The Wonk Room is reporting and tweeting live from the international climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.

The head of the Cancun climate talks fought back tears in a meeting with youth activists on Wednesday, as she frankly admitted the insufficient ambition of global leaders to protect the future. Christiana Figueres, who replaced Yvo de Boer as the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change following last year’s negotiations in Copenhagen, teared up as she considered her responsibility to her daughters and the youth of the world. She told the activists, part of Tck Tck Tck’s Adopt a Negotiator program, that the Cancun negotiations will be “insufficient” and that “nothing will be highly ambitious,” because of the economic and political constraints. But she believes that “each one of use has the moral responsibility to do the absolute best that we can.” Asked what inspires her to lead the effort despite the challenges, she choked up as she answered that it is “the next generation”:

It’s you. It’s the next generation. Look: We’re doing this but this has nothing to do with us. It’s all about you. It’s all about you. We’re the ones that have caused the problem but you’re the ones that are going to have to pay for it, right? The fact is, I’m the mother of two women about your age, and I realized many years ago that I had inherited a planet that was a diminished planet. And that if I didn’t do something about it, my daughters would grow up in a planet that had been severely diminished by what we’re doing. And I just can’t look at my daughters in the eyes and not do whatever I can.

So, it’s you. It’s about the kind of planet that you’re going to have. It’s honestly not my planet. It’s yours, okay? We borrowed it from you for a few minutes. But you will take it over very soon, because it’s yours. And you’re going to have to give it over to your children.

Honestly, there’s no perfect job here, okay? Nothing that we are going to do in Cancun is going to be perfect. Don’t expect perfection. Nothing is going to be highly ambitious. Nothing. Everything here is going to be one step, and everything is going to be insufficient. But it is the best that this group of people in these circumstances, with these political constraints, in this economic environment, can do for the time being. And as soon as this finishes we have to start pushing for the next step. And so it goes. But each one of us that is here has the moral responsibility to do the absolute best that we can at that moment under those circumstances. So what inspires me? It’s you.

Watch it:

“We can’t let something like Copenhagen ever happen again,” Figueres said, reflecting earlier comments that expectations for a comprehensive, total agreement is a guarantee for failure in the UNFCCC process.

This week brought some important advances in the campaign to give the public access to information on chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells.  CAP’s Tom Kenworthy has the story.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar strongly suggested that a policy overhaul at his department would include new requirements for public disclosure of  chemicals used on federal lands that contain 11% of U.S. natural gas reserves. And three energy industry trade groups announced they will support efforts to create a registry where oil and gas companies can voluntarily post – well by well – what chemicals they use.

Read more

Global Solar Energy May Reach 980 Gigawatts by 2020

Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) — Global solar energy capacity may reach 980 gigawatts by 2020 as governments worldwide seek to reduce fossil fuel consumption and cut emissions of greenhouse gases, a group of renewable energy associations said.

Read more

Benefits exceeded costs by 30-to-1, with 160,000 lives saved

This repost from EDF’s Steve Cochran is part of CP’s series on EPA’s highly cost-effective, science-based efforts to preserve clean air, clean water, and a livable climate for our kids.

There they go again. Economic meltdown. Higher consumer costs. Massive job losses. These are among the predictions of doom surrounding EPA’s current and forthcoming round of clean air protections. If they sound familiar, they should. Time and again, from the enactment of the Clean Air Act in 1970 to today, prophets of doom have predicted that disastrous consequences would flow from cleaning the air we all breathe. And time and again, those dire predictions have been wrong. The Clean Air Act has protected American health and our environment for decades while our economy has grown. It is a legislative success story that continues today.

This series will examine what the naysayers have said about Clean Air Act protections and how those wild predictions compare to the statute’s actual record of protecting Americans from toxic air pollution and its devastating effects on human health and the environment. We start with the acid rain program in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.

Read more

The most popular economics textbook in the United States gives a misleading picture of climate science and policy.

A new analysis of textbooks by economist the Bauman for the Sightline Institute criticizes Economics: Principles, Problems, and Policies by Campbell McConnell, Stanley Brue, and Sean Flynn, its 18th edition published in 2008, for “multiple errors” and “climate science that is almost 15 years out of date.” Brad Johnson has the story and, at the end, CP will run some highlights and lowlights from other key economics texts.

Bauman bemoans the fact that Economics has “over 20 percent of the market” for introductory economics textbooks:

Read more

By CAPAF’s Daniel J. Weiss and Richard Caperton.

On Friday, December 3, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the Senate Republican Conference Chair, plans to release the Senate GOP’s agenda for 2011.  According to Roll Call, Alexander will say that it will focus on “jobs, debt and terror.”  There is at least one big problem with his proposed agenda – it includes his call to build 100 new nuclear power plants.  This plank would create fewer jobs relative to its huge cost, add billions of dollars to the deficit, and increase the risk of terrorists getting radioactive material.  In short, Alexander’s proposal would nuke his own jobs, debt, and terror agenda.

Read more