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Heading into the second week of Copenhagen … the arc of the negotiations

Wow!  Has it really only been a week of the international global warming negotiations in Copenhagen?  Based upon the intensity of the debate you would think that we are down to the wire in the second week of the negotiations.  After all, these negotiations often only get finalized in the wee hours of the final […]

Ask Umbra on holiday donations, green magazines, and more

Dearest Readers, I write to you from Copenhagen, where I have come to witness the big climate conference. O the life of a Grist columnist gets more glamorous by the day! Be sure to check out our coverage, and follow my adventures on Twitter. Yes, dear readers, I’ve finally succumbed to the tweet hereafter — […]

All or nothing: a look at the Copenhagen endgame

Well, here we are at last. After two years of largely fruitless negotiations, the real bargaining on the terms of a new global climate pact has just begun. Yvo de Boer, the U.N. official charged with shepherding a new international climate pact, must feel as if he’s carrying the world on his shoulders as COP15 […]

What to make of the Cantwell/Collins CLEAR Act

Maria Cantwell Last week saw two interesting developments in the ongoing saga of the U.S. Senate’s struggle with a climate/energy bill. First, Sens. John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joseph Lieberman released the framework for the bill they’re working on, which basically amounts to the bill the House and the Senate Environment committee passed plus a […]

Final week of Copenhagen, and the last act is not clear

COPENHAGEN – Like all spellbinding human drama the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which today entered its second and last week, represents the accumulated chapters of an urgent script – the fate of the planet. Everybody in every corner of the world has a stake. Island nations, some of them starting to be swamped by […]

Mr. President, come to Copenhagen early

I wish every American could get lost for a few days in the Bella Conference Center and the events surrounding it in Copenhagen.  I wish you could all see and feel the desperate depth of the world’s hunger for America to step all the way up to its responsibilities here. And since at least one […]

Long term climate finance: FOUND!

We are pleased to report from Copenhagen that after years of searching, long term funding for climate finance has been found…but the question is whether we can pry it out of Big Oil and Coal’s hands.  The pledge by G20 nations championed by the US is potentially a huge new source of funds for developed […]

No time for tears in Copenhagen

COPENHAGEN — I’ve spent the last few years working more than fulltime to organize the first big global grassroots climate change campaign. That’s meant shutting off my emotions most of the time—this crisis is so terrifying that when you let yourself feel too deeply it can be paralyzing. Hence, much gallows humor, irony, and sheer […]

On the message—not the arrests—at Copenhagen’s mass rally

Demonstrators at Saturday’s climate-change march in Copenhagen.Grist photo/Jennifer PredigerI skipped Copenhagen’s large demonstration on Saturday for the same reason I missed the Bright Green expo and Desmond Tutu speaking at the Bella Center—there’s so freakin’ much happening here, so many events worth attending and reporting at every waking moment. I’ll post more soon about the […]

Postcard from Saturday’s mass climate demonstration in Copenhagen

Saturday’s mass march to the Bella Center, where climate talks are ongoing, was boisterous and colorful, but largely peaceful. I expect that the tone of the demonstrations will shift in the next week as climate activists make a last-ditch push for a strong treaty. Climate Justice Action, an anti-corporate network, is calling on activists to […]