emissions cuts
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The good and bad news from the Tianjin climate change negotiations
Countries meeting in Tianjin, China are trying to make final progress before the world comes together in Cancun. There are some essential elements that need to be agreed in Cancun to prove that this process can deliver real action, to begin to implement key elements of the international response to climate change, and to lay the foundation for further commitments beyond Cancun. So how are we doing a little over one week into the Tianjin session? We have mixed results.
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Progress from the Copenhagen Accord: A good start to global progress on climate safety
This past December, 192 countries gathered for the 15th meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark. Ambitions for the Copenhagen meeting were high. UNFCCC members had agreed at their 13th meeting in Bali, Indonesia in 2007 that December 2009 would be the deadline to determine a course of action […]
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Obama science advisor John Holdren on U.S. strategy in Copenhagen
COPENHAGEN — One of the puzzles about the U.S. strategy here in is how negotiators expected that pledging a 17 percent emissions reduction below 2005 levels by 2020 could be taken seriously. After all, that would bring the U.S. to approximately 1990 levels a decade from now, which is higher than the level the U.S. […]
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Naomi Klein says Obama’s stiffing Africa on climate
Cross-posted from MotherJones.com. Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International.Photo: foei via Flickr A highlight of my time at COP15 so far was a conversation with the extraordinary Nigerian poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International. We talked about the fact that some of the toughest activists here […]
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The tough task of evaluating Kyoto
The Kyoto Protocol has taken criticism from all sides over the years. But in fairness, it is important to recognize that, according to almost any estimate, the treaty has resulted in surpassed targets in some nations, significant emissions reductions even in nations that may miss their targets, and a marked improvement over business-as-usual had there been no […]
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Wash. Times: “China vows to dramatically slow emissions growth.”
China promised to slow its carbon emissions, saying it would nearly halve the ratio of pollution to GDP over the next decade — a major move by the world’s largest emitter, whose cooperation is crucial to any deal as a global climate summit approaches.Beijing’s voluntary pledge Thursday came a day after President Barack Obama promised […]
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China, India, U.S. commit to seal Copenhagen deal
With the start of international climate negotiations just days away, and with global allies and public interest organizations pressing the United States and China for emissions reductions, the White House and Beijing spent last week in an apparently coordinated program of announcing critical steps to help push the world as close to a binding agreement […]
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Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success
President Obama announced today that he will attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, raising the stakes for himself and all participating nations. The initial goal for Copenhagen was to forge a binding treaty. But that ambitious goal has been scaled back. With American climate protection legislation bogged down in the Senate after […]
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Europe to easily beat Kyoto target
Europe made a major commitment under the Kyoto Protocol that U.S. conservatives have been telling us for years it would never achieve. In fact, the Europeans are poised to surpass their targets under the terms of the Protocol. It is no longer plausible for those who don’t want a U.S. cap-and-trade system to point to […]