Big Sur coastline in California.
Big Sur is a 90-mile stretch of coastline south of Carmel California. The area is famous for its stunning scenery.
Big Sur was largely inaccessible wildnerness until the construction of Highway 1 in the 1930s under Roosevelt’s New Deal. Today is it a popular tourist destination.
More pictures of Big Sur
In the news
Climate talks in Copenhagen closed with an agreement to hold future talks. Delegates agreed on the need to set binding targets in the future, the generalities of a financing mechanism by which rich countries would support adaptation and mitigation in developing countries, and a goal to limit global temperature rise to 2°C (a target already set at the G20 summit earlier this year). The conference did however make significant progress on REDD, a mechanism that would compensate tropical countries for preserving their forests.
Environmental groups blasted the outcome of the two-week conference, though almost no one expected the meeting would produce a binding target.