While the world gets ready for December’s climate meeting in Copenhagen, a group of native Arctic women traveled to Washington this week to talk about what climate change is doing right now in places like Arctic Village, Alaska, and Whitehorse, in Canada’s Yukon.

Five of the women talked emotionally about how much harder it is to hunt for traditional game animals like caribou in a time of global warming, and how important these traditional foods are to their culture and health. They also took aim at some of Sarah Palin’s statements, especially her push for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic.

Watch below as Norma Kassi, a member of the Gwich’in nation — sometimes translated as “People of the Caribou” — talks about her practices as a hunter, and her take on Palin and her “drill baby drill” strategy. (It’s a fairly long video; her comments on Palin start about halfway through):

Now watch Sarah James, of Arctic Village, talk about the plain fact that “Western” fare like pizza, meatloaf and fast food simply can’t satisfy her son like a soothing caribou soup:

Kassi, James and other members of the Arctic delegation are telling their story on Capitol Hill and to members of the Obama administration. Some are planning to attend the Copenhagen conference, despite dampening hopes of a major agreement from that gathering.

They have an invitation for President Barack Obama: they’d like him to visit the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge next year, the 50th anniversary of this far-north protected area where caribou herds have their calves and where some energy companies have hoped to drill.

Video credits: REUTERS/Deborah Zabarenko (Washington, November 11, 2009)

Photo credit: REUTERS/Nathaniel Wilder (Sarah Palin outside the Mocha Moose Espresso after voting in Wasilla, Alaska, November 4, 2008)

The surprise award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama just nine months into his presidency on Friday may put pressure on him to visit a 190-nation meeting on a new U.N. climate treaty in Copenhagen.

The prize will be handed over in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of the award’s founder Alfred Nobel, and the U.N. talks will run in Copenhagen from Dec. 7-18. It takes about an hour to fly between the two Scandinavian capitals.

And the Norwegian Nobel Committee heaped praise on Obama, including his climate policies, in its citation.

“Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting,” the secretive five-member committee said.

 Some Norwegian politicians said they hoped the award would stiffen Obama’s resolve to push the U.S. Senate to pass early legislation to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the years to 2020.

Former U.S. President George W. Bush dropped efforts to get the Senate to ratify the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol, a pact adopted by all other industrialised nations for curbing greenhouse gas emissions until 2012. Obama wants the United States to have a bigger role in a new global treaty to be agreed in Copenhagen.

Environmental group Greenpeace said Obama should visit Copenhagen.

“In accepting the award in Oslo on 10th December President Obama has an incredible opportunity, and responsibility, to then travel to the UN Copenhagen Climate Summit to help avert climate chaos and conflict,” Greenpeace’s International Executive Director Gerd Leipold said in a statement.

And Denmark’s Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard also expressed hopes that Obama would come to Copenhagen: “It’s hard to imagine that he will be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10th and then come empty-handed to Copenhagen a week later.” 

And what a difference a week makes — the award of one of the world’s top accolades in Oslo is a stunning turnaround just a week after Obama went to Copenhagen and suffered a defeat by unsuccessfully lobbying for Chicago to get the 2016 Olympic Games.

But a problem is that the first week of the Copenhagen talks will be run only by senior government bureaucrats — environment ministers from around the world are due to turn up only from Dec. 16 to decide on a new pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. 

So, to have the most impact on the negotiations, should Obama go for a few days’ vacation skiing in Scandinavia after collecting the Nobel Prize before travelling to Copenhagen?

(Picture credits: top - U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and first lady Michelle Obama arrive for an event to look at the stars with local middle school students and astronomers from across the country on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, October 7, 2009. REUTERS/Jim Young. Right: The Nobel Peace Prize medal awarded to South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu)

The U.S. "Religious Left" -- which has been active at the grassroots level to support President Barack Obama's drive for health care reform -- has now launched a campaign in support his other major domestic initiative: climate change legislation.

Faithful America, a coalition of progressive evangelical, Catholic, mainline Protestant and Jewish groups, unveiled a video on Thursday urging viewers to "TELL CONGRESS: STOP CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS EFFECTS." The campaign is called Day Six.

