen out of this Congress with this new president" and that key congressional players on climate change are prepared to engage in horse trading to get a bill passed.

"The administration's enormous commitment to put resources into technology, that's going to be key to get people on board," she said, noting that wind energy has spurred economic development in her state.

AFP: EU set to switch off old-style lightbulbs

BRUSSELS (AFP) — The EU was set on Monday to fix dates for the gradual banning of traditional household light bulbs in favour of new energy-saving models which use a fraction of the electricity.

From next September, 100-watt versions of the old incandescent bulbs could be banned from Europe's shops, according to one of the scenarios being discussed by EU energy ministers in Brussels, one EU parliamentary source said.

Dispatch from the bizarro world of Jim Thomas

"The notion of deploying geo-engineering research and even commercialising geo-engineering is enjoying a level of respectability in science policy circles that would have been unthinkable even three years ago," says Jim Thomas of Canadian-based watchdog group, ETC.

One reason is "the level of panic" surrounding greenhouse-gas levels, which are growing at around three percent a year and are now more than a third greater than before the Industrial Revolution, says Thomas.

Another, he suggests, is "an astonishing switch" by former climate sceptics and conservative lobby groups in the United States.

After years of denial or contestation, these powerful forces have now suddenly accepted that global warming is a problem.

They have seized on geo-engineering as a solution that would make it unnecessary to slap costly curbs on big polluters, he argues.