100 posts
EU’s carbon emissions reduction target: key for developing countries
European chair of the G77 group of developing nations, Pa Ousman, recently told Euractiv that an increase in the EU’s carbon emissions reduction target to 30% on 1990 levels within eight years is ‘very fundamental’ to the developing world’s i...
Assesment of DURBAN COP 17 – from a model of league of nations to a Global Communitty for the Environment
Yet another Conference Of Parties (COP) finished in Durban in December 2011 with yet another decision to postpone action. Like in any European Council summit, after more than a fortnight of multilateral negotiations most national and regional delegat...
IMO starts addressing C02 emissions from maritime transport
Maritime transport accounts for about three per cent of global C02 emissions, as much as air transport. In the absence of an effective international jurisdiction both transport modes have so far escaped an effective curb of their emissions. This situ...
Rio+20 – we need more flesh on the bones
The "zero draft" summarising key issues forming the basis of the Rio+20 final agreement is a good starting point for subsequent negotiations. But it still falls far short of the hopes and ambitions of organised civil society in Europe for what could...
How sustainable can we get this year
It has always been my belief that Europe is and should continue to be a driver and leader in sustainability reform at global level. It proved this once again in Durban several weeks ago when it put pressure on large CO2 emitters and succeeded in achi...
Climate Change will accelerate unless Humanity acts speedily
I. Climate change has become an intrinsic component of modern life. It is there every morning, everywhere on earth. Winters have become much milder than 30 years ago. The weather has become whimsical: we can no longer tell what temperatures will be l...
Animal armageddon: "they compete, they parasitize each other and they eat each other"
Global warming scaremonglers are becoming more and more desperate. The latest scare comes from University of Connecticut warmists who have invented some "really sophisticated" models for predicting the coming of animal armageddon: “We hav...
Ban welcomes climate change deal reached at UN conference in Durban
“Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed today the set of decisions reached by countries at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa …” The Zombie Train remains on the rails … on road to 3-6 degr...
Low average for the 27 EU member states
While key actors discuss in Durban, a new report commissioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) analyses EU’s climate policies and considers that such a strategy is "standstill in long-term". Among potential measures to undertake, the s...
European Parliament delegation to Durban
15 members of European Parliament delegation to the UN climate summit (COP 17) begin their programme in Durban, South Africa. According to the delegation Chair, Jo Leinen (S&D, DE), this week is crucial "in laying these vital building blocks towa...
EU and China’s institutional diplomacy in the field of climate change.
This Occasional Paper aims at giving another perspective on the relevance of climate change for the EU’s foreign policy. Considering its linkages with various policy areas such as energy security, economic growth, foreign policy and even political...
EU commits funds to combating climate change
EU finance ministers on 8 November pledged to add €7.2 billion in short term funds to help poor countries deal with the effects of climate change. “Despite the severe economic downturn and strong fiscal constraints in Europe, we have mobilised
Attenborough sets out to convince the world that the frozen planet is melting
It’s just one of a host of mind-blowing images in Sir David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet – but it also provides a taste of things to come both in the series and in the white world at large. In the opening minutes of this week’s episode, the c...
Naomi Klein in The Nation: Capitalism vs. the Climate
“Denialists are dead wrong about the science. But they understand something the left still doesn’t get about the revolutionary meaning of climate change.” Interesting analysis by Naomi Klein on the political debate over climate and capitalism.&...
Climate Economics: The State of the Art
The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) has just published one of the best studies on the strengths and weaknesses of the models and assumptions used in recent climate economics publications. The SEI authors conclude that "climate economics ten...
Durban welcomes COP 17 warmists with "a ring of steel"
The soon (28 Nov.) to open Durban COP 17, the UN global warming cult´s annual mega carbon footprint meeting, is more and more beginning to look like a huge battlefield. The 15000 high priests of the cult (the delegates) will...
