In the early hours of Saturday morning, the nations of the world rediscovered consensus on addressing global warming pollution at the international climate convention in Cancun, Mexico. The top challenge for negotiators has been to figure out a successor framework to the Kyoto Protocol, which failed to set limits on the pollution of the United States (because the Senate refused to ratify the treaty) and nations like China and India (as developing countries, they are exempt from Kyoto‘s binding targets). As a result, the Kyoto Protocol now restricts less than 30 percent of global warming pollution. In Copenhagen, nearly all the nations tried to forge a new framework for cleaning their economies, but w ere not able to achieve global consensus because of the objections of five countries. As hosts of the 2010 conference, the Mexican government had to not only bring parties together to come to agreement on policy, but also to restore trust in global governance — the concept that the world’s nations can work together as one on the problems that face all of humanity. With a roar of applause overwhelming Bolivia’s sole dissenting voice, they strongly endorsed the Cancun Agreements, a series of building blocks that will allow the United States and China — the world’s top economies and top polluters — to join the fight against global warming.

CLIMATE DESTRUCTION: A new report from humanitarian organization Dara projects that there will be a million climate deaths per year by 2030, nearly all of them in the least developed nations. The deaths are preventable if a sufficient international adaptation effort is funded. The destruction from a polluted climate is already here, as can be seen from the global events during the two weeks of the Cancun conference. High-temperature records were broken in California, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada and Arizona; heavy rainfall set “records across the Pacific Northwest,” and Arctic winds “brought intense cold to the Midwest and eastern United States.” The worst wildfires in Israel’s history, fueled by record warmth and drought, “have destroyed large sections of Israel’s northern area” and killed 41 people. Floods hit Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia after “three weeks of torrential rains,” forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people. Nearly 30 people froze to death in Poland, and thirty more were killed in the rest of Europe. “The death toll from the incessant rains in Venezuela has risen to 34,” with “more than 70,000 people who have been affected” by the catastrophic floods. In India, “more than 150 people have died following heavy rains in the coastal districts of Tamil Nadu over the past few days.” Devastating flooding in Colombia that “left at least 176 people dead and 225 injured, as well as 1.5 million people homeless nationwide” forced Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, to cancel his scheduled trip to the talks. A “massive wildfire in Tibet‘s Sichuan province killed 22 people.” In a demonstration of solidarity in the climate crisis, Palestinian firefighters were some of the first to help Israel fight the unprecedented wildfires in the divided nation. Speaking at the funeral of a wildfire victim, Israeli President Shimon Peres said the wildfire “disaster taught us that all of us, Jews, Arabs, Druze, and other peoples, share the same fate.”

CLIMATE AGREEMENTS: The Cancun Agreements are the first real step toward building an international system that involves all global warming pollution — not just that produced by the rich nations governed by the Kyoto Protocol. One agreement allows for the future development of the Kyoto Protocol system. The other establishes an international Green Climate Fund, and enacts mechanisms to fight deforestation and deploy clean technology in the developing world. The agreements & quot;established a temperature target for mitigation, a system of MRV [measurement, reporting, and verification], an agreement on forestry and land use, technology transfer, adaptation, and the architecture for a climate fund that apply to all parties and not just developed countries,” summarizes Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Andrew Light. “A lot is left unanswered, most critically the gap between the national pledges for reductions in carbon pollution under the Copenhagen Accord and the now-confirmed 2ºC target in the Cancun Agreements.” The agreements require the parties to take up this issue at their next meeting in Durban, South Africa in 2011. “Looking forward, countries now have to deliver on the commitments to the systems they’ve designed,” writes Center for American Progress expert Richard Caperton. “With the structure of a climate fund decided, the next step is figuring out how the fund will operate, and where its money will come from. With the rules for monitoring carbon emissions reductions in place, the next step is to move forward with deciding how much emissions need to be reduced to make the world safe for future generations.”

CLIMATE EXTREMISTS: Bolivian President Evo Morales used the conference as a stage to solidify his position with the populist left in Latin America. On Thursday, Morales came to Cancun and rallied with representatives of the world’s indigenous peoples and the peasant movement Via Campesina, a global coalition representing 150 million small farmers, who fear the United Nations’ market-based approach to solving global warming. Bolivia’s posturing against international consensus included a passionate defense of small island states and African nations, who are most threatened by global warming — even though those nations unanimously supp orted the Cancun Agreements. Bolivia’s position that no progress is better than insufficient progress rang false to those who had the most at stake. Back in the United States, oil-funded conservatives attacked the climate negotiations, using similarly extreme arguments to appeal to the right. “I know for a fact that global warming, climate change, whatever term they attach to it,” declaimed Rush Limbaugh, “is nothing more than an attempt to create socialist nations as far around the world as they can and to separate us from our money.” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) led a group of Republican senators attacking the scientific basis for protecting the most vulnerable people in the world from global warming. Fox News, owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch and Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, ran multiple segments arguing the United Nations wants to destroy free-market capitalism in the name of climate change. The Koch Industries tea-party group Americans For Prosperity claimed climate scientists “never met a regulation on mankind they didn’t like.”