Published in the Daily Herald, COP 15 Updates

LONDON, UK -- If any of you are reading this in the next few hours, check out the online link to the Plenary I room in the Bella Center, where the resumed 2nd meeting of the COP15 just finished, and the 5th meeting of the CMP is about to begin.

http://www1.cop15.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/cop15/templ/live.php?id_kongressmain=1&theme=unfccc&id_kongresssession=1

Beyond that, most of you have already seen this, but my latest article for G-1 Billion is a copy of the article that was published Wednesday in the Daily Herald:

http://g-1billion.org/?p=2590〈=en

More to come, but it looks like they are making great progress on the negotiations, and two legal working papers are now supported by a vast majority of the international working groups (G77 + China, LDCs, AOSIS, etc.).

Also, this is pretty cool - check out what my article looks like in Chinese:

http://g-1billion.org/?p=1877〈=zh-cn

UPDATE: I just read this as a comment on an environmental blog by the Guardian, and I think it sums things up nicely regarding the debate over climate change.

I don't know how much scientific evidence you need to believe or disbelieve the fact of climate change.

Since the early 1800s mankind has been aggressively digging up and burning off carbon deposits (coal, then oil and gas) which have been in planetary storage for millions of years, and out of the way as far as influencing the atmosphere goes. It ruins the planetary ecological balance.

It's a bit like a sustainable population living in one of those SF domes on the Moon for 100s of years, everything balanced in oxygen in, CO2 out - then they decide to start burning the furniture for extra warmth. Extra CO2, CO, etc - where did all the oxygen go?

I read that the world's human population has doubled since 1965 and, without looking it up, it may have trebled since 1940. Every one of these extra humans would like water, food, sewerage, and comforts above the minima - in the West they mainly get it.

So, using fossil energy (effectively burning your ancestors to make you more comfortable), an unsustainable rise in human population, "possible" evidence that this is changing the environment in which we live for the worst - what to do?

Shall we move to another Earth-like planet which has untapped resources which we can exploit? No one has found one yet. Or should we perhaps believe the "scientists" who have, in balance, not always been right down the centuries?

If we believe them, and they're wrong, we can maintain the only place on which - as far as we know - life exists.

If we disbelieve them, and they're right, Earth's ecosystem will recover when we're gone and maybe microbes or insects will evolve into a more sentient life form in a few 10s of millions of years.