First, here’s some inspiration.  Earth Day is April 22. It’s the 40th anniversary and here’s the official site.

Now, some  reality:  How are the new talks about climate change with official negotiators going?  Not well.   They are having a hard time implementing or doing anything with the Copenhagen Accord,  which was decided upon by some countries last December. There are hard feelings all around due to how it was passed and because it doesn’t provide a clear-cut legal framework.  I’m beginning to wonder if official negotiators will ever arrive at an agreement, much less one that does something meaningful to stop climate change. I’m getting the distinct impression countries like the U.S. will be relying heavily on geoengineering, the more I hear about it. There have been several conferences on geoengineering already.  The official negotiators at the climate talks mean well, but they all end up arguing for their own country’s needs, not the world’s.   Maybe we need a new approach entirely.  A room full of climate scientists, telling the rest of the world what needs to be done, when and where, first.   Leave the capitalists at home to watch the shopping channel.  From UN News:

Skirmishes renewed at UN climate conference

BONN, Germany — Climate negotiators renewed their skirmishes this weekend at their first conference since the acrimonious summit in Copenhagen, split over how to continue efforts to reach an all-encompassing agreement to control greenhouse gases and help poor countries deal with global warming.

After the letdown of Copenhagen, delegates and officials appeared determine to dampen expectations of a final deal this year, and said negotiations are almost certain to stretch past the next major conference at Cancun, Mexico, in December.

“We should not be striving to get answers to each and every question in Cancun,” Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. climate secretariat, said Sunday. “The quest to address climate change is a long journey, and achieving perfection takes practice.”

The unusual three-day meeting attended by 175 countries was called to plot out a course of negotiation up to the Cancun conference. It was likely to approve two unscheduled meetings at a cost of $7 million to $15 million, depending on where they are held.

But procedural questions quickly spawned divisions on issues touching nerves among rich countries, led by the United States, and developing countries.

The split was expressed in the debate on authorizing a committee chairwoman to prepare a draft agreement for the next meeting in June, drawing on the results of the summit four months ago in the Danish capital.

The question is how Margaret Sangarwe of Zimbabwe will incorporate the agreement crafted by President Barack Obama in the closing hours of the Copenhagen summit with a small group of other leaders. Also on the table is [...]