Knowing they will face climate legislation sometime in the future, a number of U.S. corporations have already begun to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. The utility giant American Electric and Power is buying forest projects in Brazil and the disposal company Waste Management is recovering methane from landfills to use in its trash trucks in California.

But a preliminary report commissioned by the United Nations has found that the cost of environmental damages could erase at least one third of the profits major corporations make around the world, if they had to pay for these damages. The study looked at 3,000 of the world's top publicly traded companies, and calculated that their environmental impact amounted to at least $2.2 trillion in 2008. More than half of the damage was caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The full report, due out this summer and first reported by the Guardian in February, was conducted by the British consultancy firm Trucost, and commissioned by the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment. Trucost's CEO, Richard Mattison, told the Guardian that industries are facing a completely new paradigm: "Externalities of this scale and nature pose a major risk to the global economy and markets are not fully aware of these risks, nor do they know how to deal with them," he said.

What economists call externalities, are industry byproducts such as air pollution, soil erosion, and water pollution. These costs to the environment (and the surrounding communities) are not included in the price of producing energy, timber or food, for example, but are "paid for" by those who suffer from the effects.

The Guardian reported that the $2.2 trillion figure could be much higher, since the study only included the impact from major corporations, and not the business and consumer practices of governments or the general population.

The authors of the study hope it will be used by growing numbers of institutional investors who want to back companies with a good track record in environmental, social and corporate governance, and drive home to business leaders and policy makers that environmental costs will increasingly be part of a corporation's bottom line.

The Securities and Exchange Commission delivered a similar message in January, when it released guidelines on what public companies should disclose as potential material risks from climate change.

The four main areas included the economic costs of meeting international emissions treaties and other pending regulations, staying competitive as consumer and business trends shift to adapt to climate change, and mitigating the potential physical challenges of a changing climate, such as water scarcity and soil degradation.

Whether these risks are caused by "increased competition or severe weather," said SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro, companies must disclose to their shareholders "the significant risks they face."

James Salo, the head of research and strategy at Trucost's U.S. office, told Carbon Watch that the guidelines "put the onus on companies to understand those risks in those four key areas and manage them."

In a recent editorial, Pavan Sukhdev, a former Deutsche Bank executive, who is now working with the U.N. to develop new economic models to protect biodiversity, argued that a value has to be placed on nature for businesses to change the way they produce goods and services.

"We cannot manage what we do not measure and we are not measuring either the value of nature's benefits or the costs of their loss," he said.

Here is Sukhdev describing the role "natural capital" can play in the global economy.

Under Sukhdev's leadership, the U.N. is expected to release another influential report later this year that will lay the economic foundations for putting a price on environmental impact and offer a broad set of solutions to reduce it.

Reporter Mark Schapiro was interviewed by Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace on January 20th about his piece in Harper's Magazine outlining how corporations have found loopholes in the carbon cap and trade system, and how to verify those carbon credits.

In the interview, Schapiro explains there are companies that go over their emission caps every month, and know exactly by how much. They need to buy carbon credits in order to not go over their cap. The companies then turn to a developing country such as Brazil, which sells the companies the extra credits they need. All the while, the companies are doing nothing to actually reduce the amount of carbon they are emitting.

Schapiro writes about the people who measure carbon emissions and the reliability of the measurements. What is the United States going to do when we step in?

You may have noticed over the past year that its become far easier to hop on a US airline to fly across the Atlantic to Europe–the result of an "open skies" agreement, implemented in 2008, that leveraged principles of free trade into the air. Now those open skies are looking pretty turbulent as three of the biggest US airlines–United, Continental and Delta, along with the US Air Transport Association–pursue a lawsuit attempting to block Britain's effort to impose emission limits on the airline industry.

The UK is the first European country to begin executing a plan by the European Union to reduce emissions from aviation. Air travel contributes about three percent of Europe's total greenhouse gas emissions, but according to the European Commission that rate has risen rapidly, some 87% since 1990, as air travel gets cheaper without accounting for environmental costs. The EU estimates that one person flying from London to New York and back generates roughly the same level of emissions as the average European does by heating their home for a year.