You can see the video below:

A climate bill aimed at reducing America's emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming is being crafted in the U.S. Senate. The House of Representatives earlier this year passed its own version.

The Day Six campaign also asks people to sign an online petition that urges senators to : "... support a climate bill that addresses the root causes of climate change and makes needed investments in vulnerable communities already experiencing its devastating effects."

The organizers say that: "'Day Six' is a reference to the creation story in Genesis, when God made human beings stewards of creation."

Many left-leaning and liberal groups of faith see a biblical imperative to curb the effects of climate change because poor and developing regions like Africa are seen bearing the brunt of its consequences. 

One the other side, the religious right -- a loose network of conservative Christians that is a key Republican Party base -- has been at the forefront of conservative efforts to rally public opposition to climate change legislation aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.

 Conservative Christian radio stations have spent the summer saying its "cap and trade" provisions are the biggest tax increase in U.S. history.

Which side do you think will have its prayers answered?

(PHOTO: A buffalo skull is pictured in Lake Naivasha, Kenya, the only fresh water ecosystem in the eastern Rift Valley, June 4, 2009, which is drying up due to drought and other factors/ REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya ).  

OK, so President Barack Obama's lightning jaunt to Copenhagen last week was less than successful. Even with Oprah along, the Cheerleader-in-Chief couldn't clinch the deal for Chicago to host the 2016 Olympics. It happens.

But now that he knows the way to Denmark, might the American president consider arguing the U.S. case at international climate meetings in Copenhagen in December? The White House said he might, if other heads of state showed up.

"Right now you've got a meeting that's set up for a level not at the head of state level," presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Air Force One last week. "If it got switched, we would certainly look at coming."

Those climate talks might need a bit of a boost from the United States. White House climate czarina Carol Browner has said it's unlikely Obama will be able to sign any U.S. legislation to curb climate change before the December meeting. And that sets up a familiar Catch-22: if there's no U.S. law in place before Copenhagen climate talks, can the United States commit to anything? And if there IS a U.S. law in place, does the United States have the flexibility to maneuver in these international negotiations?

Climate negotiators already know the answer to the first part of that conundrum; they agreed to the Kyoto Protocol without backing from the U.S. Congress and came home to find no support for this 1997 carbon-capping deal. The United States is still the only industrialized nation not to ratify it.

After the Olympic disappointment -- Chicago was the first city of the final four to be cut from the running; Rio won -- is Obama's presence something that U.S. climate negotiators actually want? The global environmental community cheered his election last year after eight years of the George W. Bush administration, but he may not be the rock star on climate that he was then.

And let's just face it: arriving at climate change talks aboard a fuel hog like Air Force One could send a mixed message -- unless the White House commits to offsetting the big plane's emissions by investing in windmills or tree-planting in a friendly developing country.

So today's question: would an Obama visit to the Copenhagen climate talks help or hurt the chances for a global deal? Let us know what you think.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom (demonstration against Barack Obama and other world leaders outside UN climate change talks in Bangkok, Oct 5, 2009)

REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton (Obama shakes U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after addressing a U.N. summit on climate change, Sept 22, 2009)

One of the most popular programs brought in by the administration of President Barack Obama, "cash for clunkers", which offered rebates of up to $4,500 to trade in older gas guzzlers, wrapped up on Monday.

Some auto dealers are concerned about the slow pace of reimbursements under the program and the low inventories that have followed in its wake.

(PHOTO: A clunker vehicle sits in a parking lot during the last day of the "Cash For Clunkers" auto rebate program at Courtesy Chevrolet dealership in Phoenix, Arizona, August 24, 2009. REUTERS/Joshua Lott)

See the two video clips below. The first is of Cliff Johnson, president of Texas Motors Ford in Fort Worth, talking about his concerns. The other is from his new vehicle director, Jeremy Pirotte, who talks about inventories.

