Although a climate agreement has been signed in Durban. The real question now is- what did they actually agree to and will it be enough. Indian environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, demanded :

"I wonder if this is an agenda to shift the blame on to countries who are not responsible [for climate change]. I am told that India will be blamed. Please don't hold us hostage. We will give up the principle of equity."

China's negotiator clearly stated the conference members didn't have the right to tell China what to do. While the fact that they came back from the brink of complete failure to sign an accord is good, the accord they agreed to is not good enough, and reflects in it the same issues reverberating around the US and the world about disparity of wealth and the death of the social contract.

"Martin Khor, director of the intergovernmental South Centre in Geneva, said poor countries would be obliged to cut emissions proportionally more than the rich." Celine Charveriat, director of campaigns and advocacy for Oxfam, said: "Negotiators have sent a clear message to the world's hungry: let them eat carbon."

If emissions target cuts are not raised and met before 2020 we will miss the shrinking opportuniity to prevent climate change disaster.

Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International:

"Delaying real action till 2020 is a crime of global proportions... This means the world is on track to a 4C temperature rise, a death sentence for Africa, small island states and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. The richest 1% of the world have decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice the 99%."

Read article: Durban climate deal struck after tense all-night sesion. The Guardian l John Vidal, Fiona Harvey 11 December, 2011

The Vision Scenario for the European Union (click title to access full report) Project sponsored by Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament   Berlin, November 2006   Summary Energy and climate policy in the 21st century is facing manifold and ...

by Scott Ludlam Climate of Hope is a 30 minute documentary created to demystify climate change and nuclear energy. While the threat of climate change is now widely accepted in the community, the potential for nuclear power stations in Australia ha...

The Economist l Newsbook        Aug 11th 2010 AS TORRENTIAL storms visit unprecedented flooding on Pakistan, thousands of kilometres to the northwest Russia burns. The two events are linked by a large-scale pattern of atmospheric circulation which...

Yesterday, August 12 2010, the LaSalle Reactor Units 1 & 2 had to shut down due to high temperatures in Illinois.

This illustrates one of the many flaws in the reasoning that nuclear power is any kind of answer to global warming. The reactors cannot operate safely in high temperatures and contribute, at all times,  to thermal pollution in the bodies of water used for cooling purposes.

Nuclear power is not the answer to global warming.

Joe Romm is one of the most widely read authors on climate issues. Read this blog post: After the hottest decade on record... And, visit Climateprogress.org for more interesting info on climate change. Joe Romm / ClimateProgress.org  28 July, 2010...

Water is the Earth"s most precious resource. Now, it is on the endangered list. The Economist called water "the oil of the 21st century." There's a difference though.

It wouldn't be easy or pleasant if it happened overnight, but we can live without oil. We cannot live without water. It won't happen overnight and there are alternatives to oil in clean, true renewable energy technologies. We WILL live without oil, and the sooner we get there the better for the planet, the more likely we are to stop global warming.

There is no replacement or alternative for water. We need to stop being distracted by the inconveniences of conservation, efficiency, and change. We need to start looking hard at the irreplaceable. 

Once the water is gone, or irrevocably contaminated, once the ice caps have melted, once the planet has reached a certain temperature, once nuclear winter has been triggered, once a species becomes extinct- there are no take backs, no second chances. We are responsible for the world that we live in. We are our planet's keeper. Our lives and our health are inextricably intertwined with the Earth. 

And, 80 percent of its surface is water.

Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Report

The tar sands mining project in Alberta, Canada, is possibly the largest industrial project in human history and critics claim it could also be the most destructive. The mining procedure for extracting oil from a region referred to as the "tar sands," located north of Edmonton, releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production procedures and will likely become North America's single largest industrial contributor to climate change.

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Environment America/Repower America: Executive Summary

In February 2010, the Obama administration announced that it would help finance two new nuclear reactors at the Vogtle nuclear power station in Georgia, offering an $8.33 billion loan guarantee to Georgia Power (a subsidiary of Southern Company) and two other companies invested in the project. President Obama claimed that the investment was necessary to create clean energy jobs, stimulate our economy to export homegrown technology instead of importing foreign oil, and secure the future of our planet and our civilization by fighting the growing threat of global warming.

However, this loan is an expensive gamble on a technology with a long history of bankrupting utilities and soaking ratepayers. New nuclear reactors are not cheap, not clean, and will set America back in the race against global warming. Most importantly, they are not necessary.Clean energy technologies can begin cutting global warming pollution right away,do so at lower cost and with less risk, and will create more jobs in the process.

There is an extremely high risk that taxpayers will be on the hook if the Vogtle loan guarantee proceeds. The loan guarantee is an up-front bailout that will enable Southern Company to make an uneconomic investment...

Download the full report.

AlterNet   June 14, 2010  |  James Gustave Speth

Editor's note: This article is adapted from James Gustave Speth's The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing From Crisis to Sustainability (Yale).

It is no accident that environmental crisis is gathering as social injustice is deepening and growing inequality is impairing democratic institutions.

Capitalism vs The Climate: James Gustave Speth looks at the connection between capitalism, corporate influence on government, and climate change. If you didn't think the U.S. Supreme Court Citizen's United decision was important before, after reading this- corporate control of our planet won't look like a good thing at all.

"Corporations have been the principal economic actors for a long time; now they are the principal political actors as well. Neither environment nor society fares well under corporatocracy. Environmentalists need to embrace public financing of elections, lobbying regulation, nonpartisan Congressional redistricting and other reforms as a core of their agenda. Today's politics will never deliver environmental sustainability."

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