COPENHAGEN WAS going to be the big opportunity to sign on to a better environmental world order. Instead, the road to it has been marked with zero-visibility smog impairing collective human vision.

Unlike America's leaders, China's bosses are not much troubled by recalcitrant legislatures. The government has therefore had no difficulty in executing a smart volte face on climate change. Around three years ago its fierce resistance to the notion of any limit on its greenhouse-gas emissions started to soften. It now seems to be making serious efforts to control them.

As the world braced for bruising negotiations and prayed for a deal at Copenhagen, an icon of the Internet age sang for the glaciers of Kashmir.

Retreat Faster Than Observed Earlier
Jayashree Nandi | TNN

Bangalore: As big global players play the game of negotiations, and as the opposition wakes up to the implications of India

BINAJ GURUBACHARYA

The high-altitude meeting comes on the heels of the recent underwater Cabinet meeting held in Maldives, also meant to draw attention to global warming
: A group of Nepalese ministers reached the Mount Everest region on Thursday for a Cabinet meeting being billed as the highest ever -a stunt meant to highlight the threat global warming poses to Himalayan glaciers.

The glacier of the world famous Mount Kanchenzonga in Sikkim has receded 4.5 metres in the last 17 years (1986-2005), Union Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh confirmed on Monday.