Two very interesting articles in the media, with good summaries appearing on Ecologist website.

Big picture issue: Experts think that climate change agreements should be focused more on finding cheap ways to enable clean energy (e.g. non-carbon) production, rather than trying to flog the dead horse of emissions targets.  Interesting thought, and one that keeps coming up more and more in recent times.  Will COP16 in Cancun be affected by this?  We're going to talk with Dr. Tim Flannery this weekend after his talk at NUS and ask him for his two cents.  Stay tuned.

Local picture issue: Singapore is in the spotlight again for damaging regional ecologies through technically illegal sand trading.  It's bad PR and surely there must be a better way to add to landmass (or for that matter, more effectively use what's already available).