US kills plans, and the planet. With climate meetings in Bali about to conclude, it appears the United States has succeeded in preventing the world from setting clear targets for greenhouse gas reductions. The two-week gathering is supposed to produce a timeline for negotiating a post-Kyoto climate treaty. The European Union and developing countries want the timeline — or “roadmap” — to include quantifiable greenhouse gas cuts: specifically, a per-nation reduction of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and a 50 percent cut of 2000 levels by 2050.  If those numbers make your eyes glaze over, think of them this way: they’re what the world’s climate scientists have agreed is necessary to prevent climate change from wracking Earth with droughts, floods, water shortages, crop failures, disease epidemics and general unfriendliness. — Brandon Keim, Wired Science blog

Surprise, suprise, Bali is all about money. This essay discusses how increasingly the international climate focus has become financial trickery rather than achieving shared, binding and adequate commitments to reduce emissions. The climate conference in Bali appears to be mostly about money and growth and development and not about meeting the needs of the Earth, ecosystems and most vulnerable citizens. The Bali meetings seem far more interested in establishing markets for carbon and rainforests than committing to climate policy that is truthful and scientifically merited. — Earth Meanders

Offsetting Bali. After last week’s embarrassing revelation that Bali delegates had wracked up more than 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide since the climate summit began, the UN has stepped in to offset the damage in what must surely amount to the planting of an entire forest. — Hippyshopper

It’s hotting up at Bali. It’s the second week of the UN Climate Change Conference and the air is heavy with humidity, but despite being the rainy season, it hasn’t rained heavily in weeks. The rooms in the conference facilities where people are clustered around computers feel like saunas, an appropriate thing, I suppose–reminding us not only of where we are, in tropical Bali, but also of why we’re here…  I suggest there are at least six critical components in a strategy that might actually turn the tables on this dominant “solution” to the climate crisis. But they will not come from the environmental groups, at least not from most of those that are represented here at the climate negotiations, nor from the governments themselves. First: Name the problem: We have been hoodwinked. Just as the subprime mortgage crisis was entirely predictable by the average realtor and yet was allowed to unfold, this buying and selling of carbon permits is clearly headed for a meltdown, and we need to face up to it. — Daphne Wysham, Nation blog

Canada’s Youth Delegation Tells It like It Is. The first bit of this video provides some great insight into just how bad things are going for Canada’s Minister of Environment, John Baird at the United Nation’s climate conference underway in Bali, Indonesia. — Desmogblog

Happy to see Kev play it safe. I am on record as bagging the Labor Party’s climate change plan in the lead up to the federal election won by them last month. I thought it was a weak point that the Coalition could exploit because of its open-ended financial commitment. I am happy to report that common sense is prevailing and the government will not sign up to onerous targets if the rest of the world doesn’t also carry their part of the burden – including developing nations. Labor picked up votes in the election by cleverly playing its environmental credentials and in the process they suppressed the Green vote; it’s always a good thing when the totalitarian left of the environment movement get one in the eye if you ask me. — Kerplunk