Beaches, bargaining and building blocks at the Cancun climate talks | Pembina Institute

Beaches, bargaining and building blocks at the Cancun climate talks | Pembina Institute by Clare Demers

Like a lot of climate colleagues from around the world, I'll be packing my flip-flops later this week for the UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico. Although I've never been much of a beach person, I'm hoping that the two-week conference can deliver some of the building blocks we need for a global effort to tackle climate change.

A year ago, we headed into a similar meeting in Copenhagen hoping to see countries agree to a binding deal. Those negotiations fell far short, and as a result, expectations are more modest this time: Cancun is widely understood as a potential stepping stone on the path to a full agreement a year from now, at the South Africa talks in 2011.....