by Adele Waugaman

Abundance and scarcity -- this dichotomy is increasingly framing the most important global challenges of the day, particularly in the midst of the ongoing global financial crisis. So, it was with great interest that I attended the Pop!Tech conference last week bringing technology to bear on that theme.

Pop!Tech was packed with mobile innovators with cool projects. For instance, Erik Hersman is working on Ushahidi.com, a project using "crowd-sourced" data to populate maps of violent outbreaks in volatile environments. Ushahidi was recently used in Kenya during the post-election violence. And Ken Banks presented FrontlineSMS, which provides free software that can be downloaded from the web to harness the power of text messaging to power work of NGOs and humanitarian groups. Already FrontlineSMS has been used by UNDP in Aceh as part of the post-tsunami reconstruction efforts and in Malawi to power a healthcare network, among other projects.
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Given my work with the United Nations Foundation & Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership and our focus on using mobile technology to increase access to health information in the developing world, the Pop!Tech Accelerator Initiative using mobile phones to address South Africa's HIV/AIDS epidemic also caught my attention.

A compelling case of the often harsh juxtaposition between abundance and scarcity can be found in South Africa--a country of 48 million people, of which some 1,000 die each day from HIV/AIDS related complications. The magnitude of the HIV/AIDS crisis is amplified by the relative scarcity of trained nurses. And their jobs are made more difficult by the fact that currently only 5% of South Africans get tested, and, of those, many come to health clinics only once the disease has progressed to advanced stages.

Enter Project Masiuleke. "Project M," as it's called, is designed to increase the number of South Africans who get tested and receive the country's free antiretroviral (AVR) treatment, all through the touch of a button--in this case, on a mobile phone. 90% of South Africans today have access to a cell phone.

Using text messaging, Project M alerts South Africans to available services, like free testing and counseling services. Project M aims to keeps its constituents engaged through a series of steps from awareness-raising to home testing, counseling, and treatment reminders for those who report they've tested positive.

In South Africa and across the developing world, the rapid expansion of mobile phone usage means that in facing resource constraints like access to healthcare, innovative uses of mobile technology can play a significant role in bridging that gap. At Pop!Tech, it was clear that the innovators are ready to do so. The next step is multi-sector and multi-national cooperation to help further drive and expand mobile innovation for social change.

Regular readers of this blog know that we have been following the work of DataDyne--the nonprofit (sponsored by the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation) that developed a software application for mobile phone devices that enables public health workers in developing countries to collect data more efficiently. Yesterday, the UN Foundation (which sponsors this blog) and the Vodafone Foundation, together with the World Health Organization announced that its EpiSurveyor program will expand to 22 sub-Saharan African countries by the end of the year.

Over on the ZDNet blog Tech for Change, a Kenyan public health worker who participated in the EpiSurveyor pilot program last year describes how this technology made his work much, much easier.

It used to be that much of this work was done on paper, but following a pilot project that took place in 2007 that is beginning to change. I was a participant in the pilot PDA project using EpiSurveyor--an open-source software for mobile devices--to support our data collection activities in the country. The pilot was led by the non-profit organization DataDyne, and funded by the United Nations Foundation and Vodafone Foundation partnership.

This technology brings much greater efficiency to what I do. Being able to electronically collect health data means that I don't have to use paper, recording survey data with a pen, and filling out numerous forms and questionnaires. I just input the data into the PDA and then synchronize it to the computer to be analyzed.

In related news the San Jose, California based Tech Museum of Innovation announced yesterday that it had named DataDyne a 2008 Tech Awards laureate for its groundbreaking work with EpiSurveyor. Congrats!

by Katherine Miller, executive director of communications, UN Foundation

After four long days in Bellagio, a couple of things are clear. Conferences are conferences -- meaning that even the world's nicest conference facility is still, well, a facility. But there is a certain magic about Bellagio and that was clear by the end of the conference. So while I'm glad to be home, it is also because I'm excited about being back and work and trying to make the ideas that came out the mHealth session something real and help deliver better health care to the developing world.

Work that is even more exciting because the group of people who attended the conference -- including representatives from Noikia, Vodafone Group, Gates Foundation, QualComm, Microsoft, and many other companies and NGOs -- all made real, measurable commitments to helping promote the issues related to mHealth both back within their own organizations and with the general public.

