Tag Archive for 'UNFCCC'

Climate crunch and Copenhagen: the fierce urgency of now

Published
by
Brian
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change
. 135 Comments

Back in 2003 James Hansen was saying that we had about 10 years to get ourselves organised to tackle global warming and climate change. You ignore him at your peril.

For three days this May some of the best minds on the planet attended a curious meeting at Cambridge University, the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, to contribute their ideas and authority to some of the world’s most pressing challenges, in this case the climate crisis and its implications.

The choice of topic is not surprising. This was the second such meeting. The first was two years earlier at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. So the list of participants included one Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of said Potsdam Institute, Malte Meinshausen from the same place, Rachendra Pachauri, the IPCC head honcho, Lords Gidden and Stern, and a fella called Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy for the USA.

The message from our intellectual elders is captured in the phrase:

The fierce urgency of now…

As it happens the folk at Potsdam have been putting a bit of flesh on that message.

Continue reading ‘Climate crunch and Copenhagen: the fierce urgency of now’

Climate talks in Bonn inch forward

Published
by
Brian
9 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change
. 20 Comments

In Bonn for the last two weeks 4,600 people from 183 countries representing governments, business and interest groups met in Bonn to discuss the draft text for the December climate change meeting in Copenhagen which we looked at in May. According to the official press release steady progress was made:

“A big achievement of this meeting is that governments have made it clearer what they want to see in the Copenhagen agreed outcome,” said Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Framework Convention on Climate Change. “In my view, an ambitious and effective agreed outcome in Copenhagen is in sight – an outcome that provides a strong and definitive answer to the alarm raised by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

But a news item from the official site was headed Bonn talks yielded little consensus.

Continue reading ‘Climate talks in Bonn inch forward’

Copenhagen taking shape

Published
by
Brian
10 months ago
in Climate change
. 5 Comments

I’ve found it difficult to get information on the likely outcome of the Copenhagen climate change conference scheduled for December this year to plan the post-Kyoto arrangements. Robert has drawn attention to talks between the US and China. Tim Hollo has a strong post at Rooted.

This morning in a complete coincidence a feed I take drew my attention to a BBC piece where the head of the UNFCCC, one Yvo de Boer, tells us they have now put on the table for the first time a “real negotiating text”. The text is available from this site or if you prefer, go directly to the pdf document.

The purpose of this post is to share thoughts and any other sources, with a few initial thoughts of my own.

Continue reading ‘Copenhagen taking shape’

Tuesday Photoblogging – CDM edition

Published
by
dk.au
1 year, 3 months ago
in Climate change, Energy, Howardia, Markets, Sociology and Technology
. 1 Comment

The big questions for those in Poznan are those around financing. In what ways do existing instruments need reform? What novel measures could be devised to reign in emissions growth in areas like air and sea transport? So it was with some interest that I noticed a little PR at work. The administrators of the Clean Development Mechanism, scrambling for public recognition, announced the awards for the 2008 Changing Lives photo contest. Unsurprisingly, there is an eerie resonance between the winning entries and criticisms of the CDM itself, captured mostly recently by the US GAO report. That report, far from being simply ‘US criticism of the UN’ is the culmination of a year’s work, including engagement with some 26 experts, and on the effectiveness of the CDM. Continue reading ‘Tuesday Photoblogging – CDM edition’