President Barack Obama came into office with climate change and the environment on his list of top priorities. Nearly a year later, one of the top environmental groups in the United States says that Obama has made the grade so far.

After slackened growth of new U.S. wind power installations in 2009, the U.S. wind industry is eyeing 2010 as a critical year.

I’d had enough of being cold and weather beaten by the Katabatic wind smashing the side of my tent and bouncing off my head so I decided to make my way to our base, the Sorensen Hut, for a warm cup of tea and read a couple of pages of my book.

Penguins’ chatter outside my tent woke me to Christmas Day in Antarctica, but instead of Santa’s sleigh there was just the usual run to ensure our human waste doesn’t permanently become part of this frozen wilderness.

Sweden complained that the recent Copenhagen climate change summit was a “disaster.” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown described it as “at best flawed and at worst chaotic.” Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, dubbed the outcome confirmation of a “climate apartheid.” For South Africa it was simply “not acceptable.” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who for over a year had been urging the 192 members of the United Nations to “seal the deal” in Copenhagen, saw things differently.

The agreement struck in Copenhagen may ultimately amount to no more than a long-term climate change dialogue between Washington and Beijing. While global action to tackle emissions of carbon dioxide must remain a priority, the fact remains that we may be heading towards a future in which no long-term, comprehensive successor to the Kyoto regime is politically possible.

What will President Barack Obama’s $5 billion belief in the Weatherization Assistance Program mean on the ground?

What will President Barack Obama’s $5 billion belief in the Weatherization Assistance Program mean on the ground?

Reuters employee Pauline Askin is in Antarctica for a six-week expedition on Commonwealth Bay, the windiest place on earth.

Rumours spread fast among thousands of journalists, particularly if they have spent a day watching climate talks slowly implode in Copenhagen, waiting hours for anyone to hand out snippets of information about what was going on.

An enormous white globe dangled in Copenhagen’s Bella Centre, the location of the world’s largest ever leaders’ summit on climate change, could be an unintended yet chilling sign of things to come.

Today’s question of the day: What role should carbon play in a new U.N. climate deal?

Parallel universe at UN climate talks

All the 193 countries and many RINGOS, BINGOS, YOUNGOS, banks and others who had set up temporary Copenhagen offices had been told to have them packed up by Friday evening. Negotiations may be continuing, but the packing has definitely started.

On the final day of the conference, the media — and everyone else — is looking forward to an outcome, any outcome of a two-week marathon that was supposed to lead to cuts in greenhouse gas emisions and a 2010 deadline for a legally binding treaty.