Inter Press Service: After nearly a decade of defiance by Washington toward international efforts to protect the environment, notably its disengagement from the Kyoto treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions, there are high hopes that the United States will soon play a leading role in addressing what U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has described as “the defining challenge of our era”. If 2008 was the “the year of multiple crises… 2009 will be the year of climate change,” Ban told an end-of-year news …