En route to Copenhagen, we wrote about the eye-opening experience of having an Air France pilot announcing our flight's carbon footprint. Now it turns out that announcement may have been a portent of much tension to come: The US airline industry has adamantly opposed establishing emission limits on aviation in this country, and is now attempting to staunch the growing gap between the US and Europe's approach to greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, Anglo-American divisions in the airline industry are emerging: British Airways has stated it could voluntarily reduce its emissions to half of 2005 levels over the next decade; and Virgin's Chairman, Richard Branson, has stated he is willing to pay a carbon tax on his aviation business, and has steered some $3 billion in company funds into research projects for non-fossil sources for jet fuels and other greenhouse gas reduction measures.

The London lawsuit could be the first in a series of trans-continental legal battles to come, prompted by global industries facing very different approaches to climate change taken by Europe and the United States, where emission limits have thus far been stymied in Congress.

Over the next year, FRONTLINE/World and CIR will report on key issues of
climate change in a joint project–Carbon Watch–focusing on the multi-billion-dollar carbon trading market. We'll look at which proposals to reduce emissions by 2020 really add up; at the hidden interests behind these solutions; and the new industry players.

A few weeks ago we asked you to send in your questions on climate change for our reporter Mark Schapiro while he was in Copenhagen covering the talks.

Many of you did, sending them via webcam, email and from the summit itself. Questions came in from Tibetans, Russians, Pacific Islanders, Brazilians and many Americans.

As soon as the Bella center shut up shop at the weekend, we found the festive if freezing King's Square in downtown Copenhagen to put your questions to Mark, and get his initial thoughts on what had been achieved there.

The analysis of what did or should have happened at the summit is only just beginning to surface, and we'll be following the road from Copenhagen to Bonn and Mexico Ciity where the next crucial stages of these talks will take place in the coming months.

Over the next year, FRONTLINE/World and CIR will report on key issues of climate change in a joint project—Carbon Watch—focusing on the multi-billion-dollar carbon trading market. We’ll look at which proposals to reduce emissions by 2020 really add up; at the hidden interests behind these solutions; and the new industry players.

Even on a normal day in the Bella Center, we suffered from information overload: there was the official daily program, press conferences, side events and presentations by the country delegations all competing for time.

With 15,000 people buzzing through the complex, we seemed to bump into a story at every turn ­ at the cafe, in the coat check line, or from an unlikely tap on the shoulder. In the midst of this, the media center became a refuge of relative calm, as hundreds of journalists quietly typed, edited and filed their reports, trying to make sense of all the activity.

But just when we thought we knew what was going on, the whole dynamic changed on the last day. (See the video for that!) Now that the heads of state were in the building -- Jiabao, Obama, Lula, Chavez -- scheduled events were not just "subject to change," they seemed designed to deceive, sending journalists in one direction as VIPs headed in another.

The media began roaming in packs. We didn't always know whom we were trying to capture; we just knew we didn't want to miss it. After all, Obama would be speaking -- although we didn't know when -- and finally the "Deal or No Deal" issue would be resolved.

When he took the podium around midday, his speech created more questions than answers. The media center began to hum again and negotiators locked themselves behind closed doors. None of us would leave until well past midnight.

Days later, and we're still trying to decode the deal in Copenhagen.

I'm sure there will be a flood of reactions to the "agreement" reached today, which made things pretty quiet and tense in the press center. People were hunched over computers talking in multiple languages, first trying to interpret President Obama's speech -- "hugely disappointing" seemed to be the main reaction -- then following the last-minute back-room bargaining he was engaged in trying to salvage a deal.

But I'm going to go against this wave and continue following the aggressive push here toward carbon markets and the debate over how to regulate them.

This is where the only real money lies at this point, anyway.

During these past two weeks, the Crowne Plaza hotel has been temporary home to the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), which represents global banks, brokerage firms, commodity traders and energy companies at the apex of moving billions of dollars through the global carbon markets.

The buying and selling of so-called carbon "offsets" is now the fastest growing commodity market on earth. Worth practically zero in 2005, the market transacted $150 billion last year; and that number is expected to explode into the trillions once the U.S. passes its own emission limits next year.