The "commitment wall" was amazing to watch grow. One-by-one, representatives from each of the 30 different groups represented got up and announced what they were going to do to help continue the work from Bellagio. After each sticky note went up on the board, the room applauded and each new person who got up seemed more excited than the last. The mood continued to lift as people also realized the commitments weren't just "I promise to promote mHealth" but instead were things like, "I pledge to host 4-6 meetings at my company's offices over the next 6 months and invite experts from the global health field to speak about mHealth." Smart and measurable were the overall theme of each of the 65 different ideas that went on the wall.

It will take several weeks, maybe even months, before we can discuss some of the projects that the groups committed to but they were audacious and innovative. Many harness existing technologies in entirely new ways and others may completely reinvent the mHealth field. The ideas that sprung forth are also exciting because they include large-scale partnerships that could revolutionize health care delivery in the developing world.

But the coming months will be filled with lots of information about the Bellagio projects. The Technology Partnership team is going to start a "road show" with findings and outcomes from the conference. The Rockefeller Foundation is going to publish a book from the entire four-month long eHealth conference and we'll be reporting back to Dispatch readers both here and at the UN Foundation, so stay tuned for updates on the progress the post-Bellagio team makes on mHealth.

By Katherine Miller, Executive Director of Communications, UN Foundation

So we've been trapped at the Rockefeller Center at Bellagio for three days now talking about mHealth. While it may seem like an easy job -- who doesn't want to spend a week in Italy, after all -- it isn't. Some of the most experienced global health professionals are here and everyone is trying to figure out what their role, their project, their initiative is.

But after nearly a full day of brainstorming, something very exciting happened: our groups came up with five unique yet complimentary projects to help improve health care in the developing world. While its too early to talk specifics, these projects include using hand-mobile devices to deliver health care in rural areas; control and ultimately prevent disease outbreaks; improve the quality of life for patients with chronic diseases; and could lead to greater collaboration among some of the world's biggest and best technology companies.

At least I hope so. The best part of the day was listening to the groups run through their nascent business plans and take questions from their colleagues. Not an easy thing to do but they all did it and tomorrow, on Day 4, we're going to try and figure out how to make these projects real.

The other thing happening here is a true recognition that partnerships and working together will actually help us to move mHealth into the developing world more quickly. In the beginning, the developers sat with the developers and the corporates with corporates but by day three each of the groups had representatives from each sector and they we're all excited to share expertise, advice and ideas.

A really interesting partnership that I have learned about here is the Millennium Villages Project. This project, which is active in more than 20 villages is looking at how to provide education, health care and other services from the ground up. Included in the project are Gates, Ericsson (which is providing the hardware for the villages) and numerous other groups. While still in the early stages, Earth Institute (Jefrey Sach's group) is leading it and it shows great promise as a way to make a big difference in people's lives.

What's the problem we're trying to solve seems to be the topic of the day here. It is a question almost everyone who works at a company, foundation, or association (the funders) seems to be asking (including me), and it has been hard for the NGO participants to come to any agreement on the answer.

So, thankfully, Mitul and Claire (representing the UN Foundation's Technology Partnership) worked with the facilitators to restructure our agenda, break into smaller working groups and try a project-based approach to answer that question. By focusing the conversation on how you use technology to tackle problems related to community health or what the end goal of better data collection is or how to take projects to scale, we now have four excited and re-energized groups (instead of one larger, slightly cranky one).

Each group worked together for about two hours today and will work together again tomorrow before reporting back to the larger group about the problem they're addressing, the technology solution, and then how they involve others (including the United Nations) in their work.

I think two things they heard today will also help them focus their plans. Dave Sessions of Microsoft walked everyone through the basic elements of a successful business plan (including know your audience, know what you're trying to do, know how you're unique or bring value to the solution, etc.).

Gautam Ivatury from CGAP and Jessie Moore from the GSM Association also helped the group better understand mobile banking and how the lessons learned developing a mobile banking application for the "unbanked" in the developing world might be applied to mHealth. Known as MPesa, it started with 2,000 users but now more than 2 million people use it to do things I do at an ATM, including transfer money, check balances, pay bills, etc. And all using a mobile phone and text.

