Socialism, taxes & Castro - Day 2 Video from Rio+20

We're still at the planning conference for major groups. This weekend, 45,000 more people are traveling to this UN summit. It is hard to imagine what we are seeing and hearing multiplied by that kind of magnitude, but that is what's coming.

Take a look at our video blog from day two and sample the tone of this conference. It's just the tip of the (not melting!) iceberg.

Climate change means more work for emergency responders | The Asheville Citizen-Times | citizen-times.com

Haggard outlined the science and the outlook for climate change Friday at the annual meeting of the Disaster Emergency Response Association International, which returned to its Asheville roots for its 50th anniversary.

With warming temperatures, scientists expect more extreme weather events, sudden downpours and extended droughts, which in turn could mean more flooding or more wildfires, Haggard said. “Stay tuned to the Weather Channel or the NCDC.”

Remarks on Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development

[Todd Stern, Special US Envoy for the Climate Change Hoax]: Thanks, Valerie. There are certainly – the phrase “common but differentiated” is certainly sprinkled through this text in any number of places, and we have fairly strong and developed views about that idea in general. I am extremely familiar with it from the climate context. And what we have been very firm about in that context is that the idea, the phrase taken to mean a firewall between developed and developing countries, is completely unacceptable to us. If it ever made sense, it doesn’t make sense anymore in the context of a world that is so dynamically and rapidly evolving, and where some of the biggest economies and biggest users of resources -- in the climate change world, biggest producer of greenhouse gases -- and so forth, is on the developing country side of the line.