“It’s our philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be,” said James L. Connaughton, the president’s chief environmental adviser.

-- Anarchy - that's the ticket! So much for Bush being out in front.

CBC News, September 23

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be among nearly 80 world leaders attending a United Nations summit in New York on Monday to spur action against climate change.

Environmentalists are hoping the leaders will make some progress in breaking the gridlock on efforts to forge a deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol before it expires in 2012.

On Monday morning, Harper is scheduled to address a session on the role of new technologies in cutting emissions.

Under Kyoto, which was signed by Canada in 1998 under a previous Liberal government, the country agreed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by six per cent from 1990 levels by 2012.

After Conservatives were elected in January 2006, Harper repeatedly said the country's commitments under Kyoto were not achievable by the deadline because they would cripple the economy. Instead, the Conservatives pledged to reduce emissions by 20 per cent from current levels by 2020.

Guardian Unlimited, David Adam and agencies, September 24

Gordon Brown has insisted that global climate change can be limited to 2C and called on the US to accept binding targets to limit its carbon pollution.

In a letter to Stop Climate Chaos, a coalition of green groups, the prime minister said "all developed countries" needed to commit to reduce emissions to tackle the problem.

"Climate change poses the most urgent challenge to humankind - a challenge that threatens not only the environment, but international peace, security, prosperity and development," he wrote.

The letter was the first significant statement on climate change from Mr Brown since he became prime minister.

It came ahead of a key week of talks on developing a new international treaty, to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Reuters, September 17

[Mr. Brown - have you seen this? - Raja]

DUVANNY YAR, Russia - Sergei Zimov bends down, picks up a handful of treacly mud and holds it up to his nose. It smells like a cow pat, but he knows better.

"It smells like mammoth dung," he says.

This is more than just another symptom of global warming.

For millennia, layers of animal waste and other organic matter left behind by the creatures that used to roam the Arctic tundra have been sealed inside the frozen permafrost. Now climate change is thawing the permafrost and lifting this prehistoric ooze from suspended animation.

But Zimov, a scientist who for almost 30 years has studied climate change in Russia's Arctic, believes that as this organic matter becomes exposed to the air it will accelerate global warming faster than even some of the most pessimistic forecasts.

"This will lead to a type of global warming which will be impossible to stop," he said.

[...]

"The deposits of organic matter in these soils are so gigantic that they dwarf global oil reserves," Zimov said.

U.S. government statistics show mankind emits about 7 billion tonnes of carbon a year.

"Permafrost areas hold 500 billion tonnes of carbon, which can fast turn into greenhouse gases," Zimov said.

"If you don't stop emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere ... the Kyoto Protocol (an international pact aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions) will seem like childish prattle."

[...]

...places that five or 10 years ago were empty tundra are now dotted with lakes -- a result of thawing permafrost. These 'thermokarst' lakes bubble with methane, over 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

[...]

"Siberia's landscape is changing," he said. "But in the end local problems of the north will inevitably turn into the problems of Russia's south, the Amazon region or Holland."

===

And from: Global warming ruining the tundra

"Seasonal in-depth melting will set a record this year. In permafrost, if the ground melts to the depth of one meter, the process becomes irreversible," Zimov explained.

===

The WaPo, curiously, has a profile of the scientist: Arctic science outpost a refuge from the world

Reuters, By Dmitry Solovyov, September 24

NORTHEASTERN STATION, Russia - When Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died and the Communist propaganda machine organized a mass outpouring of grief, Sergei Zimov hardly noticed.

Back in November 1982, the young scientist was roaming around local shops and warehouses looking for the nails he needed to finish building a scientific research station high above the Arctic Circle that he had founded two years earlier.

"I wanted to deal with pure science, and I was a dissident, critical of communist ideas," says Zimov, now a bearded 52-year-old with a mane of wavy hair, at his research station in the desolate tundra eight time zones from Moscow.

"So this was just the place to be then. And it still is. My soul is at peace here," said Zimov.

Many world leaders at unprecedented summit; Bush to attend dinner

AP, September 24

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an unprecedented U.N. summit on climate change Monday that “the time for doubt has passed” and a breakthrough is needed in global talks to sharply reduce emissions of global-warming gases.

“The U.N. climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating global action,” Ban told assembled presidents and premiers, an indirect warning against what some see as a U.S. effort to open a separate negotiating track.

The U.N. chief also addressed a chief U.S. objection to negotiated limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, that it will be too damaging to the American economy.

“Inaction now will prove the costliest action of all in the long term,” Ban said.

Ban organized the summit to build political momentum toward launching negotiations later this year for deep cutbacks in emissions of carbon dioxide and other manmade gases blamed for global warming.

The Guardian Comment is free, Kevin Watkins, September 26

This week's summit on climate change will achieve nothing if rich countries don't finally show some leadership

If talking could cut greenhouse gas emissions, then this would be a good week for international action on climate change. It opened with more than 80 speeches from governments at a special session on the issue at the UN, and will close with a two-day "summit" in the White House bringing together all the world's major emitters. The bad news is that we are still heading steadfastly in the direction of an avoidable climate catastrophe.

The special session was a bold effort by the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to instill urgency into climate negotiations. His aim: to prepare the ground for an international treaty with real, enforceable limits on greenhouse gas emissions. That means a more ambitious, and inclusive, successor to the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. Negotiations begin in earnest in December at a summit in Bali - or they might if governments can bring themselves to stop dithering and start acting.

It's hard to exaggerate the importance of Bali. There is still a window of opportunity for avoiding the worst effects of climate change - but that window is closing. Most governments broadly accept the need to restrict average temperature increases to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels. Business-as-usual will take us over twice that level by the end of the century, so every year of delay will make it more difficult to achieve the target.

[...]

Consider the question of reducing emissions. To have a realistic chance of avoiding dangerous climate change, rich countries need to make cuts of at least 80% by 2050. Kyoto asked for cuts averaging 5%. And even this has been beyond most developed countries - the majority have increased their emissions since signing on to the protocol.

Rhetorical flourishes aside, it is hard to discern a real intent to change this picture. The US, the world's largest emitter, envisages a voluntary set of "aspirational" goals, negotiated on a country-by-country basis (no binding numbers, please).

[...]

Finally, before Bali, governments need to get real about the consequences of climate change. We urgently need stringent mitigation. But even the deepest cuts in emissions today will not prevent temperatures rising for at least three decades. While the rich world has the capabilities to protect citizens from the consequences, vulnerable populations in the developing world have to cope with their own meagre resources. Social justice surely demands that, having manufactured the risk, the rich world compensates the victims.

Kevin Watkins is director of the UN's Human Development Report Office.