How did they do it? By including partners from all the different sectors including mobile phone providers, handset operators, banks, and customers, as well as organizations outside of the banking industry including the World Bank and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One person was skeptical and asked how a commercial product, developed by a for-profit industry, could be used to create greater social change. The response: helping create a financially literate community and empowering people to control their own money would help free them from poverty. It will take time but was a strong reminder of how powerful a long-term, audacious goal can be supported by smaller but really innovative projects.

By Katherine Miller, Executive Director of Communications at the UN Foundation

The United Nations Foundation and Vodafone Group Foundation, in cooperation with the Rockefeller Foundation, is hosting a four-day conference to explore an emerging trend, mHealth, that harnesses mobile communications technologies to tackle global health care issues. Around the table are many of the world's recognized leaders in this field (along with some of the biggest funders) and if this first day of conversation is any indication of what's to come, it's going to be an interesting and informative discussion.

Represented at the meeting are public health systems, technology companies, major foundations, and dynamic NGOs with interest and/or experience in utilizing the latest technology to tackle everything from data collection to better clinical services to health education campaigns. Today was the day to discuss ways mHealth is being implemented in local communities and start exploring the potential impacts of the broader implementation of mHealth strategies.

Dr. Krishan Ganapathy, the President of the Apollo Telemedicine Foundation, opened his presentation with, "You can't have successful mHealth, without India." One-sixth of the world's population lives in India and its citizens are adopting mobile phones at an explosive rate (a 13,300 percent increase in cellular subscribers since 1998!).

The government, responding to a need to provide basic services, has created a National Telemedicine Task Force, and Dr. Ganapathy went through a variety of ways that India is utilizing existing technology to diagnose and treat patients. This country-wide experiment dedicated to empowering health officials and delivering better health care services in local communities is clearly working. If being able to clearly identify a brain aneurysm on a hand-held mobile phone is possible in rural India -- which it is -- than it is possible anywhere.

The tandem natural disasters in Myanmar and China raise again the terrible complexity of dealing with large scale catastrophes and, as the case of Myanmar so clearly demonstrates, the importance of getting relief experts on the ground early. For that reason I want to highlight a training program, run by the World Food Programme and supported by the Vodafone Group Foundation and the UN Foundation, for telecommunications "first responders" who provide emergency communications to the entire relief community during humanitarian disasters.

Twenty hand-picked information and communications team (ICT) leaders graduated last last month from the two-week program, designed to standardize best practices throughout the community. "Best practices" probably sounds to most like an empty phrase used by those far removed from the action. But, when you've just been deployed to a foreign country that has had its infrastructure destroyed by disaster and where there are few points of reference, it is an absolute necessity.

Recent trainee Torbjorn Soderberg blogs on his experiences after the jump. John Bursa, a graduate of the 2007 training program and a Regional Telecommunications Officer for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) recently recorded the podcast below in Yangon, Myanmar, on efforts to reconnect communications and communities in the aftermath of the deadly Cyclone Nagris.

From 12-23 May, Torbjorn Soderberg, a member of the World Food Programme's Fast Information Technology and Telecommunications Emergency and Support Team (FITTEST), traveled to Pisa, Italy, for an intensive two-week training session designed to to improve cooperation and standardise ICT best practices in disaster response throughout the humanitarian community. The training was organized by the World Food Programme, with support from the United Nations Foundation-Vodafone Group Foundation Technology Partnership.

[PART 1 OF 2]

By Torbjorn Soderberg

ICT Emergency Preparedness and Response Management Training, Pisa

Arriving in Pisa, Italy for the World Food Programme's training programme for IT Emergency Managers it hit me - this was not the field! Instead, the premises at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna were a pleasant garden, full of leaves and pine trees, with a stone walkway.

But I quickly realized that the training would not be a seminar where I could sit back and relax - it would be hard studying, 12 hour days, and even emergency scenarios that would have to be navigated to pass the training.

After several days of classroom exercises and some practical exercises, an emergency scenario was built up for us - the country of 'Midtonia' had just been struck by an earthquake that had killed many people, and a militia had taken advantage of the opportunity to level an attack, creating hundreds of thousands of IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons). It was time to put the skills we'd honed to practice!