Government and industry officials say they do not expect the auto rebate program to be renewed in the immediate future, even though it has been popular with consumers and is considered a genuine economic stimulus at a time when the nation is in recession.

U.S. President Barack Obama has made climate change legislation one of his top goals and has pushed for more clean, renewable energy like solar and wind power.

But back in 1979, when another Democrat was in the White House, 32 solar panels graced the roof above the Oval Office.

Part of an initiative called “Solar America,” the panels turned sunlight into electricity that heated water in the staff kitchen — which President Jimmy Carter often used. They were removed during Ronald Reagan’s administration in 1986.

Now, one of those presidential solar panels has joined the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.

“The White House solar panel is evidence of an American president leading by example to promote his administration’s agenda,” Harry Rubenstein, chair of the museum’s division of politics and reform, said in a statement. “It displays how President Carter reinforced his policies through a personal gesture taking place in his own home.”

Unity College donated the panel to the museum this summer. The college in rural Maine got the panels in 1991. It refurbished some of them and installed them on top of the college cafeteria, and the panels heated water there until they maxed out their life span in 2005.

We were wondering if readers would like to see Obama install solar panels on top of the White House again?
It would certainly send a message — similar to the example set by First Lady Michelle Obama when she planted a vegetable garden on the White House lawn to promote healthy eating.

– Writing and reporting by Laura Isensee

(Photo Credit: United College and GreenBang/President Jimmy Carter inspects solar panels installed on top of the White House on June 30, 1979)

Okay, so it's August in Washington. It's hot. Congress has gone home. Even the summer interns are packing up and getting out of town. So it's not surprising that top members of the Obama administration might be ready for a road trip.

That's basically what the White House announced in a statement headlined: "Obama Administration Officials Travel America, Talk Clean Energy Economy." President Obama went to Indiana to announce $2.4 billion in funding for advanced battery and electric drive projects; Energy Secretary Steven Chu headed for Minnesota to look at renewable energy projects and North Carolina to announce a big grant to a lithium battery firm, finishing up the week in Massachusetts to talk about clean energy jobs at Harvard; Interior Secretary Ken Salazar went to a solar panel company in Colorado; EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was in Florida and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke traveled to Missouri.

Probably only a crank would wonder just how much greenhouse gas all this official travel spewed into the atmosphere. There's no hybrid Air Force One, after all. But it does seem like an exquisite irony that, with the best of environmental intentions, the Obama team may have stomped all over the United States with a heavy-duty carbon footprint.

Is it fair to ask that when they talk the talk, they walk the walk -- or offset emissions by funding windmills or other projects that supply renewable energy? Let us know what you think.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Jason Reed (President Obama speaks in Wakarusa, Indiana, August 5, 2009); REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (Windmill turbines on Backbone Mountain in West Virginia, August 28, 2006)

For those keeping track, there are five months left before the December meeting in Copenhagen where the world is supposed to agree on how to tackle climate change after crucial aspects of the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol expire. Before they can agree on anything, they have to have a document to work from, and that’s where people like Michael Zammit Cutajar come in.

He and other diplomats at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will get together next month in Bonn to whittle down a 200-page text to something more manageable. On a visit to Washington, he said he didn’t expect any big breakthroughs at that meeting because “people don’t like to work much in August.” So far, he himself hasn’t read through the whole draft and admits it’s likely to be a tough thing to read: “You pick it up, you look at it, you see three pages, you say ‘interesting,’ you put it down again. It’s not meant to be read top to bottom.”

Zammit Cutajar figures the “crunch issues” are more likely to emerge at a meeting in Bangkok over 10 days in September and October, and at another gathering in Barcelona in November, before the main event in Copenhagen.

But the world negotiations aren’t the only games to watch on climate change. The U.S. Senate is expected to take up a bill to curb greenhouse emissions in September; the House has already narrowly approved one. That doesn’t mean there will be a U.S. law in place by December, and that may not even be necessary, Zammit Cutajar says.

“It would be great if there were a Senate outcome that was strong … a signal from both chambers (of Congress) that they’re on the same track,” he said, recognizing that the House and Senate versions of the legislation would have to be reconciled before any law could go to President Barack Obama’s desk.

