The Middle East produces more than 40% of the oil consumed worldwide. It's an unlikely region for a grassroots climate network to be born. Yesterday, that's just what happened. The Arab Climate Alliiance, a coalition of more than 15 Arab non-profit organizations and foundations, was launched to promote the use of clean energy, energy conservation and to work with Arab communities affected by water shortages.

The UN climate negotiations in Accra, Ghana continued over the weekend, with reports of general progress on the forest and industry negotiations. Much of the negotiations have been taking place behind closed doors, away from civil society, so not all is known about what is being discussed. Members of CAN International are on the scene in Accra and are working hard to bring updates from the NGO camp of the closed-door negotiations. For CAN's daily ECO publications, check out http://www.climatenetwork.org/eco/accra-ecos.

Chris Henschel from the Canadian Parks & Wilderness Society is also there, contributing updates on his blog at climateforests.blogspost.com. His sense on the forestry issue is that:

"So far, the most vocal countries have focused on changing the system so that it provides greater 'incentives' for forest management practices that will mitigate climate change. Translation: they want it to be easier to generate credits as incentive and reward for action. The main problem I see with this focus is that it leads Parties away from a mandatory requirement to reduce emissions in this sector and towards a system where they can only be rewarded for incremental improvements and not punished for status quo emissions."

For more analysis of the ongoing talks and how the NGO community is working to influence the policy changes being discussed, check out his blog at climateforests.blogspot.com.

The United States is obviously the largest global warming villain on earth--it's pumped more carbon into the atmosphere, for a longer stretch of time, than anyone else, and under President Bush the U.S. has refused to enter into serious negotiations with the rest of the planet. But every once in a while something comes along that gives you a little hope, and this week there were two:

In the western state of Colorado--a bastion of mining interests--the big electric utility Xcel announced it would shut down down two coal-fired power plants in the state and in their place build one of the world's largest utility-scale solar power plants. This is the frist time...