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The happenings — or lack thereof — at the climate summit in Nairobi

Gary Braasch reports from the latest U.N. climate-change convention in Nairobi, Kenya. Braasch has been photographing and reporting on climate change since 1999. His forthcoming book, Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming Is Changing the World, will be published by the University of California Press next year.

The seasonal rains have returned to southern Kenya, greening the countryside once again. But in the north and east, near the Somalian border, refugee camps set up for those who lost everything in a deep drought earlier this year are suddenly being flooded out by this season's unusually severe rains. Many see this rapid switch from drought to deluge as global warming in action -- more searing droughts and stronger rainstorms in an intensifying cycle that affects the world's very poorest.

Not far away, in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, officials and observers from around the world gathered for this year's United Nations summit on climate change. Here, the severity and urgency of global warming should have seemed clearer to delegates than it did at last year's frigid Montreal summit.

Can Sen. Warner unseat Inhofe as ranking member on Environment and Public Works Committee?

Just when you thought all the pleasant surprises of the election must be spent, one more appears in your inbox on a Friday afternoon. Senator John Warner is going to reassert his seniority on the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee to be the Republicans' ranking member, forcing every polluter's favorite Senator James Inhofe into the number two position.

Warner doesn't have the greenest record in the Republican caucus, but this year he has said some interesting things about climate change. Interesting in a good way, not interesting in an Inhofe way.

British kids: smarter than the rest of us

A survey of 11-14-year-old Britons found that they are more concerned about recycling and global warming than they are about having a girlfriend or boyfriend or doing their homework.

Some 74 percent of so-called "tweens" in the U.K. were concerned about climate change, while only 41 percent noted concern over dating, or whatever you'd call it at that age. About 64 percent expressed concern about their schoolwork.

Cooties Lurgy also ranked high on the list of concerns, as did getting American adults to be half as concerned as pre-pubescent kids in the rest of the world about cataclysmic climate change.

Inhofe on Fox

Think Progress put up a video of Inhofe on Fox this morning.

I have to admit, I'm actually a little sad -- when he passes off the chairmanship in January, there will be so much less to make fun of.

Oceanographer Tim Barnet reveals the dollar amount, and other fascinating points

Tim Barnett, a leading oceanographer who just retired from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, this Monday gave a talk called Future Climate of Earth: A Sneak Preview [PDF] to a convention of fire ecologists in San Diego.

Barnett began by saying that he had seven grandkids, and he didn't like to think about the world they were going to inherit from us. He then went on to succinctly explain why we know global warming is human-caused.

Small steps made, but no real plan for post-2012

The international climate conference in Nairobi just wrapped up, and it sounds like it was a bit of a yawn. As expected, no exciting progress or big future plans.

Of course, progress is in the eye of the beholder, as we see in three different articles from MSM sources:

Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn for Reuters:

U.N. climate talks keep Kyoto on track, but scant progress

Environment Ministers kept plans for widening a U.N.-led fight against global warming beyond 2012 on track on Friday amid criticism of scant progress in aiding Africa and confronting wrenching climate change.

After two weeks of negotiations in Nairobi, about 70 ministers agreed to review Kyoto in 2008 in what many see as a prelude to widening a 35-industrial nation pact to outsiders such as China and India in the longer term.

It also agreed to aid Africa obtain funds for clean energies such as wind and hydro power. But delegates had mixed views on the outcome of the talks.

Readers talk back about elections, ethanol, respecting our elders, and more

  Re: How Green Was My Election? Dear Editor: Things are clearly not as bad now as they were before Election Day. However, we should temper our celebratory mood by considering: 1. Nancy Pelosi, the next likely Speaker of the House, supported the war until her constituents in San Francisco made it politically impossible for […]

because of the country’s decision to resume whaling.

... because of the country's decision to resume whaling.

Ah, I love it when the market works! Bottom line: you want tourist dollars, then stop killing whales.

Failed by industrial food, farmers and low-income folk get together

"Edible Media" takes an occasional look at interesting or deplorable food journalism.

In Alabama, farmers are going broke, squeezed between low prices their goods receive in commodity markets and rising costs for fuel and other inputs. Meanwhile, obesity and diabetes rates surge among low-income African-Americans, whose food dollars tend to to flow to highly processed food.

In short, commodity food markets are failing both groups. In a piece in the latest Nation, Mark Winne shows (subscription wall) that smart public policy at the state level is helping farmers and low-income consumers buck the system, to the benefit of both.

The bill could affect most large construction in the city starting in 2012

In a preliminary vote, the D.C. city council unanimously decided to phase in green building standards that would apply to private as well as public development in the district.

The district is poised to become the first major city in the country to require that private developers build environmentally friendly projects that incorporate energy-saving measures.

By 2012, most large construction in the city -- commercial and city-funded residential -- would have to meet the standards, if the D.C. council gives final approval to a new bill next month.

Under the bill, within two years, all new district-owned projects, including schools, would have to meet the green standards, and in 2009, any building receiving more than 20 percent public financing would have to do the same. By 2012, every new commercial building over 50,000 square feet -- about the size of a medium-size retail store -- would have to meet the guidelines. The rules would also apply to affordable housing.