The trainers played the role of Midtonia government officials and other agencies responding to the crisis. It was our task to extract as much information as possible in order to quickly provide an assessment and a budget for our ICT Emergency initiative to help the people of Midtonia. The trainers made sure our job wasn't easy. Some of the 'Midtonia' officials, for example, turned out to be semi-corrupt.

The 'real life' exercises didn't end there. The weekend came, and a 4x4 off road driving session ensued in the lush mountains of Tuscany. I have been driving offroad for years, but I enjoyed networking with my fellow classmates, many of whom come from other UN agencies or NGOs, and are likely to bump into each other in the field at a later stage.

[PART 2 OF 2]

Dodging bullets and managing stress

By Torbjorn Soderberg

Toward the end of the two week, when we began preparing for the dangers we face in the field, the training became most surreal. We once again departed from picturesque Pisa, and traveled to the Folgore campgrounds - the airborne brigade's training facility. Throughout the day we were shot at (with rubber bullets), exposed to (deactivated) mines, and even held in a mock hostage-taking situation for several hours, under the influence of both physical and psychological pressure.

I managed to avoid all of the rubber bullets in the ambush exercise, but other participants took as many as 20 hits and looked like leopards with all the paint! The hostage-taking was as realistic it could get without breaking bones or creating permanent injuries to the participants. My legs are still sore, and I can recall the smell of the hood they threw over my head.

Appropriately, our final day focused on stress management training. We went through not only how to tackle our own stress, but also how to identify and address high levels of stress of our team members. We went back through some of the previous days' exercises to make the points of the session.

I must admit, I had thought these two weeks in Pisa - far from the difficulties and dangers of the field - was going to be "just another training."; But oh was I wrong. The reality of the training combined with the great venue and trainers made it into an important and enjoyable learning experience. And I enjoyed meeting and connecting with staff from other UN agencies and groups that I am likely to be in contact with again when working in the field. It makes things a lot easier when you've already met.

Thanks to WFP, the United Nations Foundation, the Vodafone Foundation and Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa for one of the best training sessions I have ever attended.

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A former Production Engineer for Ericsson AB, based in Sweden, Soderberg joined the WFP's ICT team after being seconded to the corporate humanitarian initiative Ericsson Response, a stand by partner of WFP. As a member of the WFP's FITTEST team, he deploys at a moment's notice to establish communications systems in emergencies. He has worked on projects in Sri Lanka (following the tsunami), Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia, to mention a few.

by Dan Shepard, Information Officer, UN DPI

It was one day late but countries achieved a major breakthrough on international climate change action at 2:31pm Bali time on Saturday. It was not without high drama featuring plenty of twists and turns along the way on a day when many delegates had planned to catch flights home.

It even took the special intervention of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yodhoyono and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to exhort delegates to complete what seemed like hopelessly deadlocked talks.

Yodhoyono called on countries to complete "the most difficult mile," of an "exhaustive marathon." He told delegates that we could not allow "the human race and the planet to crumble because we cannot find the right words."

The Secretary-General, who returned to Bali after a visit to Timor-Leste, said he was reluctant to speak again to the conference but that he was disappointed in the progress that had been made. "The hour is late. It is time to make a decision." He appealed to delegates not to "risk everything you have achieved so far."

After a morning of false starts and false hopes, mis-communications and misunderstandings, countries agreed on a roadmap to launch negotiations toward a global, comprehensive agreement to address climate change. The Bali decision sets out an agenda that frames the discussions that will take place over the next two years and sets a deadline of 2009 to complete the negotiations.

After agreement was reached, the Secretary-General issued a statement strongly welcoming the outcome and saying that the Bali Roadmap achieved all three of the main objectives. "The Bali Roadmap that has been agreed is a pivotal first step toward an agreement that can address the threat of climate change, the defining challenge of our time."

But the agreement did not come painlessly. On a key provision, concerning the obligations of developing countries in the future negotiations, India, speaking for developing countries, said that alternate wording had been agreed to during the night. And then Bangladesh said that language concerning the least developed countries and small island states had been omitted. The Philippines said the phrase "on the basis of equity" had been omitted. And then the United States said it could not accept the formulation that was put forward but offered to keep working until an agreement could be found.

