Wednesday-Night

The hush-hush regreening of Europe
DOUG SAUNDERS, Globe and Mail
December 20, 2007
BUAIS, France — To look across the rolling fields of Jean-Claude Thibert’s Normandy farm is to see the past, present and future of the European countryside.
A pig farm, in business for 50 years, occupies the front of his 90-hectare plot on the edge of a […]

20 December 2007
The Economist
The Olympics put China on the international stage
IF THIS is to be the Asian century, future historians might pinpoint 2008 as the year it truly began. Curiously, the event that will symbolise this is rooted deep in Western tradition: China’s staging of the Olympic games in Beijing next August.
As with Berlin in […]

Light Bulbs to Light Trucks, Efficiency Shapes New Energy Law
WASHINGTON, DC, December 19, 2007 (ENS) - Congress on Tuesday passed a new energy bill and sent it along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House in a hybrid Prius car. Today President George W. Bush signed the measure, which includes the first increase in […]

Do see last week #1345 - a wonderful evening with Marc Garneau - good conversation and great photos by Robert Galbraith
If two weeks ago our theme was Let it Snow, this week should likely be Winter Wonderland. However, we confess that after digging ourselves out of the house (resisting the temptation to hi-bear-nate), aching […]

December 16, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Bali, Indonesia

The negotiators at the United Nations climate conference here in Bali came from almost 200 countries and spoke almost as many languages, but driving them all to find a better way to address climate change was one widely shared, if unspoken, […]

December 16, 2007
By FRANK RICH
THIS campaign season has been in desperate need of its own reincarnation of Howard Beale from “Network”: a TV talking head who would get mad as hell and not take it anymore. Last weekend that prayer was answered when Lawrence O’Donnell, an excitable Democratic analyst, seized a YouTube moment while appearing […]

December 15
Canada’s environment minister says he regrets watered-down climate deal
(CP) BALI, Indonesia - Canada helped gut some of the substance from a world climate-change deal and then expressed regret Saturday when the final agreement was ultimately watered down even more than it had hoped.
Environment Minister John Baird hailed as a positive step a United Nations […]

December 17, 2007
CLIMATE CHANGE: Forward, Hopefully Past the Hurdles
Analysis by Ramesh Jaura
BONN, Dec 17 (IPS) - Despite scepticism about the ‘Bali roadmap’, the international community has come a long way in hammering out a truly global response to the serious threat posed by climate change.
But the global climate diplomacy is faced with several hurdles that […]

December 3 - 14 2007

United Nations Climate Change Conference - Bali, 3 - 14 December 2007
The thirteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 13) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and third Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP 3) opened on Monday morning. […]

December 14, 2007
In 2007, Polar Ice Cap Vanished at Record Clip
SAN FRANCISCO - Arctic ice at the North Pole melted at a record rate in the summer of 2007, the latest sign that climate change has accelerated in recent years, climate scientists said on Wednesday.
… As ice in the arctic melts to water, it also […]