EU finance ministers reaffirm climate financing
(Reuters) – “EU finance ministers on Tuesday signed off on more than 4 billion euros ($5.5 billion) in short-term funding to help developing countries adapt to climate change and curb emissions…" This is positive news but with growing d...
World Bank: ditch fossil fuel subsidies to address climate change
Via Scoop.it – The Great Transition Leaked documents seen by Guardian say rich countries should use money to help poorer countries adapt to climate change…Show original...
Pachauri: "Critical voices are also needed"
R.K. Pachauri has shown signs of a new kind of humility on a recent visit to Finland. He even admits that "One cannot succeed every time" and that "Critical voices are also needed, and we are pleased to receive all new informatio...
IPCC warmists get desparate: Doomsday scenarios even more megalomaniac
The UN global warming religion promotion network IPCC is clearly getting desperate as it is trying to deal with its continuing loss of credibility. The warmist high priests seem to think that they will regain the initiative by making their doomsday p...
Place your bets for the environmental winners at the Rio 2012 Earth Summit
Via Scoop.it – The Great TransitionInteresting article by two sustainability experts on the odds for success at Rio+20. “If the rule in Macau, Monte Carlo and Las Vegas is that the house always wins, in Rio, the question is who we perceiv...
More Americans believe world is warming: Reuters/Ipsos
Via Scoop.it – The Great TransitionWASHINGTON (Reuters) – More Americans than last year believe the world is warming and the change is likely influenced by the Republican presidential debates, a Reuters/Ipsos poll said on Thursday.Show or...
Is there any need to support the implementation of EU climate policy through cross-country burden sharing?
In the current context, where public budgets are overstretched due to the economic crisis, there is a pressing need to understand the fiscal implications of climate policies. Decarbonization will impact both sides of a country’s budget via changes...
Scientist:" If anything, a few degrees warmer would probably be a net benefit"
"Coral reefs have survived everything from asteroid impacts to ice ages and even extensive reconfiguration of the oceans and continents by plate tectonics. Nevertheless, the self-appointed experts of climate change tell us that coral bleaching due to...
World’s largest firms ‘acting on climate change’, analysis shows
Via Scoop.it – The Great Transition Climate is central to business strategy of 68% of the world’s 500 largest companies, compared with 48% last year… Some good news in the run-up to Durban, but we need much more and faster progress.
You Can Lead Them to the Enlightenment, But You Can't Make Them Think
With thanks to the razzzzberry we discover what a bunch of hopeless dopey vapidity the UN encourages. Ban Ki Moon, speaking in the Solomon Islands:Your very existence is threatened. Therefore the UN shares your concerns very much. Climate change is...
Scientists: Bacteria spreading in warming oceans
By DON MELVIN BRUSSELS (AP) — Warning: The warming of the world’s oceans can cause serious illness and may cost millions of euros (dollars) in health care. That is the alarm sounded in a paper released online Tuesday on the eve of a two-day c...
Latest warmist scare: Cholera!
Another day, another global warming scare. The latest scare is about sea bacteria putting millions of swimmers and sailers at risk: Cholera!A new European report says the warming oceans caused by climate change are leading to the spread of...
Climate Spending Rose 7% to a Record $567 Billion
Via Scoop.it – The Great Transition Global climate-protection spending rose by 7 percent last year to a record $567 billion, as spending in Latin America more than doubled, according to calculations by HSBC Holdings Plc. If so much money is bei...
The hubris of an Australian warmist professor: "We put the physics in and then the answer pops out"
The Australian global warming lobby is desperately trying to convince an increasingly sceptical audience about the blessings of their climate models Dr. Dave Griggs, from the Monash Sustainability Institute and Dr. John Chur...
Obama´s "austerity" program: A new $21 million climate change "embassy" in Papua New Guinea
We all know that the Obama administration is trying to improve the dismal US government finances through an austerity program. However, even when ordinary Americans are suffering, the president is wasting US taxpayers´ money on senseless climat...
