GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States reiterated on Friday that it was committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 even though the Senate has failed to pass legislation.

"I am in no sense writing off legislation over time. And I'm quite sure the president isn't," U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern told a news conference during two days of talks in Geneva among about 45 nations reviewing climate finance.

The scientific rebel J. Craig Venter created headlines — and drew comparisons to Dr. Frankenstein — when he announced in May that his team had created what, with a bit of stretching, could be called the first synthetic living creature. Two months later, only a smattering of reporters and local dignitaries bothered to show up at a news conference to hear Dr. Venter talk about a new greenhouse that his company, Synthetic Genomics, had built outside its headquarters here to conduct research.

Professor Kahn has been one of my favorite economists and co-authors since we studied urban economics together 20 years ago. He made his name working on the intersection of urban and environmental economics, on topics like the silver lining of the Rust Belt’s decline. The improvement of air quality in deindustrializing places like Pittsburgh seems to have attracted skilled people and boosted the local economy. He has done important work with his wife, Dora Costa, on the correlates of cowardice during the Civil War, and he now maintains one of the more enjoyable economics blogs.

Professor Kahn isn’t skeptical about global warming, but he is (quite reasonably) skeptical about our ability individually and collectively to reduce carbon emissions: “attempts to reduce or reverse our carbon output — to mitigate the damage that we’ve already done — aren’t going so well” and “evidence shows that very few individuals have cut back on their carbon-producing activities at all.” Consequently, he predicts, “the world is going to get hotter.”

Environmental groups, which failed to get a climate-change bill passed this year in the U.S. Senate, are having trouble getting their message heard on the campaign trail.

They tried to sound the alarm that they're losing the fight at two events last week in Wisconsin -- one dubbed a "Carnivoil" -- but didn't draw enough people to fill a high school gymnasium, reports The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold.