As world leaders prepare for climate talks in Copenhagen next month, developing nations have tabled a controversial proposal which would effectively end patent protection for clean technologies.

China and India have floated the idea of making new green technology subject to 'compulsory licensing', which critics say amounts to waiving intellectual property rights.

The idea of adapting or liberalising patent rules for crucial new inventions which can help reduce carbon emissions is not new, but the EU and US are unhappy with compulsory licensing, fearing it would dramatically reduce the incentive for businesses to innovate and stifle green job creation.

As the UN Copenhagen climate change summit next month threatens increasingly to be a flop, the Swedish prime minister has begun laying the blame for failure at Washington's doorstep.

In Saturday's (21 November) edition of centre-right Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, premier Frederick Reinfeldt defended his work on a global climate pact while at the helm of Europe and expressed his disappointment in the new American administration.

He described a "pronounced difficulty from several sides" but then went on to salute all major global blocs other than the US and Canada.

After bountifully praising the offers on the table from Australia, Japan, South Korea, Russia, China, Indonesia and Brazil and developing nations in general, Mr Reinfeld bluntly stated that the US position is "not enough."

The UN's top climate official has called on the European Union to clarify its greenhouse-gas emissions-reduction targets and financial offer to help developing countries deal with climate change.

Speaking in Brussels, Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said that Europe needed to provide clarity on a pledge to cut emissions by 30% by 2020, a target that EU leaders have promised to adopt if they see similar commitments from other countries.

De Boer also singled out financial support to developing countries, describing clarity on finance as "a lynchpin of the Copenhagen agreement".

Albert Prinz of Thurn and Taxis, the German billionaire known for his car racing exploits, wants to build the world's largest solar farm in Bavaria. The 115 million euro project could generate handsome earnings in green electricity sales for the family. First, though, they have to overcome local resistance.

One of Germany's wealthiest families, known from the 16th to the 18th century for delivering mail, is trying its hand at delivering something new: power.

The House of Thurn and Taxis, headed by 26-year old Albert Prinz of Thurn and Taxis, wants to build the world's largest solar energy park using farmland in the southern German state of Bavaria, according to the Financial Times Deutschland. The family plans to invest €115 million ($171 million) to build solar panels across 1.9 million square meters (20.5 million square feet) of land, equal to 280 soccer fields, in the town of Harthof near Straubing. The farm would provide up to 65 megawatts of peak power, making it the world's largest.

"Even in the Sahara, there are no areas with topography as capable as here," says Stefan Stehl, a representative for the family told the FT Deutschland.

Many in Germany associate McDonald's with obesity and litter. But the company is now trying to change its image -- by changing its colors. The burger joint has swapped out red for green in an effort to demonstrate its commitment to the environment.

No matter what you think of McDonald's, the company's shrill colors are certainly not easily forgotten. A bright, mustard-colored M on a ketchup-hued background, the signs are almost blinding in their gaudiness.

In Germany, though, the company's colors are changing. While the iconic golden arches will keep their color, they will now be on a green background instead of the bright red one. The reason? McDonald's Germany wants to reposition the restaurant as a bastion of environmental friendliness. Ronald McDonald is becoming a tree hugger.

Climate change sceptics and fossil fuel companies that have lobbied against action on greenhouse gas emissions have squandered the world's chance to avoid dangerous global warming, a key adviser to the government has said.

Professor Bob Watson, chief scientist at the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs, said a decade of inaction on climate change meant it was now virtually impossible to limit global temperature rise to 2C. He said the delay meant the world would now do well to stabilise warming between 3C and 4C.

His comments come ahead of key UN negotiations on a new global climate treaty in Copenhagen next month that the UK government insists should still aim for a 2C goal, despite doubts over whether a meaningful deal can be sealed.

At a recent solar energy conference in Anaheim, economic development officials from Ohio talked up a state that seemed far removed from the solar panels and high-tech devices that dominated the convention floor. Ohio, long known for its smokestack auto plants and metal-bending factories, would be an ideal place for green technology companies to set up shop, they said. "People don't traditionally think of Ohio when they think of solar," said Lisa Patt-McDaniel, director of Ohio's economic development agency. But in fact, the Rust Belt goes well with the Green Belt, she said.

