In particular, many developing countries have insisted on the principle that only developed countries should be required to reduce the greenhouse gases blamed for damaging the atmosphere.
A new round in the longstanding quarrel began earlier in the week when Fu Ying, the vice minister of foreign affairs, told the chief Filipino diplomat in Beijing that Manila was "severely damaging the atmosphere of the bilateral relations between China and the Philippines".
The fact is, we already have wind and solar technologies that can dramatically cut our reliance on dirty coal plants that create most of the pollution that is poisoning our lungs and damaging our atmosphere.
Lacking facilities to harness the gas or a market to sell it, flaring made good business sense, even if it damaged the atmosphere.
To seriously damage the atmosphere, the explosion would have had to occur as close as the comet belts that girdle the solar system.
Since then, researchers have debated how much radiation supernovas produce, how those rays damage the atmosphere, and how often stars explode near our sun.
Scientists have long wondered whether a blast of photons and particles from a nearby supernova may have damaged the atmosphere enough to alter Earth's climate and so change the course of evolution or even cause a major extinction event.
The way I figure it: we shouldn't be heavily taxing things that are supposed to be good -- such as income and savings -- while undertaxing things that are supposed to be bad -- like burning non-repletable fossil fuels that damage the atmosphere.
The 2020 goal is so important because scientists warn that global warming has already begun to trigger self-reinforcing feedback loops--such as the release of potent greenhouse gases from melting permafrost in the arctic and increased wildfires in southern latitudes--that threaten to damage the atmosphere beyond the point of no return if not addressed immediately.
In a dramatic intervention late on Friday, Venezuela's head of delegation, representing a group of "like-minded countries" including China, India, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, accused the EU of "damaging seriously the atmosphere of confidence and trust in this process".