With genuine fears about the economic consequences of a market growing this big this fast, traders at a panel on Thursday were grappling with how much regulation was appropriate as carbon emerges as the epitome of the 21st century commodity.

Not surprisingly, there was consensus among the panelists, which included a member of the IETA, an executive with EurEx, a German commodity exchange that opened a carbon trading facility in Chicago last year; and a policy expert with the investment bank, JP Morgan.

Carbon is becoming much like any other commodity but with one key distinction: It is designed not to be delivered (like oil or gold) but to be eliminated, presenting an array of potential regulatory challenges.

David Hunter, the IETA's director for U.S. policy said the group was firmly against a federal cap and trade bill introduced by Senators Collins (R-ME) and Stabenow (D-MI). Measures in the bill want to avoid some of the highly speculative investments that have driven Europe's carbon market, which is regulated under provisions of the Kyoto treaty.

The U.S. bill proposes to cut out middlemen and to strictly limit trading activity between those industries that have emission credits and those industries that need them.

Hunter disputes some of the biggest conerns the bill is designed to address -- chiefly that the market is growing so rapidly it could quickly devolve into the bubble-and-bust scenario that kicked off the global economic crisis two years ago, and that the market could be exposed to the same manipulations the electricity industry went through in the 1990s.

"Nothing like that could happen in the carbon markets," Hunter told me, "because carbon [commodities] are just a piece of paper."

He is right in the fact that, unlike other commodities, no physical commodity is ever actually delivered. Instead, it is an unorthodox financial instrument containing a promise not to emit greenhouse gases.

Richard Folland, a senior climate change and energy adviser at J.P. Morgan, now one of the world's largest carbon trading firms after buying British carbon brokers Eco Securities last fall, argued that minimal regulations are necessary but that overly intrusive regulations could end up “diminishing liquidity.” And contrary to fears, he said, expanding the number of "market actors" would make the market more difficult to manipulate not less.

Overall, the discussion provided a stark contrast to the main emissions negotiations at the Bella Center. No matter how today's non-binding agreement is received and changes things, the carbon markets will continue to grow at an exponential rate.

Inside Bella there was abundant talk about the growing cataclysmic symptoms of global warming, and much dodging around money. At the Crowne Plaza, there was much talk about money, and barely a reference to reducing the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

Over the next year, FRONTLINE/World and CIR will report on key issues of climate change in a joint project—Carbon Watch—focusing on the multi-billion-dollar carbon trading market. We’ll look at which proposals to reduce emissions by 2020 really add up; at the hidden interests behind these solutions; and the new industry players. This week, our reporters blog from the Copenhagen climate change summit.

Brazil and the United States, the two key players in the REDD negotiations, are now squaring off. Negotiations are down to the wire and one major division remains. Hold on as we head into U.N. speak. Here's what is at the heart of the dispute:

Brazil, with the support of the European Union, is arguing that all deals on forests be conducted on a national basis -- so any market mechanisms involved have to be conducted and overseen by national authorities.

The Brazilians argue this is the only way they can ensure that deforestation activities don't simply move from one state to another, and the only way to stop this problem is at the national level.

The United States, with strong vocal support from Colombia, is arguing that such deals also be conducted on what they call a "sub-national" level -- meaning that individual states or regions, depending on the country, should be allowed to cut their own forest deals, irrespective of whether they fall in line with national policy.

Brazil and the United States, the two key players in the REDD negotiations, are now squaring off. Negotiations are down to the wire and one major division remains.

This sub-level deal making, say opponents, only encourages shifting the problem of "deforestation into another state."

Earlier this week, we spoke with Eduardo Braga, governor of the powerful state of Amazonas in the heart of the Amazon jungle, about his position. Braga has gone through something of a transformation on the question of "states rights" in Brazil.

Until recently he has been a strong supporter of Brazilian states being able to negotiate their own forest deals within their borders, which have become a primary revenue source for Amazonia and other heavily forested states.

In fact, last year Braga signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the state of California to cooperate on forest preservation projects and alternative energy technologies. The hope on both sides was that the forests of Amazonas could be used to offset emissions by California state industries on the arrival of tighter emissions controls expected next year.

