Obama

Sandra Butcher, senior program coordinator, international secretariat, Pugwash. This article first appeared in Comment is Free on Monday 22 March.

Gordon Brown told the Foreign Press Association in London on Friday that he would highlight the upcoming "moments of opportunity and challenge". He said we "must now urgently do more to build upon that brief moment of collective international will", and he reminded us that "global problems need global solutions".

Despite this rhetoric, and earlier UK statements promoting the ultimate goal of a nuclear weapons-free world, in reality Brown's comments on nuclear weapons were tepid, sadly leaving him in some ways behind the Tory party lines as discussed by shadow foreign minister David Lidington last week at the Royal Society. There was certainly no sign that Brown intends to encourage his government to show transformative leadership in this area.

This article by Greenpeace climate campaigner Joss Garman (above) first appeared in yesterday's Guardian.

In his inaugural address, President Obama promised to "work tirelessly to … roll back the spectre of a warming planet", and to "restore science to its rightful place", adding: "Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions – that time has surely passed."

You wouldn't know it from reading the Guardian this morning. Instead of sensing the spirit of "yes we can", you feel the familiar muscle of America's Big Carbon special interests. For months, US officials have been dampening expectations and lowering the bar on which climate measures could be expected from the new administration. This culminated yesterday in Obama signalling that he wants to delay a formal global climate agreement until next year at the earliest, rejecting the advice of his own science adviser, John Holdren.

Barack Obama's grandmother now has solar panels on the roof of her home in Kenya, courtesy of Greenpeace.

Greenpeace Solar Generation Activists and local youth organisers installed the panels on "Mama Sara's" home, and also put panels on the Senator Barack Obama School in Kogelo.