In years past, Sunbelt governors recruited Midwestern businesses to set up shop in their states, dangling tax breaks and the lure of a union-free workforce. Now the tables have turned as solar start-ups, wind turbine companies and electric carmakers from California and the Southwest migrate to the nation's industrial heartland. They're looking to tap its manufacturing might and legions of skilled workers, hit hard by the near-collapse of the United States auto industry and eager for work.

For all of green tech's futuristic sheen, solar power plants and wind farms are made of much of the same stuff as automobiles: machine-stamped steel, glass and gearboxes. That has renewable energy companies hitting the highway for Detroit and Northeastern industrial states, driven in part by the federal stimulus package's incentives and buy-American mandates.

Irvine's Fisker Automotive, for instance, will manufacture its next plug-in electric hybrid car at a defunct General Motors assembly plant in Wilmington, Del. And Stirling Energy Systems, which is building two massive solar power plants in Southern California, has signed deals with two automotive companies to make components for its giant solar dishes.

AP Arkansas farmers say that a record amount of rainfall and flooding this year has put a strain on their crops and their infrastructure.

Farmers and farming advocacy groups on Monday detailed the problems that the year's weather have caused during a U.S. Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry hearing. The hearing, held at the Clinton presidential library and hosted by the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, was the first held in Arkansas since Sen. Blanche Lincoln took over as committee chairman earlier this year.

Lincoln has introduced legislation along with U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., that would provide an estimated $1.3 billion in direct payment assistance to producers in counties declared primary disaster areas by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

(AFP) Flooding in the world's major port cities caused by melting icecaps could cause up to 28 trillion dollars (18 trillion euros) in damage in 2050, environmental group WWF said in a report Monday.

"If the temperature rises between 0.5 and 2 degrees (Celsius) between now and 2050, it's possible that the sea level would progress by half a metre (nearly two feet) bringing major financial damage," Ulrike Saul, in charge of climate and energy for WWF Switzerland, told AFP. Such a rise in the sea level would cause up to 28 trillion dollars in damage in the world's 136 biggest port cities, according to the study in which German insurance company Allianz took part.

Saul warned: "If the current climate protection policies do not change, it is more probable that we will register a rise of 2 degrees in 2050." The northeast coast of the United States could see a rise in sea levels 15 centimetres higher than the world average, the study said.

A report on carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide fluxes in the European Union shows that greenhouse gases produced by agriculture are in excess of ecosystem absorption capacity. Le Figaro highlights the inherent dangers of intensive agriculture.

With two weeks to run to the Copenhagen Summit on climate change (COP 15), which will be attended by 64 heads of state, a new report has presented detailed estimates of carbon fluxes in the European Union (Nature Geoscience, 22 November 2009). The figures included in the report are not limited to greenhouse gas emissions caused by industry, transport, and residential dwellings, but also cover exchanges of carbon between land, vegetation and the atmosphere, which, on land, mainly result from photosynthesis and respiration. These natural fluxes are important because forests, grasslands and peat bogs have the capacity--just as oceans do--to act as sinks for CO2 which accumulates in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming.

Whereas exchanges in most parts of the world result in the sequestration of a proportion of anthropogenic CO2, the report shows that in Europe, emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4)--two powerful greenhouse gases--produced by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock exceed the CO2 sink capacity of forests and grasslands in the region. Nitrous oxide is produced by the interaction of chemical fertilizers and bacteria, while methane is generated by the digestive systems and excrement of livestock. The prevalence of these gases has meant that the EU's terrestrial ecosystems now produce more CO2 than they are able to absorb. In fact, they add 3% of "carbon dioxide equivalent" to emissions caused by fossil fuels-- and there is hardly any improvement in this balance elsewhere on the continent in countries like Turkey, Ukraine and Belarus.