This type of transaction may not be as simple now that Brazil's states and federal government are presenting a united front on preventing such unilateral deals from happening. Braga told us that any American partner approaching Brazil with a carbon offset project would have to do their homework first.

"We are not going to support your emissions at the cost of the standard of living of our people." That's the difference now," he said.

"If you do your homework and establish your target to reduce your emissions of greenhouse gases, then you can come to us to help mitigate further emissions," he told us.

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has conceded that carbon markets may play a limited role in preserving Brazil's and other countries' forests. But to get there, the Brazilian negotiators have added an interesting obstacle course and are calling the shots.

The REDD Ahead

In the latest REDD negotiations, and echoing Braga's change of heart, Brazil has taken the position that if developed countries want to gain access to the countrys forests to offset their emissions, they must first demonstrate their own commitment to reducing greenhouse gases at home.

Specifically, Brazil is asking that no more than 10 percent of a developed country's excess emissions can be written off against forest preservation schemes, and that this would only happen after those countries had already committed to reducing their emissions by 30 percent from 1990 levels.

So doing the math, a country with a stated 30 percent reduction goal would have to reach 33 percent to receive the keys to the carbon-rich magic kingdom of the Amazon.

According to Kate Dooley, a forest policy analyst for the UK-based NGO FERN (Forests and the European Union Resource Network), this offer is only on the table if developed countries stick to their commitments to continue negotiations on a binding global agreement under the Kyoto protocol.

Few close to the REDD talks believe these conditions will be met.

Over the next year, FRONTLINE/World and CIR will report on key issues of climate change in a joint project—Carbon Watch—focusing on the multi-billion-dollar carbon trading market. We’ll look at which proposals to reduce emissions by 2020 really add up; at the hidden interests behind these solutions; and the new industry players. This week, our reporters blog from the Copenhagen climate change summit.

Why is REDD on so many people’s lips at Copenhagen?

Forests are a hot topic in the UN’s climate change negotiations in Copenhagen this week. Many experts are pointing to reduced deforestation projects (known as REDD projects) as an economically cheap way to help developed countries offset CO2 emissions, while preserving forests in developing nations.

And while many tropical countries, such as Indonesia, Costa Rica, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Papua New Guinea, are often in favor of REDD proposals, if done incorrectly, these projects can cause a whole host of problems (As Mark Schapiro reported in an article in Mother Jones.)

But the devil is in the details, unfortunately. And while delegates from around the world negotiate REDD provisions for carbon emission offsets in Copenhagen, the U.S. is also developing similar forestry proposals in its own climate bills.

Global emissions from deforestation

About one fifth of total global CO2 emissions come from the forest sector, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Some of these emissions are due to deforestation, which comes from agricultural activities, biofuel plantations and illegal logging for precious woods such as cedar and mahogany, according to research by Dr. Matthew Finer, an ecologist at Save America’s Forests. Some of these emissions are due to "degradation" which comes from accidental fires or controlled burns, and in some cases, from forest dwellers cutting trees—such as palm—for food.

This is important, because in some developing countries, more carbon emissions come from deforestation than from energy generation, said Florence Daviet, a senior associate at the World Resources Institute’s climate and energy program, in a telephone interview from Copenhagen. 

In addition, forestry projects could have a "quite a large impact" on mitigating climate change, said Professor Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, in a telephone interview from Lisbon, Portugal.

"Between 25 to 30 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions come from land-use change, so deforestation counts for significant amount of that change," he said. A renowned expert in energy policy and climate change issues, Kammen attended the conference in Denmark, blogging on Berkeley’s website about his involvement and observations. 

REDD details: biodiversity, additionality

Some of the critical details about REDD programs are buried within hundreds of pages in the House and Senate versions of the climate bill, but experts note these details are vital to creating forestry projects that actually reduce emissions and do not produce negative unintended consequences. One is verifying that these carbon reductions are real—essentially that trees exist and are absorbing GHG emissions. This can be achieved through remote sensoring, said WRI’s Daviet, and in some cases is already being done.

Another is called “additionality,” which is often referred to in laymen’s terms as “anyway credits.” Alexander Pfaff, an associate professor in Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy has studied REDD projects in Costa Rica and has seen instances in this country where farmers were paid not to cut down forests—even though they would not have cut them anyway.