Then South Africa, responding to the US, said developing countries had voluntarily moved to accept new obligations for their national actions on climate change that were "measurable, reportable and verifiable," a concession that only a year ago, he said, "would have been unthinkable." South Africa asked the US to reconsider its position.

Then an avalanche of countries took the floor in support of the developing country position, many asking the US to state their reservations separately and not block a consensus.

US Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky took the floor again and said the US wanted a roadmap and wanted to be part of the roadmap.

"We are very committed to long-term greenhouse gas emission reductions," and she said the US would work with other large emitters to halve global emissions by 2050. And then she said the US "will go forward and join the consensus," which was followed by a thunderous ovation.

"It feels like we are in a movie with lots of plots," said the delegate from Egypt.

After full adoption by the plenary, countries thanked the US for joining the consensus and thanked the secretariat of the Climate Change Convention and the Indonesian government for hosting the Conference.

By Curtis Moore, Independent Consultant and a Former Counsel, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

It is Thursday of the second week of the climate negotiations in Bali, which is the traditional day to reach agreement--or not--at international global warming negotiations. But do not confuse an agreement -- if there is one, and there almost certainly will be--with a solution. A Bali roadmap may be a great accomplishment, but it is not a solution, nor will it lead to one. A solution is what is desperately needed because the peril posed by global warming is far more grave and imminent than all but a few realize.

The Earth is approaching--some believe it may have already passed--a half dozen tipping points. These are infinitesimally small changes that trigger sudden, often violent and irreversible change. Because of the extended delay from the development of science until its restatement by the IPCC, none of these considerations is before negotiators in Bali. But one government in the world has considered these facts, then adopted the most comprehensive, multifaceted and aggressive program to combat global warming in the world. That government, which will come as no surprise to many, is California.

One of the great flaws in the negotiations process is that policies are developed on science as expounded by the 2,000 participants in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It, in turn, reaches its conclusions considering only studies published in "peer reviewed" literature, meaning they have been scrutinized closely by expert scientists. This means the science elaborated by the IPCC is rock solid, but three to five years old, so when negotiators from throughout the world gather annually to craft policies, they may be utterly ignorant of the newest science, even if has profound implications. That is certainly the case in Bali.

In the last five years, thanks in part to improved super computers and new information, but also due to the inspiration of some, scientists looking for answers to troubling and unexplained environmental changes, serious shortcomings in the assumptions on which the negotiating process is based have been revealed.

First, scientists knew that a variety of pollutants excluded from the Kyoto Protocol tropospheric ozone, or smog, for example, and carbon monoxide the colorless, odorless gas emitted by every tailpipe and smokestack--cause global warming. But because they had short lifetimes--meaning they are destroyed by a variety of chemical reactions in the atmosphere or by other means--they were thought to be much less important than the so called "long lived" gases. But in fact, it is now clear the majority of today's warming is due to these short-lived pollutants.

Second, some pollutants were not then known to be significant causes of warming. Black carbon, like the soot emitted by diesels, for example was not seriously considered for inclusion in the Protocol. It now turns out, however, that it is a major cause of warming, especially where it darkens snow and ice, thus increasing the absorption of sunlight. Moreover, black carbon now appears to not only cause melting by warming areas like Greenland, Alaska and Siberia, but also by actually changing the way that snow melts, accelerating the process. This may account for the fact that while warming in the Arctic is roughly what computer models predict, melting is much, much faster, perhaps twice the speed of predictions.

Third, some pollutants and sources were excluded from coverage because, in theory, they are subject to other international agreements, but also because the true magnitude of their contribution to global warming was not accurately known. Ships, for example, are excluded. But recent estimates place are that they account not for a small amount of pollution, but an immense quantity: between 15 and 30 percent of global emissions of oxides of nitrogen, a pollutant that helps form smog, for example. Indeed emissions from ships are roughly equal to those of the continent of either Europe or North America. Aircraft are also excluded, even though they injects immense amounts of carbon where it can be most dangerous, at high altitudes and over the Arctic.

Negotiators also left chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the industrial chemicals like DuPont's Freons that destroy stratospheric ozone, out of global warming coverage, supposedly because they were subject to another international regime, the Montreal Protocol to Protect the Ozone Layer. Chemicals subject to Montreal are regulated, however, solely to address their impacts on stratospheric ozone. As a result, the chemical–again, one made by DuPont–now used as a chilling agent in the air conditioners of cars and trucks was allowed on the market as a CFC replacement even though it was known at the time to be a powerful cause of global warming.

