`We want this done!'

G ENEVA -- Mounting skepticism and deadlocked negotiations have culminated in an announcement that the Copenhagen Climate Conference will not result in a comprehensive global climate deal. Disappointing? Certainly. But the Copenhagen climate summit was always meant to be a transitional step. The most important thing to consider is where we will go from here.

Decision-makers have not faced up to just how close the world may be to the climate ``tipping point.'' But, while a runaway climate remains a risk, runaway politics are already a fact.

According to the latest science, the current proposals under negotiation will result in warming of more than 4 degrees Centigrade during this century -- double the two degrees maximum endorsed by the G-8 and other leaders. That leaves a higher than 50-percent probability of the world's climate moving past its tipping point.

Some Kyoto targets met, but . . .

C limate-change skeptics are barking up the wrong smokestack. The shell game being played isn't with the science, it's with the solutions -- specifically, the carbon emissions targets that enlightened world leaders are pledging to meet. That's where the numbers don't add up.

When the Copenhagen climate summit convenes this week, the European nations that have led the crusade against global warming will be able to report that the continent has met the targets for carbon emission reductions set in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. There may be shoulder dislocations from all the self-congratulatory back-patting.

But the Kyoto targets were well on the way toward being met before they were even established. The targets are based on 1990 emissions levels -- after the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc had been fouling the air for years with their antiquated, carbon-spewing heavy industries. When the communist regimes -- and their creaky economies -- collapsed in a heap, emissions from the former Soviet-dominated

Evidence of climate change irrefutable

Don't be fooled about climate science. In April, 1994 -- long after scientists had clearly demonstrated the addictive quality and devastating health impacts of cigarette smoking -- seven chief executives of major tobacco companies denied the evidence, swearing under oath that nicotine was not addictive.

Now, the American public is again being subjected to those kinds of denials, this time about global climate change. While former Alaska governor Sarah Palin writes that she did not deny the ``reality of some changes in climate,'' she distorted the clear scientific evidence that Earth's climate is changing, largely as a result of human behaviors. She also badly confused the concepts of daily weather changes and long-term climate trends when she wrote that ``while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes.'' Her statement inaccurately suggests that short-term weather fluctuations must be consistent with

EPA steps up in fight against climate change

T he Environmental Protection Agency's announcement Monday that it is going to regulate emissions that cause global warming has been expected ever since President Barack Obama took office.

The timing of the announcement sends a welcome signal at a crucial time. It comes as international momentum is building for the United States to take climate change seriously and lead to cut carbon emissions.

Decision is a boost

Copenhagen's moment of truth

On Sunday, we will learn if world leaders meant what they said when they agreed last month to act collectively to stabilize Earth's overheating climate.

Having failed to complete a legally binding agreement at the chaotic Copenhagen summit, world leaders instead endorsed what they said would be a "politically binding" agreement - the Copenhagen accord - that calls on countries to submit national targets and action plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The plans are due by Sunday, and without them, the accord is a hollow symbol.

Defections by major developed or developing countries would doom, in its infancy, the three-page political agreement cobbled together in the Danish capital.