The issue at hand with additionality, “is that if you were going to clear [the forests and stopped], then I changed things. If you weren’t going to clear and I pay you, I’ve changed nothing,” he said in a telephone interview. 

Yet another issue that is sometimes a point of contention among environmentalists, Pfaff said, is called “co-benefits,” and is a part of both the House and Senate versions of the climate bill. The idea is that a project should reduce carbon from the atmosphere, but also have the co-benefit of protecting habitats for species, preserving water quality, and stabilizing soil.
 
Attaching a value to somewhat intangible things, such as biodiversity, is important, because it helps ensure financial instruments include these services the ecosystem provides, rather than simply paying for sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. 

Irony: Many perils lurk within the details of REDD

Groups concerned with biodiversity and indigenous autonomy are concerned with co-benefits, because a project without them can create perverse incentives.

Kammen notes there are instances in China and Brazil in which landowners cleared the forests and reaped the financial benefits from the timber and wood products. They then planted monocultures—large plantations of a single species—and received credit for carbon offsets. 

“This could have huge negative effects on biodiversity,” he said. “There is the potential for projects [to be harmful] if they don’t reflect biodiversity and to hurt local communities.”
 
Payments for so-called ecosystem services—for protecting water quality and species habitats, among other things—must be reflected in REDD projects, Kammen said. In the House version of the climate bill, projects that have co-benefits for biodiversity do receive more credit than ones that do not.

What support is the US giving?

There are benefits from REDD projects to US companies that might soon be facing greenhouse gas emission limits from a federal policy.

“If you can reduce immediate emissions as a result of land-use change and tree cover change or degradation of forests, it will take immediate pressure off emissions reductions [goals] in the short term,” WRI’s Daviet said.

In addition, Kammen said that forestry projects can be done “at a rate of a few dollars per ton of carbon,” which is much less expensive than many other options, especially for electrical utilities or oil refineries.

Representative Henry Waxman, expressed his support for REDD provisions within the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the climate bill he co-authored with Representative Edward Markey. 

“The clearing and degradation of tropical forests is a major driver of global climate change. Forests cover about 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface and hold almost half of the world’s terrestrial carbon,” Rep. Waxman said in an email.

“Deforestation is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries, amounting to roughly 20 percent of overall emissions globally. Reducing emissions from deforestation is highly cost-effective, compared to many other sources of emissions reductions.” Rep. Waxman is also the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. 

Ignorance could lead to unrealistic expectations

Last week the US’s special envoy to the UN, Todd Stern said he would not use public funds to aid climate efforts in China, denying the idea developed nations owe developing countries “reparations” for pollution in the past.

But the global demand for things such as cheap timber or biofuels can pressure developing countries to invest in projects that produce the most revenue, said Daviet.

“The bigger picture is the demand that drives deforestation in developing countries,” she said, noting our expectations for reducing deforestation may not be realistic if the US continues to buy biofuels on the world market.

Over the next year, FRONTLINE/World and CIR will report on key issues of climate change in a joint project—Carbon Watch—focusing on the multi-billion-dollar carbon trading market. We’ll look at which proposals to reduce emissions by 2020 really add up; at the hidden interests behind these solutions; and the new industry players. This week, our reporters blog from the Copenhagen climate change summit.

The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack shook up the negotiations on REDD Wednesday when he announced that the United States would release $1 billion over the next 3 years to help tropical countries slow the rate of deforestation.

The move, he told us, was intended to signal a new American commitment to forests and climate change. "The United States and the Obama administration is very interested in sending a clear message that we are engaged aggressively in climate change," Vilsack said.

We caught up with the secretary at a private dinner sponsored by Avoided Deforestation Partners, a consortium of business and environmental interests looking to the carbon market to finance forest preservation.

The move came just as tensions were mounting in negotiations over who would provide the funds to "make forests worth more alive than dead," a phrase often used by forest advocates to highlight their aims.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) estimates that $25 billion will be needed over the next 5 years to significantly slow the rate of deforestation, which contributes as much as 20 percent of all greenhouse gases.

