Coal is the savior of the human race | Grist

"We believe that energy poverty is the world’s top priority, putting people first, not climate change.... We believe the challenge of ending energy poverty is global, and the solution is coal.”

-- Frederick Palmer, senior vice president of Peabody Energy, speaking at an international coal industry conference in Beijing. U.S. coal exports to China are rising rapidly.

Cancun climate talks hit bump thanks to Japan and Brazil | Grist

With negotiators laboring to unblock a complex, interlinked two-track process, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva meanwhile predicted the 12-day meeting "won't result in anything."

"No big leader is going, only environment ministers at best. We don't even know if foreign ministers are going. So there won't be any progress," Lula, who himself decided not to travel to Mexico, told reporters in Brazil.

China, Brazil Say Debate on Extending Kyoto Accord Threatens Climate Talks - Bloomberg

“Kyoto has to continue, otherwise the whole negotiation would fall apart,” Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, Brazil’s lead negotiator in Cancun said in an interview last night.

Cancún climate change summit: One lesson not to learn from Mexico | Jo Tuckman | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Felipe Calderon vowed to be Mexico's greenest ever president but his centralised reforestation effort proved disastrous
...
The problem was that by that time the original presidential tree, tendered with reverential care throughout the year, was one of the few left standing. The vast majority were dying or already dead. After months ignoring exposés in the local media, the official auditor came out with a report in March 2009 that concluded only 10% of the trees had survived. Worse, the massive reforestation effort had taken funds away from supporting the community-based management schemes.

Though it never fully accepted the farce into which the massive reforestation programme had fallen, Calderon's government did appoint a new head of the national forestry commission who reassigned resources back to what works.