Americans must borrow forty cents out of every dollar they spend and the Euro is in crisis. But you wouldn’t know it from the United Nations-sponsored World Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa. Delegates from 194 countries are meeting to discuss, again, combating climate change by reduction of carbon emissions, which some say cause global warming.

One topic is extending the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set limits on 37 industrialized countries’ emissions of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide. It expires in 2012.