According to Reuters/Planet Ark, diplomatic efforts have begun to accelerate toward a framework for a new global climate change treaty. A European official close to the negotiations claims that the "tone of the debate has changed in the United States and Australia -- key nations which rejected the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions -- and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it a top target of her G8 presidency this year."
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Monday, "We need to work for agreement by the G8 plus five on the elements of a post-Kyoto framework including a global stabilisation goal and a cap and trade system, a framework that includes not just the US but also India and China."
Meanwhile, in Houston, oil industry heads are meeting to discuss global energy challenges, including ways to find more effective soultions to produce oil and gas, as well as alternatives to fossil fuels.
According to the Associated Press, we can "expect to see industry leaders, including the chiefs of ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell PLC's U.S. division, speaking across America in an unprecedented campaign to educate consumers on energy-related issues and discuss topics such as ethanol and renewable fuels. It's also an opportunity for the companies to polish their images."
"There's never been as much effort going into technological innovation across the whole energy industry as we're seeing today," Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consultancy, and author of "The Prize," the Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the oil industry, told AP.
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