December 8, 2007
The executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change spoke recently about the economic importance of curbing greenhouse gas emissions. The secretary said it is even more clear now that public and private money will need to blend in a creative way to achieve this goal.
December 5, 2007
UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said the first day of the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia went smoothly, adding a group will be formed to determine “a roadmap into the future.”
December 4, 2007
The United States will soon stand alone among industrialized nations in its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, with the new Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, having said in no uncertain terms that his country would now ratify it.” Source: New York Times.
The United States could learn a lesson from the recent political upheaval in Australia, Kevin Rudd certainly has.
Despite an 11-year run by John Howard, who helped turn Australia’s economy around, a recent Economist article suggests the ouster may be the first time climate change has directly impacted an election.
Mr. Rudd has also learned what many national leader elsewhere will discover in the next few years: that climate change is now an election issue. A few years ago Mr. Howard could get away with his robust refusal to sign up to the Kyoto protocol, to hobnob with Al Gore or do anything that might damage Australia’s booming coal industry. No longer. This may have been one of the first national elections in which global warming was a political issue for big parties. It will not be the last.” Source: The Economist.
December 4, 2007
The Bush administration is the only government in the world that is opposed to mandatory emissions reductions being included in a new treaty,” said Philip Clapp, the deputy managing director of the Pew Environment Group in a recent New York Times article. “The question is, will they block others from moving forward.”
The Indonesian island of Bali is flooding with politicos and environmentalists today who are determined to reach a consensus on how to update the aging global climate treaty.
The summit falls on the heels of a disturbing report released last month by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which outlined possible side-effects of global warming.
By far, the biggest obstacle to forging a new accord by 2009 is the United States, analysts say. Senior Bush administration officials say the administration will not agree to a new treaty with binding limits on emissions,” the New York Times article states.
The Bush administration vehemently maintains the push to improve global warming can not create a negative economic impact, adding “binding limits on emissions” will do just that.
December 3, 2007
Learn how to calculate your carbon footprint and how to offset the greenhouse gas emissions you produce everyday.
December 2, 2007
What we are facing is not only an environmental problem, but has much wider implications: For economic growth, water and food security, and for people’s survival - especially those living in the poorest communities in developing countries,” United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer.
The 13th United Nation’s Climate Change Conference will start Monday in Bali, Indonesia. The UNFCCC has made it clear a breakthrough is necessary at this summit to reduce the looming impacts of global warming.
The goal for this conference is to reach an international agreement “on concrete steps” to follow the end of the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period in 2012.
November 20, 2007
Check out this interesting online dialogue between New York Times environment reporter Andy Revkin and GRIST blogger David Roberts on their agreements and disagreements on climate change.
November 19, 2007
Source: Sustainable Energy Ireland
United Nation officials will start reworking the outdated Kyoto Protocol on limited greenhouse gas emission at its December meeting in Bali, Indonesia.
“We cannot afford to leave Bali without such a breakthrough,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said after the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was released Saturday in Valencia, Spain. “The potential consequences of quickening climate change are ’so severe and so sweeping that only urgent global action will do,’ he said in a recent Chicago Tribune article.
The document released this weekend is a collection of three climate change reports released earlier this year.
A lack of action - especially by the world’s largest polluters, the United States, China and India - will lead to an eventual rise in sea level, which will ultimately force millions of people out of low-lying coastal regions. Other repercussions, include worsening droughts, severe storms, water shortages. According to the report, the changes could affect 20-30 percent of the world’s species.
November 19, 2007
“Coal, the dirtest fossil fuel, is the crack cocaine of the developing world.” (Coal Factors large into climate change: Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles Times writer Alan Zarembo argues coal is just too good to give up for many countries, adding that fact alone will likely undermine the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Nobel Prize-winning panel presented a plan that in order to work requires the world’s largest coal producing countries to drastically reduce emissions over the next 20 years.
That includes China which has more than doubled its CO2 emissions from coal since 2000 and has built 603 coal-fired generators - 64 percent of the new generators built worldwide - over the last eight years.
” . . . a recent analysis by climate experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that even if the U.S. and Europe could stop all their carbon emissions, the developing countries are on pace to create a climate crisis on their own,” the article states.
November 19, 2007
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates together committed $750 million to research climate change at the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries summit in Riyadh recently.
OPEC leaders also pledge to cut emissions from oil and gas production, although the effect of the falling U.S. dollar trumped any promises to combat global warming, according to Bloomberg.com.
“They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper,” said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at press conference today. “The dollar has no economic value.” Source: Bloomberg.com
Saudi King Abdullah opened the summit by committing $300 million to study ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and carbon sequestration.
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