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Environmental groups hoping for concrete action on climate change were left disappointed by talks at the Group of 20 summit on Friday. Although world leaders managed to forge some agreement on global warming - despite news of Iran's secret nuclear facility eclipsing most of the discussion at the Pittsburgh summit - greens said little of substance was actually achieved. "They haven't really produced anything that is relevant in terms of active progress," says Kim Carstensen, head of the World Wildlife Fund's Global Climate Initiative. "I'm not that impressed...
...help developing nations that stand to lose the most from climate change adapt to a warmer world. That latter issue is a chief sticking point for the ongoing U.N. climate negotiations, in which governments are working to produce a successor to the Kyoto Protocol at the Copenhagen summit in December. While poor nations have demanded funds to help them develop sustainably and prepare for warming, rich nations have so far been slow to promise money. "Climate financing is going to be absolutely key if we're going to have a deal in Copenhagen," says Bill McKibben, an environmentalist and author...
Still, the summit wasn't a total loss for greens. President Barack Obama introduced the idea of phasing out fossil fuel subsidies over time, to help improve energy efficiency and "transition to a 21st-century clean energy economy." Phasing out subsidies for fossil fuels would save money - the Environmental Law Institute estimated that the U.S. paid out $72 billion in subsidies between 2002 and 2008 - and correct a market that has been warped against low-carbon alternatives precisely at a time when nations are supposed to be cutting carbon. But again, specifics of a concrete plan were wanting in Obama...
...summit ended a whirlwind week for climate news that began on Sept. 22 with a high-level U.N. summit on warming. Before "Climate Week" began, the U.S. Senate made intimations that it would not likely vote on a carbon cap-and-trade bill before the year was up, dimming the chances for a global deal at Copenhagen. But, then, China pledged to improve energy efficiency, while progress was made toward crafting a way to use global carbon markets to slow tropical deforestation. That gave environmentalists some hope. "Overall, I still feel better than I did a week ago," said Carstensen...
...could tell something important was happening. The business class cabin in the seven-and-a-half-hour Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Khabarovsk on the Friday night prior to the summit was peppered with Kremlin officials and their bodyguards. A cavalcade of black SUV's, with tinted windows and the blue lights that signal someone important is inside, was waiting on the tarmac in Khabarovsk...