EU may propose Kyoto Protocol extension
The EU could propose a lifeline for the beleaguered Kyoto Protocol and secure the future of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) beyond 2012, government negotiators and observers have told Point Carbon news. EU officials will discuss whether to b...
Guyana president raises climate change issues with EU Commissioner
Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo has raised the issue of undisbursed climate change funds with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Andris Piebalgs, the European Commissioner from Latvia, both of whom attended the 32nd CARICOM Heads of Go...
Tory Euro-MPs defy Cameron on climate change
British Conservatives in the European Parliament rebelled against the climate change policy of their party leader today and cast the deciding votes against a resolution calling for the EU to increase its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions...
Broken Balance of the World
“You are only 200 000 years old, but you have changed the face of the world. Despite your vulnerability, you have taken possession of every habitat and conquered swathes of territory, like no other species before you”. These sentences are from th...
Low taxation of company cars: a perverse incentive to pollute?
As residents of Brussels know all too well, this is a car city. Sure, there's an efficient metro system – but it has only two lines and doesn't cover large swathes of the city's more affluent areas, which are instead covered by glacially slow trams...
Parliament group to dig up raw material issues
A special group was set up in the European Parliament last month to collect first-hand information on the issues affecting the availability and price of raw materials. Group chair and German MEP Karl-Heinz Florenz told EurActiv about his object...
Summer School: Climate change in cities and city regions – Time to adapt?
Baltic Sea Region The registration for the BaltCICA summer school is now possible. The Summer School is an exciting opportunity for master students and young researchers to get in touch with a research community of the BaltCICA project with focus on...
Renewables and the Recession
The growth of renewables slowed in the North and CO2 emissions dropped, but China (and the rest of Asia) managed to compensate for both. Read more over at Future Challenges.
CLIMATE CHANGE – FROM AGONY TO EPIPHANY?
“Cancún may have saved the process but it did not save the climate.” Said a Greenpeace activist at the end of the last Cancun Conference of Parties (COP) 16 Climate negotiations in December 2010. True. Broadly speaking, what was agreed in Cancun...
Severe weather advisory
Severe weather, like heavy snowfall in winter or extreme temperature in summer, are creating chaos on roads and in airports (the snowfall that is) or kill the crops in the fields (summer drought). All those climatic episodes that are not usual, are l...
EC and Pacific Islands Forum launch a Joint Initiative on Climate Change
Following the Cancún Climate Change Conference, Andris Piebalgs, Commissioner for Development and Tuiloma Neroni Slade, Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, launched a 'Joint Pacific-EU Initiative on Climate Change'. The objec...
A Wake-Up Call for Australian Climate Policy
In 2010, Australia has been haunted by two unprecedented natural catastrophes, a severe drought in February and a flood of biblical dimensions in December. The latter has flooded an area of the size of France and Germany combined, fortunately very sp...
How to heat European Homes and Offices by 2050?
The unusually harsh 2010 winter in Europe has led to much higher consumption of coal and gas to warm homes and offices, and it naturally leads one to query about the ways our children and grandchildren will heat their homes 40 years from today. The E...
Euro roundup: Open Europe’s 2011 brief, EU and Switzerland, Hungarian media law…
The EU in 2011 from Open Europe blog by Open Europe blog team For those of you who can’t wait to see what 2011 has in store for European politics, Open Europe has published a briefing looking at the issues facing the EU – and most impo...
The EIB, a committed environmental player
With its financial clout, the EIB is able to commit substantial resources to the environment and to combating climate change. This year more than 25% of its total lending has been granted to further the objectives of the European Union in this area.
2.2 billion euros for combating climate change in developing countries
In 2010, the European Union and its member states contributed 2.2 billion euros to the ‘fast start’ financing. Fast start financing is a rapid form of financial aid for developing countries so that they are able to move quickly to continue combat...
Penguins support our cause in Brussels
A group of campaigners from the coolproducts for a cool planet coalition - accompanied by MEP Judith Merkies and..... a group of penguins, quite appropriately given the bitterly cold weather - have called today on the European Commission to...
