Going green for security's sake

The more than 10,000 delegates currently meeting at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan have a difficult task ahead of them: Outlining the successor to the Kyoto Protocol to be agreed upon in 2009.

At the crux of the matter is the transatlantic split between the United States, which did not sign the original agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and the EU, which sees itself as the world's green vanguard.

The stereotypical understanding of the divide ...