This week the Economist published a slew of interesting pieces examining different fronts in the effort to curb climate change. The first was helpful rundown of the key factors affecting the upcoming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bali. Obviously, the issue of climate change has moved a great deal from where it was ten years ago during Kyoto negotiations. The piece helps focus in on the key factors for a meaningful agreement now.

Experienced code-breakers will be looking, essentially, for three things by which to judge whether Bali has been a success or a failure. The first is some sort of long-term commitment by all 192 signatories of the UNFCCC to deal with the problem, involving some sort of goal, such as temperature, emissions cuts or atmospheric carbon concentrations. The second is further commitments by developing countries to cut their emissions. The EU already committed itself to cuts of 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 at its spring conference earlier this year; and since the current American administration continues to oppose binding targets, such promises will have to come from other rich countries, such as Australia or Japan.

The third area concerns developing countries. They are not going to commit themselves to cuts. But activists hope that China and India—the nations everybody is watching—may throw America a bone. If the big developing countries agree to look into cutting emissions from particular sectors—an idea that the Bush administration has pushed—rather than from their economies as a whole, America will be likelier to commit itself to emissions controls. After all, it was the developing world's refusal to countenance cuts that led America to turn its back on Kyoto in the first place.

The second piece looks at one solution to this very problem: how to decrease emissions in developing economies. Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs) are $5 billion market resulting from the Kyoto protocol. Under this program, poor countries earn credits for cutting or preventing emissions of greenhouse gases which can be bought by rich countries. Not a perfect solution, but a potential start.

Finally, the Economist examined the burgeoning religious environmental movement in the United States as a swing constituency affecting policy choices on climate change in the years to come.

The bottom line, according to the Economist: "A green jamboree in Indonesia will not achieve anything tangible, but it matters." Such is the way of public policy advocacy.