Bali Stalemate

This is an excellent article on the debate over whether developing countries should be forced to adhere to emissions limits. Basically, the desire is to curb emissions from India and China now rather than later, but India and China argue that this puts a limit on their emissions at a much lower point than that to which the developed countries are limited. Economists and some environmentalists argue that it is easier and cheaper to curb emissions now rather than later when the industries are up and running. China argues that they are already doing a great deal to curb their emissions and this should be enough (this is the Bush Administration argument that mandatory limits are unnecessary -- because we've clearly been doing such a great job without them so far). I very much doubt this will be resolved in the next week and a half.

In Sri Lankan news, Sewalanka has two events tomorrow: the launch of the Sinharaja Guidebook for Ecotourists and the press conference for Arugambay's triumph at the World Travel Mart. Should be interesting. Well, o.k. maybe not interesting, but should provide me with free coffee.
I'm sure this is breaking copyright laws or something, but the drawings on this post are from the guidebook.

The first week of every month is known as meeting week around here. Thursdays are really the big day -- we have our environmental committee meeting, then communications advisory committee meeting and finally the program department meeting. Plus, we've been meeting about these stupid events tomorrow and of course, meeting about meetings. Still, I feel bad complaining. I have one week a month of this here -- I had almost daily meetings in D.C. Outside of meetings I've been working on training presentations. I had to do one on environmental degradation in Sri Lanka for a training they are doing at Islander Center. This means I'll actually get to go to Islander Center -- something I was told I would do months ago. I love how time flies here.

Hope you have a nice weekend. I'll tell you how our events go tomorrow. Meanwhile, please enjoy a diagram of the world showing all the cities that have inner-city rail systems. I think they are being generous by including Jacksonville, Florida -- a two stop monorail doesn't really seem like a rail system to me.