Yet another round of international climate talks has kicked off, this time in Bonn, Germany. More than 2,000 delegates from 162 countries will chit-chat over the next two weeks about the details of an agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. But no significant steps forward are expected out of Bonn; most major decisions on the next treaty have been put off until 2009, when the U.S. delegation will presumably be less pigheaded. The Bonn gathering is the first of at least eight major meetings scheduled before a rendezvous in Copenhagen in December 2009, at which delegates hope to have a successor to Kyoto ready for adoption.
