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While it lasted, the global-warming debate was an entertaining free-for-all. Then this month the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out with its latest report. It was if someone had pounded a gavel. No more discussion, please. This case is closed.

Those of you still skeptical that human activity is the prime cause of global warming - well, we've put up with your annoying behavior long enough. Go to your room. Be quiet. What's the matter with you anyway?

People began comparing misguided skeptics to Holocaust deniers. Al Gore was a bit less direct. His choice of words: "global warming deniers."

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WASHINGTON — Five Western governors agreed Monday on a plan to cut their states' emissions of gases linked to global warming and to establish a regional carbon trading system, though they stopped short of saying how drastically they will seek to reduce greenhouse gases.

The governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington said that within six months they will set a regional target for lower emissions. A year after that, they pledged, they will devise a regional cap-and-trade system, which would let companies that can't meet their emission reduction targets buy credits from those that reduce emissions more than required.

"In the absence of meaningful federal action, it is up to the states to take action to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the country," said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano. "Western states are being particularly hard hit by the effects of climate change."

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LONDON (Reuters) - Wind is filling the sails of the alternative energy industry after repeated past false starts, bringing big business and the green movement into an uneasy partnership -- as investors smell money.

Fears of hype and even a dotcom-style bubble cannot cloud their view that renewable energy's day may have come, as the world's most pressing concerns combine: climate change, breakneck economic growth in China and energy security.

In the past -- the 1970s for example -- it was high oil prices that spurred the hunt for alternatives like wind and solar, usually the domain of academic professors, environmentalists and rural communes.

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When George W. Bush, The Washington Post and the insurance giant Lloyd?s of London agree on something, it?s obvious a new wind is blowing. The climate change debate is here to stay, and as America warms to the idea of environmental conservation on a grander scale, it?s vital that conservatives change the debate before government regulation expands yet again and personal freedom is pushed closer toward extinction.

The fact is, I?m a conservative and a conservationist ? and that?s OK.

For the past 20 years, I have seen the ever-so-gradual effects of rising sea levels at our farm on the South Carolina coast. I?ve had to watch once-thriving pine trees die in that fragile zone between uplands and salt marshes. I know the climate change debate isn?t over, but I believe human activity is having a measurable effect on the environment.

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Call it greenmail for a post-Kyoto world. The private-equity firms that just agreed to buy Texas utility TXU have scored something of a PR coup by getting Environmental Defense and other climate-change activists to fall in line with their purchase plans before the deal was announced. The question is what price shareholders are paying for this act of political correctness.

In the old days, a greenmail artist like Carl Icahn would buy up a tranch of some company's stock and threaten to buy the rest unless the target paid him to go away. But 21st-century greenmail works a little differently. Judging by media accounts, the price of Environmental Defense's support was an announcement that the new owners would build only three of the 11 coal-fired power plants that TXU has had on the drawing board.

Last year, Environmental Defense had launched a "Stop TXU" campaign to oppose the new plants. But yesterday it declared "victory" and explained that its agreement had been sought by emissaries of the private-equity investors in return for mothballing the eight coal plants and an agreement to sign on to mandatory emissions caps and an overall reduction in TXU's CO2 emissions by 2020.

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After years of watching curiously as Al Gore seemed to shout tirelessly into the wind, trying to convince the world of the existence of global warming one wonkish slide show at a time, many people now believe he has been right all along."I take no joy in that part of it," the former vice president said Friday from Los Angeles. "I wish I hadn't been right, believe me. So on one level, if you work hard on an issue, you get some feeling of having worked hard to put the evidence together if it turn...

Gore's three-decade crusade is receiving international attention this weekend as An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary in which his global-warming slide show is the focus, is nominated for two Oscars, including best documentary feature."I think the Oscar nomination was great because for one thing, it helps bring more attention to the message contained in the movie. That is my principal focus, delivering this message to as many people as quickly as possible," said Gore, noting his pleasure in th...

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Public policy is all about trade-offs. Economists understand this better than politicians because voters want to have their cake and eat it too, and politicians think whatever is popular must also be true.

Economists understand that if we put a chicken in every pot, it might cost us an aircraft carrier or a hospital. We can build a hospital, but it might come at the expense of a little patch of forest. We can protect a wetland, but that will make a new school more expensive.

You get it already. But in the history of trade-offs, never has there been a better one than trading a tiny amount of global warming for a massive amount of global prosperity. Earth got about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the 20th century while it increased its GDP by 1,800 percent, by one estimate. How much of that 0.7 degrees can be laid at the feet of that 1,800 percent is unknowable, but let's stipulate that all of the warming was the result of our prosperity and that this warming is in fact indisputably bad (which is hardly obvious).

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It's a question some environmentalists are asking since an organization contracted to help recycle trash and pick up litter was slashed from this year's county budget.

