Skip to content
Grist home
All donations DOUBLED
  • Agriculture: A necessary complication in the climate negotiations

    Despite a sense that the international climate change negotiations, convened in Bonn, Germany this week, are grinding forward at a painfully slow pace, there is a momentum to the process that makes adding new ideas very difficult. It took several years of behind the scenes technical work and at least two years of carefully planned […]

  • Coming global warming limits in China?

    News coming out of China provides some hints that they might adopt a domestic limit to reduce their global warming.  As China Daily is reporting: “China will put in place carbon dioxide emissions targets for its economic and social development programs, the central government has promised.It also signals that China may be considering national goals […]

  • That status of global warming negotiations in Germany

    I’ve been participating since last Monday in the global warming negotiations in Bonn, Germany.  This is the second session of the year. There are 53 days of official negotiations before Copenhagen and Monday was day 17 (the first 10 days were held in the first session in Bonn in March — as I discussed here […]

  • On working with the UNFCCC and making aerial climate art

    500 marshmallows organize for climate action.Robert van Waarden / Spectral QFor better or worse, ours is the age of distraction. Texting while in lectures, talking while in the car driving, iphoning while going, well, anywhere really. The possibilities for connecting beyond our immediate environment can take 25 hours of the day, and those possibilities are […]

  • At Bonn climate talks, it’s a dialogue of the deaf

    Climate protesters march in Bonn on June 6.Courtesy Oxfam Germany via Flickr BONN, Germany — Beethoven’s birthplace stands just a few stops down one of Bonn’s speedy tramlines from the conference center hosting the latest session of the international climate negotiations. A modest yellow-painted house with dark green wooden shutters, it is now a museum […]

  • The good, the bad, and the ugly at Bonn

    Apparently, neither rain or large groups of NGOs descending on them to discuss climate change negotiations serves to deter people in Bonn from enjoying their orchestra in the park. That’s how the Climate Action Network meeting (an umbrella group of NGO actors) was serenaded today by traditional band music. It was all very innocuous until, […]

  • Some heated exchanges from Bonn on “binding commitments” for Copenhagen

    Photo: Ellas DadPhoto: Ella’s DadIn the climate negotiations occurring in Bonn, Germany there is an emerging debate on the form of “commitment or action” developing countries will undertake (as the Economic Times in India points out).  This has been a long running debate in the international global warming negotiations, but it has gained more focus […]

  • Powerful injustice at the Bonn climate talks

    It’s the fourth day of climate negotiations here in Bonn, and at 4:30 in the afternoon, there is a lull in the action before the start of early evening “contact groups” – official meetings of negotiators that are sometimes open to observers. Looking for a quiet place to sit down with my laptop, I have […]

  • The Climate Post: Waxman-Markey, Bonn, and carbon counting

    The U.S. Congress fast-tracks climate legislation, international negotiators hash through the first “negotiating text” for year-end global talks in Germany, and big businesses start counting their carbon. The pile of climate stories this week climbed faster than predicted New England sea levels. The American Clean Energy and Security Act — aka Waxman-Markey, aka ACES, aka […]