The United Nations wants a global climate change agreement in place by December. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke with the US deputy climate change envoy Jonathan Pershing about the difficulties of reaching such a deal. The US and China, he claims, are making progress.

SPIEGEL: The US and China are responsible for 40 percent of global CO2 emissions. Should the two countries find a solution to global warming between themselves?

 With the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen rapidly approaching, the world is trying to agree on what to do about climate change. Jonathan Pershing: My impression from our talks in Beijing is that China does not want to reduce the global climate talks to US-Chinese talks, to a kind of G-2. Like us, they want this to be part of the UN process. There are tasks we can pursue bilaterally, but ultimately the whole world has to agree on the framework to combat climate change.

SPIEGEL: Did the talks in Beijing produce any tangible outcome?

Pershing: My impression is that China and the US are finding common ground. We didn't come home with a signed agreement but we understand much better what is important for the Chinese and why. For example, access to green technology is very important for China. Their concern is that the most energy-efficient technologies are still too expensive -- that's a concern we fully share. So we can work together to reduce costs associated with employing these new technologies. In particular, we will work together on carbon capture and storage so that CO2 isn't emitted into the atmosphere but stored in the ground. The US and China now share a great interest in energy efficiency and particularly in car efficiency. That's where we ican greatly ncrease our cooperation.

Space is about to get a bit crowded.

Seven shuttle astronauts will blast off from Florida on Saturday to join up with six colleagues already on the International Space Station (ISS).

The orbiting platform has never before had so many individuals moving around it at the same time.

The Endeavour ship is scheduled to lift off at 0717 local time (1117 GMT).

The flight-time to the ISS is just three days.

Now, with the focus in Washington on clean power, some dam agencies are starting to go green, embracing wind power and energy conservation. The most aggressive is the Bonneville Power Administration, whose power lines carry much of the electricity in the Pacific Northwest. The agency also provides a third of the region's power supply, drawn mostly from generators inside big dams.

The amount of wind power on the Bonneville transmission system quadrupled in the last three years and is expected to double again in another two. The turbines are making an electricity system with low carbon emissions even greener -- already, in Seattle, more than 90 percent of the power comes from renewable sources...

Environmental groups contend that the Bonneville Power Administration's shift to wind turbines buttresses their case for tearing down dams in the agency's territory, particularly four along the lower Snake River in Washington State that helped decimate one of North America's great runs of wild salmon.

Bonneville wants to keep all the dams, arguing that they not only provide cheap power but they also make an ideal complement to large-scale installation of wind power. When the wind slows and power production drops, the agency argues, it can compensate quickly by telling the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, which operate the dams, to release more water from reservoirs to turn the huge generators. When the wind picks up, dam operations can be slowed.

The dams help alleviate a need for natural-gas-fired power plants, which are used in other regions as a backup power source when the wind stops blowing, but which release carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming.

John Hildebrand, an animated 82-year-old wheat farmer, has allowed a Spanish developer, Iberdrola, to put wind turbines on his land in Wasco, not far from the Columbia River. Power from his turbines feeds into the Bonneville system.

He and his brother Gordon sat in the front row when Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Bonneville Dam in 1937, before the region even had public power -- so they have seen the future of energy, twice.

"All we had is sky out there," John Hildebrand said, looking out toward the tall structures twirling high above his rolling land. "Now I've got turbines."