Perhaps worst of all, the true atmospheric lifetime of the chemical that will be the single largest contributor to global warming, carbon dioxide--created when carbon-rich fuels like coal, oil and wood are burned--was greatly underestimated. Although there was some uncertainty as to CO2's lifetime, there was a consensus that one century was about right. Instead, it is now known that after even 1,000 years, one third of CO2 being emitted now will still be in the system.

The upshot of this miscalculation of CO2's lifetime is that even if emissions were to cease this instant, it would be over a century before the full cooling benefit would be realized. These are grim realities, but as is often the case, there are solutions, if only policy-makers will address them.

Because the lifetimes of the short-lived pollutants range from a few days to weeks to a few years, reducing them can produce near-term cooling. HFC-134a, the DuPont chemical used in car air conditioners, has 3,400 times the warming power of CO2 on a molecule-to-molecule basis, and a lifetime of about 12 to 15 years. Thus, if the entire world were to ban use of the chemical in automotive air conditioners, as Europe is doing starting in 2011, there would be cooling benefit before children born today graduated from high school.

For the other short-lived pollutants that cause global warming, the health payback would be immense. Black carbon kills and ozone both kills and causes asthma. The global annual total surely is in the hundreds of thousands of deaths and tens of millions of illnesses. Reduce them, and needless sickness and death would be avoided--and reduce them we must.

One Government realizes this: California.

It was in California that the link between cars and smog was first established, where the first pollution control technologies were mandated and the first statewide regulatory program for air pollution was installed. It was California that gave birth to solar photovoltaic cells to generate electricity from sunlight, where turbines to generate electricity were installed in huge numbers and where the most aggressive and effective energy conservation requirements in the world were developed.

After reviewing new science and examining what regulations and new technologies could achieve, the California legislature adopted not one law, but an entire suite. They deal with the near, mid and long term; cover transportation, electricity generation, and industrial processes as well as residential and commercial activities. They require reductions right away -- "early actions," they're called–and other cuts that must be the "maximum technologically feasible, cost effective" reductions.

They encourage the deployment of solar and wind power, and the adoption of new, tougher conservation requirements. They require reductions in not only carbon dioxide and the other pollutants covered by international global warming law, but also black carbon, ozone and its precursors and the industrial chemicals like DuPont's 134a.

There are some gaps in the California Suite, but the legislature is working to close them, so that when they are finished the final product will be a solution -- not just agreement. To see the California Suite become the symphony played worldwide would be, pardon the pun, sweet music indeed.

By Curtis Moore, Independent Consultant and a Former Counsel, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

Negotiators in Bali are in theory supposed to produce a "roadmap" to future agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. What might emerge instead, however, is a roadmap to a confrontation of historic proportions, a rematch between George Bush -- or, at least, his surrogates -- and his opponent in the 2000 campaign for the Presidency, former Vice President Al Gore.

The two could not be further apart on an issue than they are on global warming. Bush is casual and sanguine, Gore urgent and demanding. Bush’s emissaries to Bali, to their credit from their perspective, have thus far succeeded beyond all expectations in obstructing and slowing negotiations. The result has been, in the words of one journal that specializes in covering the proceedings, a "shift" in tone, with parties "already casting blame for the apparent failure of talks" in one arena.

Ten years ago negotiations reach a similar stage in Kyoto, when they seemed hopelessly bogged down. Then Gore, whose signature issues even then were the threats of global warming and stratospheric ozone depletion, arrived unexpectedly on a White House jet. In a matter of about 13 hours he forged the consensus that became the Kyoto Protocol.

For the past several days Gore has been in Oslo, Norway to accept the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work to raise public concern over global warming. By all accounts his talks have been stemwinders, with an "almost historic aura," according to one observer.

Thursday, Gore arrives in Bali where the situation today is much the same as 10 years ago in Kyoto. But on this occasion, those who have created the logjam are representatives of the United States.

