Can Obama lay ground for climate talks?

King Coal, which has been deservedly painted as the greenhouse-gas villain that must be phased out, is being rescued instead. About 40 new coal-fired plants are reportedly scheduled to be built across Europe during the next half-dozen years, with five in Britain and 27 in Germany alone.
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Robert Collier is a visiting scholar at the Center for Environmental Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.

Alarmist Thomas L. Friedman thinks carbon dioxide is "toxic"

we need a tax on carbon — so we and our power utilities don't become permanently addicted to cheap coal that makes for lower electricity prices today but spits out toxic greenhouse gases that have to be paid for by future generations tomorrow.