The North Pole, the conference room – and Narnia?

I’m feeling rather envious – or at least I’m getting itchy feet.
My colleague Stefan Nestler is on his way to the North Pole via Spitzbergen.
Mind you, he’s with an expedition that’s walking, skiing and towing all the necessary rations and equipment on their sledges.That is going to be quite a feat.
His Nordpolblog (in German, but there will be great pictures, I’m sure) looks fantastic.
Visit the North Pole Blog
Meanwhile, I have been doing conference duty here in Bonn, following the UN Climate Secretariat meeting trying to make progress towards an agreement to be signed in Copenhagen in December.
Fred has posted a comment asking what I think of all these conferences and their chances of success, and Obama’s role.
Well sometimes I think these giant meetings (more than 2 and a half thousand people at the UN meeting here until April 8th) produce enough “hot air” to raise the temperature of the planet considerably. But if we don’t get all the major players to agree on binding commitments, we have no chance.I don’t know if they really need that many people. And a bit more video-conferencing would save a lot of travel emissions.
Talking to the delegates to the UN meeting, I certainly get the feeling the change of US administration has given a boost to morale and the feeling that we might get there somewhere after all. But there are those who warn against expecting too much.
Let’s give the guy and his team a chance. And let’s see what comes out of this round of talks, and Obama’s special climate summit in April.
Meanwhile, I’m off on a break until after Easter. I’ll leave you with another link to the latest iniative by the online community connect2earth. They’ve launched a new campaign, supported by celebrities like Skandar Keynes (from Chronicles of Narnia – ha! bet you were wondering when Narnia was going to come in to it. Jack, you probably thought it would involve the lion…)
They want to encourage people to debate with the world’s top environmental experts. Check it out yourselves, here’s the link:
Join the green online community?
Check the Ice Blog again around April 14th please!