One of the benefits of getting Copenhagen reports from environmental journalist Zoe Cormier has been a quick education about Canada’s gigantic tar sands project. (See also Are Canadian tar sands the answer to our oil needs? and Pumping in Dirty Oil From Canada’s Tar Sands) It helps Canada rank as the biggest supplier of oil to the U.S. It is also among the world’s dirtiest projects. In an informative blog post at New Internationalist, Zoe notes that “production of this oil releases up to five times more greenhouse gases per unit than conventional extraction,…” Here is her report on the tar sands from last week’s Klimaforum09 in Copenhagen. . . .

Wednesday was a wild day in Copenhagen. Our embedded environmental reporter, Zoe Cormier gives us a peek behind the scenes at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, and offers her perspective on what the demonstrations proved.

Our “embedded” reporter at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference was delayed in filing these three reports from Tuesday due to police action.  I hope to have today’s action up before noon on Thursday. Zoe must be exhausted!

REPORT FROM KLIMAFORUM

POLICE GOT IN OUR WAY

THE OTHER “OTHER” FORUM

Climate change is getting a lot of attention this week as the U.N. Climate Change Conference heats to a climax in Copenhagen. Climate disruption due to increasing concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere joins the growing evidence of an unsustainable human footprint on the planet.

I’m following the Copenhagen talks with interest, wondering whether we’ll see a rational response or business-as-usual: more evidence we just can’t believe we’re at the eleventh hour. How our society reacts to climate change is a likely indicator of how we’ll respond to early warning signs of peak energy, peak water and peak food.

I’ve arranged for us to get video reports from Copenhagen during this last week of the summit.  Zoe Cormier, a London-based science reporter and photographer, has graciously agreed to be our eyes and ears in Copenhagen. She has just launched a new environmental news service, AxisOfEco.com, an impressive online news source for original environmental reporting. Zoe’s credits include a regular column on environmental issues for Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, and stories published in The Toronto Star, The Ecologist and Plenty magazine. She is the current alternative science blogger for The New Internationalist. She also writes and photographs for Guerilla Science. . . .

All eyes are on Copenhagen today as the Climate Summit begins its two-week sprint to set the planet on a survival course. Here’s the official Climate Change Conference website, for you to see schedules and get more information.

While I encourage world leaders to get very serious about reducing emissions as seriously and quickly as possible, I’d like to share some perspectives that are pretty critical of what’s taking place in Copenhagen. I offer these in the spirit of pushing for a better outcome from the talks.

Too Little, Too Late: Clearly many are worried or already disappointed that the bar has been set too low. It appears the best one can hope for is that the world agrees to agree on emission reduction targets that are too little, too late. In fact, the word “reduction” shouldn’t even be included. Leading climate scientist James Hansen pretty clearly articulated this shortcoming in an interview with the UK’s Guardian: Copenhagen climate change talks must fail, says top scientist. . . .