Bonn climate talks

Negotiations are all well and good, but where’s the bling bling?

With less than six months to go before Copenhagen, the global climate negotiations are at a pivotal moment. After a two-week negotiating session in Bonn, the negotiations are turning the corner. Or are they? For the first time, negotiators in Bonn debated the draft text of a global deal – a mixed bag of good, […]

David Waskow Politics

Raining on the climate parade

At the Bonn climate talks, environmental groups showed their displeasure with Japan’s proposed carbon emissions cuts by comparing Prime Minister Aso with former U.S. president George W. Bush.Climate Action Factory via FlickrEven the skies wept last week when the latest cold front slammed into the ongoing effort to draft a new international climate treaty. The […]

Geoffrey Lean Climate & Energy

Bonn was disappointing, and Copenhagen will be too. Who to blame?

Photo: rolandFirst up, the climate talks are not going very well. After a rousing start in Rio in 1992, from which we returned with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the negotiations have been anything but inspiring. 1997’s Kyoto Protocol defined the rich-world actions – the first steps – that would put meat on […]

Tom Athanasiou Climate & Energy

To reach a climate agreement in the near future, countries must look into the past

The second round of this year’s climate negotiations have wrapped up in Bonn, Germany, and government negotiators are digging in to their positions, making the chances of signing any global climate deal in Copenhagen this December – let alone a fair deal – increasingly slim. A snapshot at the midpoint on the road to Copenhagen […]

Janet Redman Politics

Population: Off the radar, not off the map

“The main driving forces of future greenhouse gas trajectories will continue to be demographic change, social and economic development, and the rate and direction of technological change,” according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. Two of these drivers – development and technology – have been the focus of a […]

Kathleen Mogelgaard Politics

The case for carbon speed limits

If the earth was a car, it would come with an operating instructions not to drive faster than 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, like an unruly teenager, humanity – with the United States in the drivers seat – has already revved up the engine and broken all speed limits – […]

Margaret Swink Climate & Energy

Adaptation: Something old, something new, now some money is also due

At the climate negotiations here in Bonn, the main discussions on adaptation have come to a close after a “second reading” of the draft negotiating text. Ecosystem-based adaptation, which we blogged about last week, has gained strong support from country delegations and is included in the text that is coming out of these meetings. But […]

Trevor Sandwith Climate & Energy

Short term memory won’t cut it

I don’t think that NGOs were ever terribly confident about the dedication of countries to stopping climate change, but listening to conversations here at Bonn there seems to be an increasing anger at the determinedly short memories and short-sightedness of developed countries. I am hearing more and more at press conferences, side events and in […]