Say what you like about the Bush's appointees, there can be no doubt that some of them -- at least judging from their work in Bali -- are geniuses at negotiation. Bush's second term as President expires in January, 2009, so in theory, decisions about international policy on global warming after that should be the responsibility of the person elected President in November, 2008. But Bush appointees in Bali have maneuvered themselves into a position that could freeze the current status quo, or something close to it, until as late as 2012.

So far, U.S. negotiators have:

-- Refused to allow any reference to scientific evidence that rich nations should cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, saying that would "prejudge" the outcome of negotiations.

-- Demanded striking draft language in the draft calling for "sufficient, predictable, additional and sustainable financial resources" to help poor nations adapt to climate change, saying it is vague.

-- Opposed asking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the scientific body that asses global warming sciences and makes recommendations for action, for an updated report prior to the 2009 climate meeting. James L. Connaughton, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality and is in Bali, said it was too much, "a huge amount of work for the IPCC."

-- Rejected requests by developing nations such as China and India for industrialized countries to provide more money to ease the transfer of clean energy technology overseas and by poor nations to help them slow deforestation. American representatives said that while the United States endorses the goals in principle, it opposes specifying how much money developed countries should contribute.

Some of these are deal killers. Compelled in part by the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, passed in 1997 95-0 by the Senate demanding reductions by developing nations as a prerequisite to American participation in a global warming agreement, Bush's negotiators have insisted on "measurable and reportable national mitigation actions" by the poorer countries. But for China, the price of agreeing to this is technology transfer. Thus, by refusing to agree to technology transfer, U.S. negotiators guarantee China will reject America's demands for emission reductions by developing nations. That in turn, triggers the terms of the Byrd-Hagel resolution, allowing the White House to blame, at least in part, a Democrat, Sen. Robert C. Byrd.

Similarly, China refuses to agree to curb its emissions unless developed nations will commit to specific numeric reductions, which the U.S. rejects.

Thus, when Gore steps off the plane, he will arrive at a situation remarkably similar to that in Kyoto ten years ago. But there is one critical difference.

Then, the American public seemed barely aware of global warming, much less concerned. Now, two-thirds of Americans want action on global warming, and they want it now.

Then, there had not been a Hurricane Katrina, films of polar bears adrift on ice floes, record-setting heat waves throughout not merely the United States, but the entire world.

In Oslo, Gore could hardly have been more passionate. Saying that "our world is spinning out of kilter" and that "the very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed," he warned that "we, the human
species, are confronting a planetary emergency -- a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here." But, he added, "there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst -- not all -- of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly."

Surely, few would have predicted a year ago–even a few months ago -- that Bali might be where George Bush and Al Gore -- or at the least, their respective values -- would once again confront each other. And perhaps that confrontation will never transpire. But if it does, its outcome would determine exactly what sort of roadmap to the future is produced.

John Kerry, Senator from Massachusetts in the United States, came to Bali today representing Congressional leaders. Still wearing a stiffly pressed suit while everyone else in Bali is dressed more casually, the Senator called for the Bali conference to result in a "strong mandate based on science."

"We believe that there is a significant transformational effort now taking place in the US. The US is going to lead." New legislation under consideration in the Senate, he says, would implement a cap and trade system that would contribute to greenhouse gas emissions of 65-70 per cent by 2020.

Kerry was adamant that developing countries fully participate in any new process on climate change, adding that the lack of an adequate process to bring in developing countries doomed the chances of joining the Kyoto Protocol. "This has to be achieved globally." Rich countries have to help, through technology transfer and technical assistance, but developing countries have to take on best practices and avoid the mistakes we made since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution."

Getting to yes on a roadmap in Bali is proving to be no easy task. Every discussion and every issue is part of a bigger chess match, and few countries appear willing to give much ground at this point. Every country wants its key concerns recognized, and there are a great many such concerns.

Disagreements between rich and poor countries have been particularly pronounced according to Yvo de Boer who heads the UN's Climate Change Convention. Developing countries have raised concerns that that past commitments, such as promises to provide assistance with new technologies and on adaptation have not been met.

"There's this quite strong feeling that a number of commitments in those areas, commitments from the past, have not been met and will be conveniently forgotten when we switch to a new agenda item called the future."

"Our hope is that the meeting here will agree that more developing countries should be provided with the resources to really be able to assess properly how they are likely to be affected by the impacts of climate change."