After the disappointment of Copenhagen and a year when the viability of the UNFCC was repeatedly called into question, the world has its first new legal agreement on climate change in years. The deal is modest—there are no new binding pledges to cut carbon emissions, no hard figures in climate aid and some of the most difficult …
Update [3:28 AM CST 12/11/10]: That’s it. Over the strenuous and highly verbal objections of Bolivia, the more than 190 countries at Cancún adopted a compromise deal that points the way towards a new system fo climate diplomacy that will include complementary actions by both developed and developing nations. The Cancun Agreements “mark …
In a briefing for reporters before the Cancún climate summit began, World Resources Institute president Jonathan Lash summed up is expectations for the meeting in a made-up work: “CopenCun.” He meant that much of the work of the Cancún summit would involve tying up the many loose ends of last year’s meeting in Copenhagen, with ended …
You don’t have to be in Washington to hear the howls of progressive Democrats enraged by what they see as President Obama’s capitulation to the Republicans on taxes—they’re audible all the way down here in Cancún. (Twitter helps.) As Timothy Noah of Slate puts it, Obama seems to be an easy mark, a terrible poker player who …
It happens at nearly every international climate summit. Usually about halfway through the two-week long summits, there will be an outcry about “secret” texts being negotiated in secret by the big countries of the world, dealing over the heads of poorer and smaller nations—which happen to be the ones that will be hit hardest by climate …
Someone speaking the truth—it’s an unusual occurrence at any government event (unless you have a link to Wikileaks) and it’s even rarer at the highly stage-managed U.N. climate talks. But that’s exactly what happened last night in Cancún at an event put on by Avoided Deforestation Partners, an NGO dedicated to promoting REDD, or …
Last year’s global climate change summit in Copenhagen ran into trouble for all kinds of reasons, but one of the first and worst was logistics. Too many people—more than 45,000—tried to jam into the Danish capital’s too-small Bella Center. The result was hours-long lines for security and accreditation, hot tempers and general …
I’ve just arrived in Cancun, where the 16th meeting of the Conference to the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is in full, acryonymized swing. It’s already clear that the mood in Cancun—like the weather—will be quite different from the chaotic atmosphere at the U.N. talks in …
Over at the Healthland blog, I have a post up on a new report from the venerable Consumer Reports on potentially unsafe levels of mercury found in canned tuna. Mercury contamination is a real risk for pregnant women and young children—the Consumer Reports investigation shows that mercury may be more prevalent in canned tuna than we …
Gasoline is like the circulatory system of the American economy. When it’s working fine, you barely notice it. But if something goes wrong, you end up in mortal trouble really fast.
Is the struggling U.S. economy headed towards a gasoline-induced heart attack? A report by the Lundberg Survey of American cities found that gas …