Cancun and the rediscovery of the lost, limited art of climate diplomacy
CANCUN — It is hardly news anymore when international talks on climate change fail to produce a breakthrough agreement. But the real story of the annual UN climate conference, which concludes Friday in Cancun, Mexico, is what was happening on the s...
Cancun climate change summit: view from a Spaniard
Under the shadow of various failures, delegates from every country in the world are meeting on the coast of Cancun (Mexico) to decide whether to replace or extend the Kyoto protocol. What are the most forgotten aspects on climate change? At what stag...
EU urged to 'show leadership' in Cancún climate talks
Parliament has called on EU leaders to "demonstrate real political leadership" during the UN climate change negotiations in Cancún, Mexico. On Thursday, it adopted a resolution which "deplores the fact that there has not been more progress" in prepa...
"On the Urgency of Stopping Global Warming" by Willi Semmler and Christian Schoder
Parts of the labour movement still have strong reservations towards measures aimed at reducing the carbon intensity of production in order to mitigate global warming. The public debate is dominated by fears that environmental policies harm the workin...
Climate Lessons from Steven Chu
CANCUN – Secretary of Energy Steven Chu’s remarks yesterday in Cancun were attended by an expectant international audience clamoring to hear the latest official word on what Washington intends to do about global warming, despite roundly s...
Time to find balance in the negotiation process
Dan Jorgensen and Christiana Figueres. Photo credit: Susana González/EP Despite travel difficulties getting to Cancun, everyone has now arrived in Cancun safely. Jo Leinen, opened the meeting of the Delegation today by reminding everyone tha...
Cancun: Sunny, with chance of storms toward the end of the week
The climate change negotiations in Cancun started into their second and last week this morning. Ministers are beginning to trickle in and the President of Mexico has arrived. With the politicians arriving, the final documents of the COP –UN speak f...
Promise and politeness in the climate talks at Cancun
Cancun, December 4, 2010–The mood at Cancun could not be more different from last year’s annual conference on climate change, which took place in Copenhagen. Even the setting of the Cancun conference—a beach resort in tropical weather—con...
How do we stay below a global temperature increase of 2°C
In the margin of the UN climate change summit in Cancún (Mexico), the EU presented a new scientific reference document. It shows that the pledges of the Copenhagen Accord are not satisfactory to limit global warming to 2°C. ...
EU warns climate talks risk irrelevance as Cancún opens
The UN climate change process "risks losing momentum and relevance" if the new round of negotiations that opened in Cancún yesterday (29 November) fails to make progress towards a new climate treaty, the EU's climate action commissioner has warned.
Cancun and the End of Climate Diplomacy
WASHINGTON — Next Monday, climate diplomats will gather in Cancun, Mexico, for the 16th annual installment of global climate negotiations. Expectations are low following the partial collapse of last December’s session in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Cancun: battleground for climate change
At the end of November the sixteenth conference on climate change COP16 will take place in Cancun, with the arduous task of resuming a dialogue that was interrupted in Copenhagen and hasn’t since been effectively placed back on track. Related pos...
"A Low-Carbon Economy is the Way Forward" by Ian Lucas
In the aftermath of the worst crisis in capitalism since 1929 voters in Europe have turned to the right. The coordinated injection of investment into the economy to safeguard jobs – led by governments of the centre-left – has brought no political...
EU, CO2 and Cancun
At the end of November this year's most important global meeting on climate, climate change...
Finns, impervious to cold
One thing everybody knows about Finland is that it’s cold. And our tales of -30 degrees and meters of snow don’t obviously help. But whenever I’m abroad and happen to mention that it’s a bit chilly outside I usually get a mean...
Climate Change and the Role of Arts and Media – Transatlantic Perceptions
Every action in climate protection no matter driven by the individual, state or government, is always dependent on how global warming – with all its resulting risks and dangers – is publicly perceived and communicated. Beyond the academic and pol...
