Obama's global reach only goes so far | StatesmanJournal.com | Statesman Journal

L'AQUILA, Italy — Barack Obama is finding that even the reach of a globally popular president goes only so far, leaving him to snatch partial victories as he can. For all his effort, his strategy also banks heavily on the commodity that helped get him elected: hope.

Obama came to a summit of world leaders this week as arguably the most popular politician here, not to mention the leader of the world's chief superpower. But on the dominant issue of global warming, a new deal failed to win over developing countries, weakening its punch.
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In L'Aquila, Obama has been trying to build momentum on global warming by reminding world leaders that the House recently passed an energy bill committing the U.S. to serious reductions in greenhouse gases. As a result, said Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs, leaders of China, India and Brazil are going have a hard time returning home and explaining why they "aren't also willing to take those steps."

Guyana - Hururu concerned about low carbon impact on logging, livelihood

Hururu loggers told a team spearheading sub-national consultations on Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) that they were concerned that supporting the Strategy may jeopardize their livelihoods, when the latest round of meetings were hosted on Monday in the riverain community.
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In response the prime minister gave assurances that Guyana’s development path will transform the country into a low carbon economy and at the same time contribute to the mitigation of climate change effects. Additionally, the climate change office representative told the meeting that by reducing deforestation highly forested countries such as Guyana stand a better chance of not facing the extremities of climate change. “Our forests have a mutual purpose in preventing climate change,” he said. Bishop also told the group that the purpose of the LCDS is not to “lock away Guyana’s forests.”

Australian Climate Madness: Pachauri - the quote that got away

But this is the quote nobody wants you to read, which I found as a transcript on a Chinese web site. In it Pachauri refers to the lack of a baseline against which to measure the 80% cut by 2050:

“It’s pretty ridiculous if you ask me, I mean I’m surprised I didn’t see the fallacy that they were introducing in this pledge by not defining the baseline at least. How can you say you will achieve a cut of 'x' amount if you don’t even define what the baseline is, what the benchmark is?”