Starting off Bali with a bang...and looking for some big bucks

The Bali conference on global warming got started with a bang Monday as Australia's newly elected prime minister, Kevin Rudd, in his first official act signed papers to ratify the 1997 Kyoto treaty.

"Delegates in Bali erupted in applause when Australia's representative, Howard Bamsey, told the session that his country was jumping on board," the Associated Press reports.

But Rudd's decision leaves the U.S. as the lone major industrial country still refusing to ratify the treaty, which meant U.S. delegates "were forced to repeatedly defend their refusal to embrace emission caps," the AP reports.

Meanwhile, one underplayed story is the hunt for who will pay for fighting global warming under the new climate change treaty that Bali is supposed to lay the groundwork for.

"Kyoto has created a carbon market that last year directed $5 billion investment into cutting greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries," a Reuters story reports. "That compares with a needed $200 billion invested annually by 2030, nearly half of that in developing countries, according to a U.N. report published in October....The private sector must supply 86 percent of investment needed to help adapt to global warming and cut emissions, the U.N. report said."

For the AP story on the opening of the Bali conference, click here.

For a story on the Australian decision, click here.

And for the Reuters story on the money hunt, click here.

--Craig Pittman