Delegates from developing nations at the Copenhagen conference were incensed after reading a leaked document purporting to show that a group of wealthy nations intends to sideline the UN in future climate change negotiations and place CO2 emissions restrictions on poorer nations.

The Guardian reported that the so-called “Danish text” — reputedly drafted by wealthy nations including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Denmark — would abandon the principles of the Kyoto Protocol requiring industrialized nations to commit to binding greenhouse gas emissions while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft text would hand control over financing climate change projects in the developing world to the World Bank and would make funds given to poorer nations for climate change adaptation contingent on those nations taking actions to reduce emissions.

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The UN Climate Change Conference opened in Copenhagen this morning, with conference President Connie Hedegaard of Denmark telling delegates from 192 nations that they must take action now or risk putting off for years a crucial agreement to curb global greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is our chance,” said Hedegaard, Denmark’s former minister for climate end energy. “If we miss it, it could take years before we get a new and better one — if we ever do.” After weeks of pessimistic forecasts about what the 12-day conference might accomplish, the mood among participants was more upbeat following news that U.S. President Obama will appear at the end of the conference and that China would agree to reduce by nearly half the so-called carbon intensity of its economy — the amount of energy used per unit of gross domestic product. Today’s opening session featured video clips from children around the world urging delegates to act to stave off catastrophic global warming. A 24-year-old from Fiji wept as she presented a petition from 10 million people asking the conference to forge a deal to save low-lying islands like hers from rising sea levels.

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This week, the international community launched another attempt at world governance around climate change.  But in the lead-up to what has been called our last chance to mitigate the most severe consequences of human-induced climate change, a sputtering world economy, political anxiety, and legislative lethargy may have derailed the entire process before it even began.  The goal now: hammer out the foundation for a later agreement.  With the clock ticking, can we afford to wait?

What space junk teaches us is that we get down to the business of debating solutions only after the cause of the problem has had sufficient time to germinate and evolve into something far more insidious.  Before climate change events reach a tipping point, however, we owe it to ourselves to revisit the enabling circumstances that precipitated it in the first place so that we can begin to enact smarter policies aimed at systemic change.  Copenhagen must be that opportunity.

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Twelve years ago in Kyoto, the world was poised to act on a climate treaty but looked for a clear signal from the United States. Now, with the Copenhagen talks set to begin, the outcome once again hinges on what the U.S. is prepared to do.

President Obama took much of the drama out of the Copenhagen talks earlier this month when he and other world leaders announced that there’d be no treaty at the end — in essence, they said, we’ll wait for the U.S. Senate. Still, you can’t call off the party entirely, and so the planet’s climate scientists, bureaucrats, activists, skeptics and journalists will still descend on the Danish capital in a few days for a fortnight of meeting, marching, propounding, denying, and most of all spinning.

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As the keynote speaker at the Singapore Energy Lecture, Dr. Daniel Yergin was toeing his usual line of optimism on the subject of oil and energy.  As the Founder and Chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associate (CERA), Dr. Yergin has a long career in the energy industry, though one some challenge as upholding the status quo of business and industry.

“The century ahead of us will be defined by energy innovation,” he said in his keynote address.  “We need availability and security of energy, and a depth and diversification of energy sources.”

He spoke of the odd timing of the Copenhagen agenda of lowering carbon emissions (of which fossil fuel energy sources are a key contributor) by 2050, as well as projections that by 2030, there would be a substantial growth of energy needs worldwide.  Some 80% of which these energy demands are to be met by hydrocarbon sources.  Indeed, humanity faces some difficult decisions and conflict in the years ahead: development at what cost?

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The Obama administration, faced with the failure of Congress to pass climate legislation before global talks in Copenhagen next month, may endorse a more limited interim agreement and defer stronger U.S. commitments until next year, according to the Washington Post.

While the scaled-back agreement would fall short of what European leaders wanted from the U.S., administration and congressional leaders say it will at least prevent the global talks from being seen as a failure.

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The University of Bristol in the UK has published a study based not on climate modeling, but on statistical analysis of data including historical data from Antarctic ice cores.

The study shows that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.

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In spite of leaps and bounds in technology, investment capital, political support and public will over the past decade – much less the past year – there is one element of a revolution that has not emerged in the clean tech movement: an icon. Sure, standard-bearers of the green movement that began in the 1960’s are still visible and active and there are brilliant scientists, entrepreneurs and politicians out there who might be candidates. But, as greens cast about for their own JFK in government, or a Green Gates in the private sector, what they really need is their own Green Gandhi. He may be emerging.

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First, take a deep breath. It is difficult to do when it is your life and career day-in and day-out, but every once in a while, all of us moving in the clean tech space should stop and reflect on the breakneck pace at which everything around us is moving: technology, regulation, public awareness. Sure, maybe climate change legislation will not be through the Senate in time for Copenhagen (or at all this year, or even this Session), but that was an ambitious (and partly arbitrary) timeline. On the brighter side, today’s public discourse and political will on renewable energy and climate change would have been inconceivable among anyone but the green elite even five years ago.

Still, I cannot help but notice that one not-so-novel technology is getting a lot of renewed attention these days: nuclear power. Sure, in the industry we’ve all bought into the CW that “nukes are back,” but it always been accompanied by a “sort of” at the end. Microreactor technology has been a consistent “yeah, but” in that developing conversation. Then in their NYT Op-ed, Senators John Kerry and Lindsey Graham blew the lid off of things with a commitment to good old-fashioned conventional nukes (alongside a commitment to drilling and clean coal that threatens to turn the Senate bill into little more than a symbolic accopmplishment).

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The U.S. Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, and a leading senator predicted that Congress will make good progress on climate legislation — and may even pass a bill — before a meeting in Copenhagen in December to forge an international treaty to slow global warming.

The remarks by Chu and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California were markedly more optimistic than those of President Obama’s chief climate and energy adviser, Carol Browner, who said 10 days ago that a U.S. climate bill would not be passed before Copenhagen.

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