The two-week United Nations climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, has gone into overtime, lasting past its scheduled end as the U.S., Canada, and Japan duked it out with European countries and developing nations in a battle over emissions targets. As expected, the U.S. team, led by Chief Negotiator “Snarlin'” Harlan Watson, has successfully negotiated against specificity; the European nations agreed to drop their insistence that developed nations aim for a target of cutting greenhouse gases between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020 in favor of continuing to simply talk about cuts instead. However, Germany’s environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, insisted the overtime haggling was good-natured, saying, “The climate in the climate conference is good.” That’s great, but the climate outside the climate conference isn’t doing so well. Or haven’t you heard?
