Holiday Briefing

COPENHAGEN BOUND: President Obama will attend the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen next month, a senior White House official announced Wednesday, offering new glimmers of hope that the heavily hyped summit might actually be productive. Obama won't be going empty-handed either: He's expected to announce a new commitment to slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, keeping with targets in the House climate bill that passed in June. The trip is not a huge inconvenience for Obama — who will address negotiators in Copenhagen on Dec. 9 — since he's already traveling to nearby Sweden that week to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize. He's already been to Copenhagen once this year, too, during his failed bid to win the 2016 Olympics for his hometown of Chicago. Still, his presence this time in Denmark's capital will likely be momentous, as world leaders have repeatedly pointed to the United States, and Obama specifically, as a key to making the treaty talks work. Obama recently acknowledged that the summit is unlikely to immediately produce a binding treaty, partly since the U.S. Senate's version of the climate bill has stalled, but his tone has grown more optimistic since meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao on his recent Asia trip. Hu has yet to say whether he'll attend the talks, but Obama will be joined by at least 60 fellow heads of state, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. (Sources: Los Angeles Times, BBC News; read more about Obama's trip here on MNN.)

 

THANKSGIVING IN SPACE: Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis may not be on the planet for Thanksgiving, but they'll still get to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal of sorts— aka "Flight Day 11 Meal C." The crew departs the International Space Station today for the two-day flight back to Earth, marking the second straight year and seventh time overall that a shuttle crew has spent Thanksgiving in space. Thursday's Meal C doesn't include any turkey, but there will be beef brisket, vegetarian chili, seafood gumbo and lasagna. "It could be beef brisket, it could be tofu, it doesn't matter to me," said shuttle skipper Charles Hobaugh before Atlantis launched Nov. 16. "We're going to enjoy ourselves no matter what we do." Maybe not quite as much as the five people who will remain at the space station, however. They'll be eating from a multinational menu that includes turkey, candied yams, cornbread stuffing and cranberry-apple dessert. (Source: USA Today)

 

PARDON POLITICS (updated): "Courage" the turkey was welcomed into the Rose Garden Wednesday for the 20th annual Thanksgiving presidential turkey pardon. But while Courage and his stand-in, Carolina, are having a better week than millions of other U.S. turkeys, animal-rights advocates still have a bone to pick with Obama. That's because the birds' next stop is Disneyland, where they'll serve as "honorary grand marshals" in the theme park's Thanksgiving Day parade, and then live out their days at its Big Thunder Ranch. It's a relatively new twist that President George W. Bush tacked onto his father's tradition in 2005, but several pardoned turkeys have died within a year of arriving at Disneyland, leading groups such as Farm Sanctuary and PETA to demand that Obama send his birds to a nearby farm instead. He didn't, but if it's any consolation, Courage and Carolina listened to a constant loop of Disney music on the Goldsboro, N.C., farm where they were raised, in an effort to acclimate them to the adventure ahead. Obama, for his part, seemed amused but not exactly giddy about the event's pomp and poultry. "There are certain days that remind me why I ran for office," he said before granting the pardon, "and then there are days like this, when I pardon a turkey and send it to Disneyland." Click here to watch a video of the event, or check out the clip below for a turkey's-eye view of the run-up to Wednesday's pardoning ceremony. (Sources: LA Times, ABC News, Associated Press, Huffington Post, Snopes, whitehouse.gov)

 

 

CHICK MAGNET: A new gender-identification technique developed by German scientists could save millions of male turkey chicks each year from being killed shortly after they hatch, according to a new study published in the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry. Nestlings and immature birds often lack any external sexual characteristics, and the poultry industry regularly slaughters newborn turkeys once they're noticeably male in its rush to churn out more egg-laying females. But researchers from the Dresden University of Technology have come up with a method for determining chicks' genders at a younger age, and potentially even while they're still in the egg. By using infrared spectroscopic imaging, they looked at pulp germ cells on the birds' contour feathers and managed to accurately guess their genders more than 95 percent of the time. If applied to fertilized eggs, the researchers say their technique could allow the poultry industry to select only "female eggs" for breeding, avoiding the mass killings of newly hatched male chicks altogether. (Source: e! Science News)

 

EMISSION CONTROL: California is once again trying to make an example of itself. The state took a big step toward creating its own cap-and-trade system Tuesday, embodied by a draft rule from the California Air Resources Board that sets a gradually declining limit on greenhouse gas emissions and allows businesses to buy and sell pollution permits to stay in compliance. It comes as the national cap-and-trade bill has stalled in the Senate after the House narrowly passed its version in June. California has a history of setting environmental trends that later get adopted nationally — such as this year's tougher new rules on vehicle emissions — and that's exactly how some state regulators see this move. "California is first out of the box," says California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols. The program will cost carbon-emitting businesses as much as $8 billion annually by 2020, CARB estimates, but industry groups are shooting back that it could cost twice that much, with much of the cost falling to consumers. Regulators have scheduled months of hearings and public commenting before the rule is finalized next October. (Sources: LA Times, New York Times)

 

— Russell McLendon