Vilsack said that his actions also reflected a new commitment at the USDA to deal with climate change and to help stimulate a new green economy in U.S. agriculture.

This includes a move toward more unorthodox carbon offsets such as as no-till farming -- a practice that releases less nitrogen into the atmosphere. It is one example, Vilsack said, of "revitalizing rural America."

A former Iowa governor, Vilsack said the funding could not only help reduce forest clearing to plant crops such as soy, but could be an advantage to U.S farmers. "If we can avoid people deforesting acres and acres of forests to plant new crops,” he said, "then we avoid competition with our own agriculture."

The administration's move is by far the most serious commitment the U.S. has made to preserve forests. The money is intended to spur the ability of countries like Indonesia, Brazil, Guyana and other tropical forest nations to develop alternative industries to forest degradation, and to do the measurements that are critical to determining how much carbon their forests contain.

In the long run, these measurements are essential if forest-based credits are going to be used with any legitimacy by U.S. industries seeking to offset their emissions.

Other tensions remain. Industry analysts Point Carbon called a recent draft of the REDD agreement "remarkably void of any references to tradable credits or offsets from forest-related activities." Indeed, the latest draft seems to rely heavily on government aid to fund projects, whereas the United States wants a more market-driven solution, whereby companies will ultimately pay for forest preservation schemes as an offset for exceeding their emissions limits at home.

Vilsack's announcement suggests that the U.S. may use its $1 billion to change the power dynamic and push for more market-based approaches worldwide.

Over the next year, FRONTLINE/World and CIR will report on key issues of climate change in a joint project—Carbon Watch—focusing on the multi-billion-dollar carbon trading market. We’ll look at which proposals to reduce emissions by 2020 really add up; at the hidden interests behind these solutions; and the new industry players. This week, our reporters blog from the Copenhagen climate change summit.

"Where there are forests, there are indigenous people. Where there are no forests, there are no indigenous people."

Onel Masardule, a Kuna leader from Panama, smiled at the simplicity of his statement. You could read this as part fact, or depending on the results of the current negotiations, part prophecy.

According to The World Bank, 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihood. If the forests perish, so do they. This fundamental principle has been built into their culture, which is why the most preserved forests on earth are on indigenous lands.

Masardule described the forest as his hospital, his house and his supermarket. Joseph Onesimel, a Masai from Kenya, described taking care of the forest as a duty similar to taking care of children. To him, paying someone not to chop down trees makes no sense. "When you go to the bathroom to take a shower, that is your duty. Why should I pay you for that?"

As the world's leaders argue about incentives for stopping deforestation, the indigenous leaders I've been talking to keep telling me that protecting the forests should be handed to them. Traditional knowledge has maintained biodiversity for centuries.

"Preserving forests is not complicated,” Onesimel told me. But, REDD, the global agreement behind forest preservation, is.

Many of the forests where indigenous people live have not been demarcated; property lines have not been drawn; and there are no titles. Before any offsets are sold, land rights are going to have to be settled, which makes Masardule and others wary.

Dozens died in violent clashes between the Peruvian government and indigenous groups in the Amazon last summer. The dispute was over oil and gas development, not carbon, but for Masardule it's the most recent example of foreign money trumping indigenous sovereignty. "How can REDD help me if my rights aren't recognized?"

Free, prior and informed consent is the basic right all indigenous people are asking for in Copenhagen. In other words, they demand that before any carbon projects are developed on their lands, they be given the right to examine the issue and decide for themselves whether they want to participate.

The latest draft of the REDD agreement only mentions indigenous people in the preamble -- not in the legally binding body of the text. The New York Times reported today that a final text of the agreement will be given to ministers on Wednesday, and that all major points, including indigenous rights, have been worked out.

Masardule says the agreement will allow industries to keep polluting, while credits are changing hands. "They want to get rich off the disgrace of the whole world,” he said.

Over the next year, FRONTLINE/World and CIR will report on key issues of climate change in a joint project—Carbon Watch—focusing on the multi-billion-dollar carbon trading market. We’ll look at which proposals to reduce emissions by 2020 really add up; at the hidden interests behind these solutions; and the new industry players. This week, our reporters blog from the Copenhagen climate change summit.