Our guest blogger is Andrew Light, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, who is now attending the United Nations climate change talks in Poznań, Poland. This is the fifth of several on-the-scene dispatches.

In front of a capacity crowd in the largest hall available at this year’s UN climate change conference, Al Gore gave a dramatic address on the possibilities and the hurdles before the climate change community. The biggest, longest applause line by far (complete with hoots and whoops) went to his indirect endorsement of Bill McKibben’s 350 campaign inaugurated on the instigation of an argument first floated by NASA’s James Hansen in a paper released shortly after last year’s UN climate change meeting in Bali. According to Hansen, “We need to reduce from today’s atmospheric CO2, about 385 parts per million, to 350ppm. We are already too high to maintain the climate to which humanity, wildlife, and the rest of the biosphere are adapted. (. . .) This target must be pursued on a timescale of decades.”

Though Gore did not mention the campaign by name the concept was clear:

The truth is that the goals we are reaching toward are incredibly difficult. Even [a stabilization of atmospheric CO2 at] 450 ppm is inadequate. We need to make that goal 350ppm. (. . .) This task can seem daunting. For those of us who understand the goal should be tougher let us understand that the early steps in the process to go from 450 to 350 are very familiar. Once processes of change begin, once decisions are arrived at, then the task becomes easier in the doing. We will see that as we start changing we will improve our economies and increase our standard of living.

Watch it:

The atmosphere in Poznań for Gore’s speech was less dramatic than that surrounding his address at last year’s UN climate change meeting in Bali, though in some ways his task this time around was more difficult. Rather than confronting Bush’s intransigence against a unified world community, Gore had to contend with a depressing malaise that has pervaded the halls of the conference and haunted delegates and observers as they trudged through the cold, cloudy and wet weather on their way to the venue. There was also plenty of blame to go around this time, with accusations hurdled between developed and developing countries of who was responsible for the lack of progress. Read more

[Dispatch #2 from the climate talks in Poland by CAP Senior Fellow Andrew Light, first printed in WonkRoom. The Pew quote has been corrected in the headline and text.]

Since Monday, one of the predominant topics of conversation among representatives of American non-governmental organizations at this year’s United Nations conference on climate change has been “what’s up with Pew?” In this case the “Pew” is the Pew Center on Climate Change, which is taking the public stance that a “full, final, ratifiable agreement just isn’t in the cards” to succeed the Kyoto Protocol at next year’s much anticipated UN meeting in Copenhagen, as Pew’s Elliot Diringer told the Washington Post.

[That's a view I share. See "Obama can't get a global climate treaty ratified."]

The message coming from Pew was that the gathered parties here in Poland should not get their hopes up that the US would agree to language next year in Copenhagen since it is “too optimistic,” as Pew’s Eileen Claussen said, to believe we will have a final cap and trade bill through Congress by then. If true, then we will fail in a promissory note floated by John Kerry, Al Gore, and others at last year’s UN climate change meeting in Bali to wait one year for the US to rejoin the international community on fighting climate change. It was with much anticipation then that Pew held a press conference here Wednesday on its views on the future of the Kyoto process.

Read more

Don Blankenship, the “scariest polluter in the United States,” is the CEO of A.T. Massey Coal Company, an egregious polluter, union buster, and extreme practitioner of mountaintop removal mining. Blankenship also happens to sit on the board of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which promotes his virulent brand of right-wing global warming denial. The Natural Resources Defense Council’s Pete Altman has just revealed video of his bizarre rant that “The greeniacs are taking over the world” and censoring the poor folks of the Chamber:

How many times have the people in this room heard, at the US Chamber of Commerce or at the National Mining Association, “I don’t believe in climate change, but I’m afraid to say that because it is a political reality”? The greeniacs are taking over the world.

Watch it:

The NRDC Switchboard has much more video of Blankenship’s November speech, including accusations that his political opponents are “atheists,” “communists,” and comparable to Osama bin Laden. Soon we’ll find out if his enemies list includes the U.S. Supreme Court. Read more