Late on Friday, July 24, Algerian diplomat Ahmed Djoghlaf and US envoy Daniel Reifsnyder, who co-chair the group that will finalize a universal UN climate change agreement in Paris at the end of the year, issued a long-awaited new version of the draft agreement. It comes closer to setting all … [continued]
If at this moment you were to ask me, What’s in a name? I would say, everything. At its recent board meeting in South Korea, the “Green Climate Fund” (GCF) refused an explicit ban on fossil fuel projects. As a result, the fund which was set up as part of UN … [continued]
It’s Day 1 after the soft March 31 deadline the United Nations set in Lima for developed nations to submit official plans (INDCs) for their individual efforts to combat climate change. Remember what’s new about these numbers: they represent the world’s first bottom-up estimates, determined by the emitting countries themselves … [continued]
The European Union reprised its trendsetting role in world climate negotiations on Thursday by committing the first Intended Nationally Determined Contributions to the planned Paris climate agreement at the end of this year. Also on Thursday, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change issued the official “Paris Accord” negotiating text from … [continued]
Despite grindingly slow progress in the United States with decarbonization by means of energy adaptation, the world has actually moved a few steps ahead in the past year. That makes it time to revisit the simplest mechanism for greenhouse gas reversal: a phased-in, revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend strategy. “Fee” rather … [continued]
The big news we’re hearing about Barack Obama this weekend has nothing to do with climate change: it’s that he’s cutting short his trip to India to pay final respects from the United States to Saudi Arabian King Abdullah. He’ll also meet with Salman, the late monarch’s brother and former … [continued]
Festival colors adorn Manila, the most densely populated city on earth, for the Pagbisita ni Pope Francis. Twelve million people in the 16-city capital metro are taking off from now through January 19. A very special visitor has just arrived: Pope Francis, spiritual leader for one-sixth of the world’s population, … [continued]
With a new report on energy decarbonization, the International Energy Agency has just made a major contribution toward implementing the greenhouse gas reduction agreements outlined at the recent UN climate negotiations in Lima (COP20). The agency, an autonomous organization, was founded after the 1970s oil crisis—a fossil fuel disaster many of us … [continued]
Turning off my computer at a little after 3 am this morning, I gave a silent thanks to Manuel Pulgar Vidal, the Peruvian environment minister and president of the just-completed 2014 UN COP20 meeting in Lima. Now I’ll be a little louder. Much of the credit for the newest internationally … [continued]
In what may have been the only way to confidently convince Australia’s leadership that they were taking a dramatically wrong turn on environmental and energy policy, global opinion has turned against the country at a time when the climate talks in Lima, Peru, have kept such issues at the top … [continued]
