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Then, in Davos in February 2004, eleven very large companies, major polluters all, made a commitment that their activities would be laid open for all to see—they promised to disclose and detail all the greenhouse gases they produce on a new open Web site called the Global Greenhouse Gas Register. The register was launched to considerable media fanfare by the World Economic Forum; the pious declaration that accompanied it hoped that other major companies would follow their worthy lead.35 Together these companies account for some eight hundred million tons of CO a year, fully 5 percent of the total emitted by the thirty-seven industrialized nations governed by the Kyoto Protocol. The companies also promised to prepare corporate-wide inventories of their other major greenhouse gas emissions—methane (CH ), nitrous dioxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulphur hexafluoride (SF )—and to have had, or be prepared to have, that information independently verified. By year's end the site was still largely empty—only two companies had reported in, and the data available to the public were, to put it mildly, sketchy. Still, the idea was a good start.

The following year, in April 2005, dozens of countries met in Cambridge, England, to set up the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), to coordinate national systems and satellite observations into a single, global, earth-monitoring organization. Sixty countries participated, including all the major polluting countries.

Another curious indicator was the emergence of coal from polluting villainhood. In the year 2000, only two new coal-fired generating plants were planned in the United States; by the year 2004, there were no fewer than a hundred on order. Partly this was because the U.S. administration in 2000 and 2004 was resolutely non-Green, and partly because coal resolutely did not come from the Middle East, but that wasn't all. The technology had changed. Coal producers, stung by their unwashed reputation, have invested large sums in scrubbing technologies, and many of them actually work.

More-modern combustion techniques not only clean the emissions before they start, but they burn less coal too. "A century ago coal plants delivered only 5 percent of the fuel's potential energy; now the number is about 35 percent, and pulverizing it can get that up to 40-45 percent. With high-temperature burns, over 50 percent may be possible." Joint industry-government research efforts in Australia and Canada had come up with a number of innovative ideas. For example, coal can be "fluidized" before combustion—you can burn it on a bed of particles suspended in air, a technique that captures most of the emissions before they begin. Coal can also be burned in oxygen and not in air; it can be gasified, with the gas powering a turbine, the surplus heat used to drive a conventional turbine. Noxious emissions can thereby be greatly reduced, perhaps to zero. As the Economist pointed out, much depended on how national legislation was framed. The Netherlands subsidizes zero-emission electricity; and Norway heavily taxes carbon emissions; both policies encourage the development of clean coal. But British subsidies, for example, are awarded only to renewable-source electricity, which leaves out even the cleanest coal burning.36

Finally, consider the question of the ozone hole over Antarctica, which only a few years ago was a serious cause for concern—legitimately, because while ozone (Q, or oxygen with three atoms) is poisonous to humans at ground level, as it is a major component of smog, at high altitudes it protects the planet from the sun's damaging ultraviolet radiation. With ozone thinning so dramatically, the risks of rampant cancers and plant crop failures seemed very real; the ozone layer around the earth is thinnest at the tropics and thickest at the poles.

The hole in the ozone layer appeared over Antarctica very quickly. Or rather, by the time it was noticed in the early 1980s, the ozone layer had deteriorated