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Uprising’s guest expert Robert Jensen, Professor of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and an author, analyzes today’s news headlines:

Global climate change talks in Warsaw, make little headway as the strongest storm in world history continues to wreak devastation in the Philippines. Representatives from 190 countries met in Poland yesterday to debate the best way to move forward on regulating greenhouse emissions even as they admitted the meeting would simply lay the groundwork for more detailed talks two years from now. The needs of large developing nations are quite different from the interests of Western industrialized countries. Small, impoverished countries, particularly island nations, are facing the worst scenario of having to relocate their populations when the oceans rise. Click here for a Washington Post article about the story.

We turn to another international meeting where little seems to have been achieved. After 3 days of talks between the EU, US, and Iran over Iran’s nuclear program, not much progress has been made. All parties involved sounded cautiously hopeful but had no concrete plan. Notwithstanding the hypocrisy of nuclear powers taking a country to task over fears of a nuclear weapons program, what is at stake is the impact of harsh international sanctions on Iran’s economy. An added complication is the hawkish influence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Click here for a CNN article about the story.

Here in the US, a train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded over the weekend in Alabama in what media reports are saying could be the worst such accident in US history. As the fracking industry has ramped up, the rail transportation of crude oil yielded by fracking procedures has increased making such accidents more likely. The train in question was carrying nearly 3 million tons of crude oil when it was derailed near Aliceville, Alabama. The accident comes just months after a similar accident in Quebec, Canada which killed dozens of people. Click here for a Commondreams article about the story.