In four weeks' time, foreign ministers from across the globe will sit down in Copenhagen to try and agree an international deal to tackle global warming.

Those talks may sound distant and abstract but if a deal is done it will begin a process that will affect all of us, changing how we live our lives.

Why? Because the Copenhagen talks are about how the world will cut greenhouse gas emissions. That will affect us all because almost everything we do involves greenhouse gases one way or another.

Think about it. As soon as you start up your car, put on the kettle, turn up the thermostat a notch or even buy a bag of potatoes you are creating carbon dioxide, the key greenhouse gas.

So those talks aren't abstract. Ultimately they are about everything we do: how we travel, how we heat and power our homes, what we buy, what we eat.

So how might our lives change?

Well, I've got a pretty unique insight into that question because I was involved in a bizarre BBC experiment.

My family and I were challenged by my editor on Newsnight to spend a year doing everything we could to cut our greenhouse gas emissions.

To be honest I thought it sounded really dull - a kind of muesli correspondent. I'd pictured myself more as the jet-setting foreign correspondent. But this was my very first day on the programme so I told him what a great idea I thought it was and... well, you can guess what he said next - he wanted me to do it.

And, to be fair, it was actually a very good idea. Take one fairly ordinary family. Then apply the latest thinking on low-carbon lifestyles. Then watch the results!

It was a combination of the utter humiliation of a reality TV challenge with a serious inquiry into the role of individuals in tackling climate change. So you get to see whether lifestyle changes and new technologies really do cut carbon emissions AND get the vicarious pleasure of watching a family suffer as they try and live a more ethical life.

In the run up to the Copenhagen conference, we'll be featuring those films here on the BBC website.

Here's the first one, where I attempt to get to grips with what the challenge is actually going to mean for me, my wife and our two young children.

Watching the film again after three-and-a-half years is very odd for me. It's amazing how much the kids have grown but it is also amazing just how much the nature of the debate has changed.

I remember sitting down with Sara, the Ethical Man producer, to discuss whether we needed to explain the idea of a "carbon footprint". It was a new concept back then. Now put the words into a search engine and you get millions of results.

It felt as if we were venturing into new territory. Of course there are lots of people who have been worried about their impact on the environment and have been trying to live low-impact lifestyles. But they tended to be deep greens, the sort of people who would be happy to live in a yurt.

Cutting carbon emissions simply wasn't an issue that preoccupied most people.

Now many newspapers have "ethical" correspondents. Companies will boast about their green credentials. Adverts will tell you how low-impact the foot spa you are about to buy is.

The debate has certainly changed but the fact is most of us have not changed the way we live.

That fact has prompted me to agree to another unreasonable request from the Newsnight editor. I have agreed that he can turn our home into a temporary television studio in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference.

Since what is being discussed at the conference is ultimately about how we all live our lives, then where better to discuss the issues it raises but in a fairly ordinary home?

We'll be inviting world leaders, top scientists, environmental campaigners - in fact anyone else we think is interesting - to join me around my kitchen table. They'll get a mug of tea and then we'll discuss the key issues.

The first of these experiments in broadcasting will be on the programme tonight. My house guests include none other than the climate change secretary himself, Ed Miliband.

We'll be discussing what might actually be agreed at Copenhagen and what it will mean for us all. So tune in at the usual time - BBC2 at 2230 GMT.

If you've got any questions for Mr Miliband, please send them to me here.

I'd also be very grateful if you have any tips you might have on interesting or innovative ways we can all cut our carbon footprints.

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In the US state of Virginia the talk is of revolution. In the basement of a restaurant in Richmond we met 100 or so American patriots -ordinary people who claim to be the vanguard of a great new movement, a movement for American liberty.

"Lower taxes, less government, more freedom", is their rallying cry.

The words of Patrick Henry, a son of Virginia and one of the founding fathers of the United States, ricocheted around the room: "Give me liberty, or give me death."

The echo of the American Revolution is deliberate. This movement takes as its manifesto the Declaration of Independence itself. Many supporters say they carry a copy of it with them at all times.

The meeting in the Richmond basement was organised by a group called FreedomWorks. Supporters describe themselves as "conservative" but they are not necessarily Republicans.

Greenhouse gas cap and trade

Their call to arms focuses on two issues: healthcare reform and - you guessed it - President Barack Obama's plan for a cap and trade system to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

It presents its aggressively libertarian, small government agenda as a direct challenge to the politics of the new administration.

It claims to be engaged in nothing less than a battle for American freedom.

The scale of this new revolutionary army became apparent in September with a giant rally in Washington to commemorate the day after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers.

A day when, the movement says: "we were united as Americans, standing together to protect the greatest nation ever created".

How many actually attended is contested. According to the official count tens of thousands marched; the organisers say hundreds of thousands, even millions turned out. But there is no question this movement has wide appeal.

It has been picked up and fostered by the right-wing media, in particular Fox News and its anchormen Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

Potent appeal

But this cannot be dismissed as a trivial media confection.

The notion of freedom this movement promotes has potent appeal here in the US.

It is rooted in the founding principles of the US themselves - the "inalienable" rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that the Declaration of Independence holds to be "self-evident".

This is the idea that individuals have inherent rights, including property rights, which may not be arbitrarily overridden.