EU making deeper emission cuts than promised
Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action, said: "The European Union not only signed the Kyoto Protocol, we not only pledged under Kyoto. The facts show that the world can count on the European Union; what we pledge we also deliver.
EU funded project helps to map pollution
Real time maps of air, ground and water pollution can now be made available to everyone thanks to an EU-funded research project called INTAMAP. The INTAMAP project has developed open specifications software to draw up contour maps that not only show...
They must be desperate
After the collosal PR horlicks that they made with their No Pressure video it appears that the 10:10 climate campaign is desperate to get back on track,To that end they have a job going,10:10, the world’s most exciting climate campaign, has a 10 we...
Th!nk4 Post: Will COP16 Succeed Where COP15 Failed?
This time last year the buzz was beginning to build around COP15 that took place in Copenhagen last year. This was going to be when Europe stood up to the rest of the world and set out its plan and hoped to get everyone else on board. Did it work? No...
Neanderthal's better than Climate Activists
A study conducted at my Alma Mater has shown that those much maligned unfeeling thugs, the Neanderthal's were better equiped with human emotions than those idiots at 10:10Compassion in Homo erectus 1.8 million years ago began to be regulated as an em...
Commission sued over biofuels as suspicions mount
Europe's biofuels policy could cause unwanted side-effects equal to as much as 1.5 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases - roughly the annual emissions of Russia or India, official reports warn. That means biofuels could produce more carbon emissions th...
German-led research tackles climate sceptics head on
In an attempt to rebalance the debate on global warming, the German research branch of Deutsche Bank has commissioned a report that refutes the claims of climate sceptics The report, authored by researchers at the Columbia University's Earth Institut...
Th!nk 4: Back to Climate Change
The European Journalism Centre is back with the next Th!nk About It Competition. This time it will be focusing again on the Climate Change issue in the run up to COP16 in Cancun, Mexico. Here are the details, The EJC’s long-running TH!NK ABOUT IT b...
Making money from Climate Change
On the 12th inthe HQ of the Local Government Association a day conference is taking place. Costing,£ 345.00 or LGA member organisation rate:: £ 219.00 (which of course will be paid, not by the attendees but their rate payers) it is titled,Local G...
European plan for the creation of green jobs
On the occasion of the first ever ministerial conference on "green jobs", Deputy Prime Minister Joëlle Milquet and European Commissioner László Andor have launched the proposal for a first European plan for the creation of jobs in the "green" sect...
In My Humble Opinion
During the last days, a lot of irritating messages about so called "chemtrails" have arrived in my mailbox. In my humble opinion, "chemtrails" is a diversion, because the evidence for the alleged secret global spraying of the atmo...
EP Greenwash
Oh the sound of self congratulation.European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek and Secretary General Klaus Welle today renewed the institution's commitments to reduce its carbon dioxideemissions and make better use of energy, water and paper.Those com...
Greenland not melting quite as fast as previously thought. Wait for the media silence
A year ago we were inundated by fears that the ice-sheet in Greenland was melting.The Greenland ice sheet is losing its mass faster than in previous years and making an increasing contribution to sea level rise, a study has confirmed.In breathless pa...
International Trade and the Fight Against Climate Change
In the fight against climate change international trade can be either part of the problem or part of the solution. Both policy areas are closely intertwined. Just consider the millions of tons of goods ranging from T-shirts to raw materials that are...
Oh - Uh - Now offshore wind farms destroy seals!!
Or so says the blaring headline in the Daily Hate: Wind farm clue to horrific...
Stormy weather for climate negotiations
With all what comes out of the international climate negotiations lately, it seems safe to assume that they are stuck. From August 2-6, climate negotiators from around the world met in Bonn to work on the documents to be agreed upon at the 16th Confe...
International Climate Games: From Caps to Cooperation
Climate negotiators recognize that, at root, the climate problem is a free-rider problem. Each country would prefer that the others do more. But the free-rider problem is not immutable, and that has been overlooked. The design of agreements can exace...