Bridging the Gap, a not-for-profit organization responsible for managing recycling programs in Lake Lotawana and Grain Valley, was cut $90,000. Its affiliate, Keep Kansas City Beautiful, a litter pick-up program, was cut $50,000.

"They eliminated funding for environmental issues, or it appears that they have," said Jamie Frazier, executive director of Bridging the Gap. "I hope they take another look at how past initiatives have impacted the environment and their bottom line."

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The latest giveaway will take place in Australia, where the gaming console launches March 23. The first 20,000 buyers will receive a copy of the James Bond movie "Casino Royale." Free downloads of the PS3 game "Gran Turismo" — out since December for U.S. and Japanese PS3 owners — also will be offered in Australia. A PlayStation 3 model with a 60-gigabyte hard drive costs 999.95 Australian dollars ($790). The console costs $600 in the U.S., where it's been on sale since November.

"They have to sweeten the deal a little bit," said Hiroshi Kamide, director of research and game expert at KBC Securities Japan in Tokyo. "The problem with the product so far is that no one has fully understood why it's so expensive."

In the U.S., Sony also offered the movie "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" as a freebie. (The movies are produced by Sony's movie studio, and they're given away as Blu-ray high-definition discs, which the game console can play.)

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TOKYO (AP) ? Sony is handing out freebies to buyers of its PlayStation 3 as its hefty price appears to be scaring away shoppers. The latest giveaway will take place in Australia, where the gaming console launches March 23. The first 20,000 buyers will receive a copy of the James Bond movie "Casino Royale."

Free downloads of the PS3 game "Gran Turismo" ? out since December for U.S. and Japanese PS3 owners ? also will be offered in Australia.

A PlayStation 3 model with a 60-gigabyte hard drive costs 999.95 Australian dollars ($790). The console costs $600 in the U.S., where it's been on sale since November.

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TOKYO - Sony is giving away freebies to woo buyers to the new PlayStation 3 video game machine whose hefty price appears to be scaring away shoppers.

The latest giveaway from the Japanese electronics and entertainment company is being promised for the Australia launch for the PlayStation 3 set for March 23 - a Blu-ray Disc version of the Sony Pictures James Bond movie "Casino Royale," for the first 20,000 Australian PS3 buyers.

The PlayStation 3 costs a hefty 999.95 Australian dollars, ($790), for the 60 gigabyte hard drive version.

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TOKYO (AP) ? Sony is handing out freebies to buyers of its PlayStation 3 as its hefty price appears to be scaring away shoppers.

The latest giveaway will take place in Australia, where the gaming console launches March 23. The first 20,000 buyers will receive a copy of the James Bond movie ?Casino Royale.?

Free downloads of the PS3 game ?Gran Turismo? ? out since December for U.S. and Japanese PS3 owners ? also will be offered in Australia.

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TOKYO (AP) - Sony is handing out freebies to buyers of its PlayStation 3 as its hefty price appears to be scaring away shoppers.

The latest giveaway will take place in Australia, where the gaming console launches March 23. The first 20,000 buyers will receive a copy of the James Bond movie ``Casino Royale.''

Free downloads of the PS3 game ``Gran Turismo'' -- out since December for U.S. and Japanese PS3 owners -- also will be offered in Australia.

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Sony is handing out freebies to buyers of its PlayStation 3 as its hefty price appears to be scaring away shoppers.

The latest giveaway will take place in Australia, where the gaming console launches March 23. The first 20,000 buyers will receive a copy of the James Bond movie "Casino Royale."

Free downloads of the PS3 game "Gran Turismo" out since December for U.S. and Japanese PS3 owners also will be offered in Australia.

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TOKYO ? Sony is giving away freebies to woo buyers to the new PlayStation 3 video game machine whose hefty price appears to be scaring away shoppers.

The latest giveaway from the Japanese electronics and entertainment company is being promised for the Australia launch for the PlayStation 3 set for March 23 ? a Blu-ray Disc version of the Sony Pictures James Bond movie "Casino Royale," for the first 20,000 Australian PS3 buyers.

The PlayStation 3 costs a hefty 999.95 Australian dollars, ($790), for the 60 gigabyte hard drive version.

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MUMBAI, India ? Until recently, it looked like the depleted ozone layer protecting the earth from harmful solar rays was on its way to being healed.

But thanks in part to an explosion of demand for air-conditioners in hot places like India and southern China ? mostly relying on refrigerants already banned in Europe and in the process of being phased out in the United States ? the ozone layer is proving very hard to repair.

Four months ago, scientists discovered that the ?hole? created by the world?s use of ozone-depleting gases ? in aerosol spray cans, aging refrigerators and old air-conditioners ? had expanded again, stretching once more to the record size of 2001.

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