(An idea that is, incidentally, arguably Britain's greatest legacy to the US).

The movement argues that the Declaration is a charter for small government and quotes George Washington in support: "Government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master."

They claim that the Obama administration's cap and trade plans, together with its stimulus package and its plans for healthcare reform, represent an unwarranted incursion into the rights of Americans.

Unworried by climate change

These conservatives are changing the context in which the Obama administration has to make its case for government action on climate.

The argument that the effects of climate change will make pursuing life, liberty and happiness very difficult just does not wash with them.

Most of the people I spoke at the Richmond meeting did not believe climate change is something they need worry about.

A recent poll found most Americans agree. Just 35% describe global warming as a "serious problem".

Debate on how to tackle a problem becomes very difficult when people do not believe it is a problem that needs to be solved.

As the meeting broke up one man took me aside to say he was not persuaded by the arguments he had heard.

"You are in a state that fought for the freedom to keep people in slavery," Phil told me.

Meaning of freedom

Indeed, Patrick Henry, who demanded liberty or death as he helped launch the revolt against British tyranny, subsequently worked to defend the slave trade as an attorney.

Phil told me the story of Gabriel, a slave who, 24 years after the Declaration of Independence, attempted to lead a rebellion against the slave owners here in Richmond Virginia.

Gabriel turned Patrick Henry's words around - "Death or liberty" was his slogan.

Liberty eluded Gabriel. He was betrayed and his rebellion was crushed by the Virginia state militia before it had even begun.

Gabriel was hanged just a couple of blocks away from the cellar where the FreedomWorks meeting was held.

"Freedom means different things to different people," Phil said as he left the meeting.

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West Virginia is the mountain state. Its mountains have defined the state's history, and now the mountains of Virginia look set to determine whether the world begins to tackle global warming.

That may sound a little apocalyptic, but please bear with me.

The American nation was born in Virginia where the tobacco plantations - established in the early 17th Century - gave the country its first economic boom.

Neighbouring West Virginia, by contrast, remained a rural backwater thanks to its vertiginous topography.

A life shaped by terrain

The mountains of West Virginia are not high, but boy are there a lot of them. As a result, the state had little to attract settlers.

The sea of mountains makes travel difficult and farming near impossible. West Virginia's only significant industries until the middle of the 19th Century were salt mining and charcoal burning.

And, 150 years on, West Virginia is still predominantly a rural state. Its population is less than two million, its state capital, Charleston, has just over 50,000 residents.

So how come this remote, rural state is playing a pivotal role in determining the international deal on greenhouse gas emissions that is likely to be done at the Copenhagen conference?

The reason comes back, again, to those mountains.

West Virginia remains economically isolated. There is still virtually no industry here. It is the third poorest state in the union in terms of per capita income.

But there is one thing West Virginia has mountains of - and I mean literally mountains -and that is coal.

The US Department of Energy estimates that West Virginia has 28.5bn tonnes of high quality coal left. That's right, 28,500,000,000 tonnes of energy-rich, carbon-dense, bituminous coal.

You get a sense of the true scale of that figure when you meet some of the guys who dig the stuff up.

Foundation of industrial America

The miners I met up in the hills outside Fairmont all work a single seam of coal, the famous Pittsburgh seam, one of the greatest mineral resources in the US.

The seam is up to eight feet (2.4m) thick and runs for hundreds of miles from Maryland to Ohio and from Pennsylvania deep into West Virginia.

It is so vast it has been being worked constantly for almost 200 years.

Indeed, the Pittsburgh seam can reasonably claim to have laid the foundation for the industrialisation of the US.

It is perfect for coking and therefore perfect for making steel, as industrialist Andrew Carnegie discovered. His great fortune was made using Pittsburgh seam coal to make the steel that built modern America.

One of the miners I met, DJ Weaver, is the fourth generation of his family to mine the Pittsburgh seam.

He, his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather all spent their lives working Pittsburgh, and there is reckoned to be enough coal left for another couple of generations of the Weaver family to be employed on the seam.

And the Pittsburgh seam is just one of West Virginia's coal reserves.

Pivotal position

Not surprisingly, coal dominates the economy of this state and has also shaped its politics.

The governorship, two of the state's three House of Representatives seats and, crucially, both Senate seats are held by Democrats.

It is those two Senate seats that have put West Virginia in such a pivotal position in terms of climate legislation.

The Obama administration needs 60 Senate votes for its climate bill if it is to avoid a Republican filibuster - a roadblock to the bill.

The electoral calculation only adds up so long as every Democratic senator votes with the administration.

But both Democratic senators here in West Virginia have said they will vote against the bill.

That means Senator John Kerry, the former presidential candidate who is sponsoring the bill, is looking for compromises that might draw them back into the fold.

He is also being forced to consider inducements - like offshore drilling permits and incentives for the nuclear industry - which might attract wavering Republicans.

In short, West Virginia's opposition to the Senate climate bill will end up watering down America's position on climate.

That, in turn, will dilute any deal done at Copenhagen .

It may seem extraordinary that a sparsely populated, rural state like West Virginia could hold such sway in international politics, but the logic here on the ground is compelling.

"What would you do if the mines closed?" I asked the miners.

They shook their heads: There aren't any good jobs outside of coal here", they told me, "West Virginia is coal".

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