What's news? Climate, naturally

The talk everywhere (besides the various scams which have become an established part of our lives) these days is about Cancun in Mexico. It is time again to talk climate. That's it - TALK is the catchword. No action.

The two-week negotiating session started yesterday. Is there hope? Not really, but at least there will be ideas, new suggestions, etc. Accepted or not!

After two weeks of deliberations that at times grew rancorous last year, Obama and leaders from Brazil, India, South Africa, and China hammered out an eleventh-hour deal that came to be known as the Copenhagen Accord. It was more a statement of intent than an actual plan, and it left quite a few countries unsatisfied.

But the Copenhagen Accord at least solidified some basic commitments. Countries agreed that they would aim to keep planetary warming to under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F), and would each put forward domestic plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the months since then, 138 countries have either formally signed on to the accord or signaled that they would -- and combined they are responsible for more than 86 percent of global emissions.

Industrialized nations also committed to raising $10 billion each year for the next three years for so-called "fast-start" funding to help developing nations cut emissions and adapt to the changes already taking place. There was an additional agreement to establish a long-term fund of $100 billion per year by 2020 to meet those goals. Specifically, there will need to be progress on how countries will formalize the commitments they made last year, and how to keep track of what each country is actually doing when it comes to cutting emissions.

We better hurry up. Going by a fresh report from British scientists, if the Earth's temperature rises by 7 degrees Fahrenheit the rest of this century -- and some researchers think that could happen as soon as 2060 -- up to a billion people would have to be relocated. And another 3 billion could end up without access to water supplies.