Eco-redemption song echoes across Earth

Today is World Environmental Day. The day is especially important this year because the vital UN Climate Change Conference will be held in Copenhagen on December 7 to finalize a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Officials from about 200 countries will assemble in the Danish capital to try and iron out a strategy to save the world from global warming, the gravest threat humankind has ever faced.

The good news is that US President Barack Obama has reversed his predecessor George W. Bush's stance and accepted that global warming is indeed man-made, and the excessive amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) we have been emitting into the atmosphere is to blame for the crisis. He has accepted, too, that if we continue to emit GHG at the present level it could threaten all life on the planet. And there seems to be a consensus among countries now that GHG emissions have to be reduced, and reduced fast.

But which country cuts how much emission?