The Guardian story includes comments form a wide range of commentators on the outcome of the Durban Climate Change Conference.

Any thoughts?

To little too late... short-term greed has a stranglehold on all of these pontificators. History will hold them guilty of crimes against future generations... and us, with our fluffy sense of entitlement and oblivion to world needs.

But voices of protect and conscience seem to go, not unheard, but equicated, watered down, relegated, subordinated to the voices of business, ecomomic "necessity" and political "harmony".

I agree Mike.  Much too little!  Far too late!  

In BC we are now being bombarded with the "voice of economic necessity" in reference to the "Northern Gateway Pipeline Proposal".  Harper and company would have us believe that it is "critical" to the Canadian economy that we maximize the development of the oil sands for the benefit of the Asian export market.  This mantra is repeated ad nauseum by Harper, Federal Cabinet Ministers, Alberta's Premier Redford, and Enbridge Execs.  As though saying it often enough makes it so!

I am sorry for the situation we are bequeathing to our children and grandchildren.  Alas!

I too am concerned about global warming, but I am much less optimistic about our being able to solve the problem quickly.

We cannot just suddenly stop using fossil fuels.  Trucks, ships, etc would stop...food exports would stop, people would starve, etc etc.

So we need another approach.   On the "Global Defrost" thread under this same section, LBMuskoka started a good thread on global warming, to which I have contributed what I can, including the experience of Germany making a serious effort to replace nuclear power with wind.  But if you read through the thread, you see that while this is not an unreasonable idea, it will take some years to implement.

Nor does it address the problem of cars.  This is another very difficult situation.  How are people to get around when North American cities have been designed for cars?   Yes, there is an experiment in Houston with electric cars (I think I wrote about it)--but this is a very tiny first step.  

I encourage you to join that thread, or add to this one for that matter, with practical ideas for what we can do.   It might be better to stay on the other thread, just for the purpose of keeping track of things.  I am looking for realistic solutions, that you have read about being implemented somewhere or that qualified engineers have suggested are practical.

There should be a ban on production of gasoline powered only car--and collectors should require special registration---striclty hybrids and electric cars. More sidewalks and bike lanes in cities (some places have no pedestrian walkways near freeways, so walking is impossible). Two people plus in a vehicle/ carpooling. encourage use of public transit, even if it takes a little longer. If we weren't always in such a darn hurry to get everywhere because our society says we have to run around like whirling dervishes on a stop watch to keep up the GPD...then we could actually slow down a bit, and hence, slow down our emmissions while we work on solutions to cut them out in the longer term. I take taxis every once in awhile (I figure the driver would be driving around alone anyway) but I limit it to certain situations. I have never owned or driven a vehicle (well my friend did try to teach me in my 20's to no avail), and I manage to get where I need to go.

Oops, sorry. I will go to the other thread.  I am disappointed about our back out of the Kyoto Accord as well. It wasn't perfect, but it was something, something that could at least be improved upon.

It was all there was... it still is.

Yes, sorry, I meant for Canada's part.