Zammit Cutajar uses a cosmic metaphor to describe how a world deal on climate change could develop. “The process of negotiation is sort of creation in reverse, with the big bang coming at the end.”

Stay tuned.

Click here for more Reuters political coverage.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang (Grandma Nak Shrine in Bangkok, June 30, 2009)
REUTERS/Albert Gea (Athlete Veronica Campbell-Brown of Jamaica in front of Sagrada Familia church, Barcelona July 22, 2009)

Who was president when U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rose most sharply since 1990, the U.N. benchmark year for action to fight climate change?
– George W. Bush (2001-2007)
– Bill Clinton (1993-2000)
– George H.W. Bush (1990-1992)
(I’m giving presidents responsibility for the full calendar year of their inauguration in January; official U.S. data are only available until 2007)

Answer — Bill Clinton (by a long way).

Many people might have thought the worst scorecard was by George W. Bush, who gave up plans to implement the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, signed by the Clinton administration but never submitted to a hostile Senate for ratification.

But emissions rose by more than twice as much in the Clinton years, when climate campaigner Al Gore was vice president, as during the combined years when two Bush presidents, father and son, were in the White House since 1990.

So is that legacy a problem for President Barack Obama, a Democrat like Clinton?

At U.N. negotiations on a new climate treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December, many nations welcome promises by Obama of far tougher action than Bush for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But there are nagging memories of unkept promises — Clinton’s administration agreed to cut U.S. emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 as part of the Kyoto Protocol. In 2000, Clinton’s last full year, U.S. emissions were 15 percent above 1990 levels.

Of course there are excuses — the economy grew strongly during the Clinton years, bringing pressure for higher emissions, and the Senate opposed action. In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 against key principles later built into the Kyoto Protocol.

The Bush administrations failed to keep U.S. commitments too — in 1992, George H.W. Bush agreed the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (the parent treaty of Kyoto which was ratified by the Senate) which set a non-binding goal of returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2000.

U.S. GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS (millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent)
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH
1992: 6,140
1990: 6,084
rise 56
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON
2000: 6,975
1993: 6,275
rise 700
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
2007: 7,107
2001: 6,872
rise 235

* A rise of 700 million tonnes is about as much as the annual emissions of a country such as Britain, France or Canada. Under the combined Bush presidencies, emissions rose by 291 million tonnes.

(Source; official U.S. submissions to U.N. Climate Change Secretariat)

George W. Bush has suffered years of criticism by U.S. allies for failing to do more to combat global warming. But maybe Obama can’t just blame Bush?

(Photos: TOP: U.S. President George W. Bush, flanked by former Presidents Bill Clinton (L) and George H. Bush, speaks about relief efforts from hurricane Katrina in the Oval Office of the White House, September 1, 2005. RIGHT: A protester holds up a sign at a demonstration at the State Department in Washington September 27, 2007 during a  meeting of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters — including the United States and China. Both pictures by REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

 U.N. climate talks started in Bonn on Monday with demonstrators dressed as camels, birds, trees, a cactus and several polar bears urging delegates to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The cactus costume with the sign “water me” was my favourite (left).

Too many  protesters at U.N. meetings dress up as polar bears — the bears’ icy habitat is coming under threat from receding ice. So to get the polar-bear-weary delegates’ attention, a bit of variety is a good idea, even though it’s probably harder to make people feel sorry for a prickly plant than an iconic Arctic predator.

I am not sure what the creatures (below right) are — any ideas? They look to me like a cross between a polar bear and a penguin with a carrot stolen from a snowman’s nose.

Environmentalists want developed countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

The United States, even with President Barack Obama’s promises to do far more to fight climate change, says such a goal is impossible. U.S. delegates say even cutting back to 1990 levels by 2020 – a reduction of 14 percent from 2007 levels — is a stretch in an economy dependent on fossil fuels.

So what should the United States and other developed countries do at the June 1-12 talks as part of a new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed in December?

Will they make the cactus happy?