An ingenious forest-protection proposal has grown out of the ongoing U.N. climate change summit, according to a BBC article: Papua New Guinea officials suggested that developing countries should reap financial rewards in return for prohibiting their industries from razing forests – an idea that is long overdue. Preserving foliage-rich wilderness is a lynchpin of the global-warming solution: Trees create natural carbon sinks that breathe in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, and release oxygen.

Rejection of the Kyoto Protocol – the international agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions – by the Bush administration and Congress has not stopped cities, states, and regions from setting their own Kyoto-style climate change goals. Researchers at the University of Vermont found that more than a third of Americans live in places that have set their own emissions reduction goals.