As the next round of international talks about climate change begin in Cancun tomorrow, optimism is low that the talks will lead to a major breakthrough among countries trying to cut emissions. But ahead of the summit, environmentalists applauded an initiative by a consortium of around 400 private companies to ban …
Climate Negotiations
Climate: Stop Global Warming with a New Computer Game
The world’s politicians have, so far, done a perfectly crap job of dealing with climate change. The bold promises of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which led to the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), have yet to be fulfilled. Kyoto Protocol or no Kyoto Protocol, global carbon …
Climate: India Is Still a Long Way from Cutting Carbon
You’ll hear it over and over again in the debates over the global climate negotiations: while the U.S. has put more carbon overall into the atmosphere than any other nation (and is still the number two emitter overall), the lion’s share of future carbon emissions will come from the big developing nations. China, now the world’s …
The Future of Energy in Europe
I just spent an interesting morning at the European Future Energy Forum in London. The opening panel debate—titled “Movers and Shakers”—included representatives from European governments, industry and NGOs. A full line-up can be found here.
The conversation was fast-paced but seemed to orbit around what will happen if the next …
Climate: Can Business Stop Global Warming?
I’m in Mexico City for the next two days, attending the B4E Climate Summit. B4E is conference speak (and text message speak) for business for the environment, and it’s a meeting that brings together sustainability experts at major corporations from around the world—Siemens, Coca-Cola, McKinsey—to discuss how business can become …
Climate Change: U.S. and China—Faraway, So Close
The UN climate change negotiations have fallen off the news map since last year’s summit in Copenhagen ended in barely avoided disarray, but that doesn’t mean they’ve gone away. China will be hosting interim talks for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Tianjin starting on Oct. 4. That meeting will be …
Climate Change: Meet the UN’s New Top Climate Diplomat
After I sit down with Christiana Figueres, the energetic new chief UN diplomat on climate change, she asks me if I made it to last year’s global warming summit in Copenhagen, which was plagued with logistical problems. I tell her I had, and that the first day I’d waited outside in the Danish cold with thousands of other people …
Bjorn Lomborg, Climate Skeptic, Calls for Massive Global Warming Investment
Yesterday the Guardian reported that Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish scientist with the shock of blond hair who made a name for himself decrying the world’s hysteria about climate change, makes a surprising claim in his upcoming book – that confronting climate change should be a global priority, and that a $100 billion per year …
Global Paper Company — and Clients —Under Fire for Deforestation
In its ongoing campaign to draw attention to Indonesia’s deforestation woes, Greenpeace has released a new report singling out Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), one of the world’s largest paper companies owned by Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas, for sourcing trees from rainforest and peatland that are home to endangered species like the …
Death (of an Agreement) on the Nile
Nine countries that border the Nile failed to reach agreement on Sunday on a deal to share the river for irrigation and hydro power projects—a troubling indication that water rights will become increasingly difficult to manage in the face of climate change.
In May, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya signed a new agreement …