The most important environmental meeting of the decade started today in the wooded hills above Kyoto. Stunning autumnal colours still hang on to the trees surrounding Japan's ancient capital. But the vision facing jet-lagged delegates as they arrive for the COP3 conference owes more to Star Wars than natural beauty. The conference centre is a 1970's concrete monster - Darth Vader's helmet expanded a hundred and fitted out in anaemic office carpets.

Still the conference organisers can't be faulted on their attention to detail -harassed delegates who find the cacophony of telephones and speeches too much to bear can escape to the toilets where the peaceful sounds of bird song are piped in to encourage quiet meditation.

Demonstrating their concern for the issue at hand the organisers have announce that they will keep fossil fuel emissions down by keeping the temperature of the conference to 20 degrees C and handing out 100 shawls a day to cold-blooded delegates. Old conference hands quip that the reptiles from the oil lobby should be easier to spot than normal.

Yesterday saw countries convened for the `meeting-before-the-meeting' attempt to clear up a few issues that couldn't be resolved in Bonn last month - they couldn't decide whether forests and soils could be included in any agreement. New Zealand and the US are still pushing for a loophole to be included in the Kyoto Protocol which would allow countries to offset extra fossil fuel emissions against tree planting.But no one can guarantee that new forests will store their carbon for the normal life-span of the trees let alone the historic timescales which carbon is stored in fossil fuel deposits. Unexpected carbon 'bombs' such as the estimated 200 million tonnes of carbon released by the recent Indonesian forest fires underline the risk that is inherent in the approach of NZ and the US.

Whilst delegates reiterated old positions in the conference hall, Greenpeace installed a solar powered message board at one of Japan's most famous Buddhist temples. Established over 1000 years ago, the Kiyomizu-Dera temple is perched on a cliff overlooking Kyoto. At the invitation of the Kiyomizu Dera monks, Greenpeace installed a sixteen panel array in the centre of the temple grounds. An LED notice, powered from the display will broadcast messages collected from the Greenpeace website throughout the conference. The ranks of journalists collected to record the event hung on every word of the head monk, Mr.Onishi.. They marveled at the coming together of the new and the old - solar panels and the temple, Greenpeace and Buddhism, silicon and incense.

A 50 square-metre banner outlines the choices faced by delegates meeting 10km away at COP3; 'climate chaos or solar future'. Greenpeace hopes to make sure that delegates don't forget the big picture as they dive further and further into the detailed negotations - we will constantly remind them that solutions exist and that dangerous climate change is not inevitable.