The COP21 climate negotiations in Paris opened on Monday with a flurry of activity, speeches, and announcements from some 150 world leaders gathered to kick things off. It’s hard to come away from a day like yesterday without feeling a tinge of hope continuing…that is, until the real negotiations begin. While many impressed with their calls for action … Read More
United Nations
Oil Industry Set to Ignore “Final Warning” on Climate Change
The “clock is ticking”. “Little time left”. The “Starkest Warning Yet”. The “Final Warning”. Just four of the headlines from around the world of yesterday’s UN report on climate change.
Rio – 20
First the gloss from Rio. This was the UN’s largest ever conference with 45,300 delegates from more than 180 nations. The UN says it has obtained pledges worth $500 billion from governments and companies for projects aimed at reducing the strain on the planet’s resources. There are nearly 700 commitments from governments to supposedly cut … Read More
EU Commissioner Calls for End to Subsidies
Connie Hedegaard, the outspoken EU Commissioner for Climate Action, has lent her weight to the growing calls for ending fossil fuel subsidies. Earlier in the week, Oil Change International revealed that fossil fuel subsidies could be as high a $1 trillion. Oil Change has been working with others NGOs to make phasing out subsidies a … Read More
Greenwashing +20
If you open a copy of the Financial Times this morning, you will see a full page advert from the “Friends of Rio+20” with a message to the delegates at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development. These “friends” say they are an assortment of big business, scientific and civil society leaders, but a quick glimpse … Read More
Universal energy access stressed at UN
Yesterday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed the importance of making energy available to the poor as a foundation for combating poverty as world leaders gathered in New York this week at the Millennium Development Goal Summit. At a high-level event yesterday, the Secretary General said that it is lack of political will that is keeping … Read More
A complete mockery of forest protection
Anyone following the palm oil debate would not have been surprised by the findings of the BBC’s top investigative programme Panorama earlier in the week, which investigated the industry. Using GPS technology and satellite imaging, the BBC exposed how the palm oil giant Duta Palma Group is logging on both high conservation lands and deep … Read More
Obama: Global Leader or World Leader Pretend?
Many American Presidents find their terms in office defined by one event: if we think of Nixon it was Watergate, Clinton it was the Monica Lewinsky affair and George Bush it was the war in Iraq. Whilst many Americans may think that Obama’s Presidency will be defined on whether he succeeds in reforming health care … Read More
Obama Attacked Over “Ambition Gap” on Climate
There is a first time for everything. Tomorrow the world’s attention will be on the Chinese President Hu Jintao when he becomes the first top Chinese leader to address a United Nations conference on climate change. Whilst many will see this as a positive step, there is no indication that Hu will announce any change … Read More
A “Critical Month” for Climate Change
Welcome to December. It is being dubbed a “critical month” for action on climate change. Firstly, there is the latest round of UN Climate talks, this time taking place in Poznan in Poland. An estimated 9,000 delegates from 185 nations will meet for the next two weeks to try and work at a Post-Kyoto deal … Read More