Watching the players at the climate poker table : Nature News & Comment

In two decades of covering climate-change negotiations,

Frank McDonald, has seen youthful hope fight dark forces, and a distant threat become a reality.

...As for China, the advantage of having a totalitarian regime is that once it decides that wind turbines or high-speed trains are good things, they start to happen very quickly — but not fast enough to ensure that its now-prodigious carbon emissions, or those of the United States, will peak any time soon.

Durban maps path to climate treaty : Nature News & Comment

Island states threatened by rising seas, such as Grenada and Papua New Guinea, had hoped for more immediate, aggressive steps. Kevin Conrad, the representative for Papua New Guinea in the negotiations, lays part of the blame for inaction on the ongoing global financial crisis.

Kevin Conrad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In August 2011, following a change of government in Papua New Guinea, new deputy Prime Minister, and Minister for Forestry and Climate Change, Belden Namah, said that Conrad would be recalled from his role as envoy, and replaced. Namah stated that he wanted a climate change ambassador who was a permanent resident of Papua New Guinea, and suggested that Conrad was insufficiently familiar with the country, its culture and its landowners.

2008 - Bali Climate Talks - Kevin Conrad - Papua New Guinea - NYTimes.com

Mr. Conrad, 39, was born in the United States to Papuan parents but grew up in Wewak on New Guinea’s northern coast. He studied finance at top American universities, worked in investment banking and lives with his family in the New York City area. Besides representing New Guinea in climate talks, he runs the Rainforest Coalition, a group formed by tropical countries seeking compensation for the benefits of not cutting their forests.