international politics
-
U.S.-Russia climate and energy efficiency cooperation: A neglected challenge
This piece was co-written with colleagues from the Center for American Progress: Julian L. Wong, a Senior Policy Analyst, and Samuel Charap, a Fellow. The summit between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Moscow on July 6-8 comes in the middle of a packed international schedule of bilateral and multilateral meetings for […]
-
47 groups urge Obama to endorse 2-degree C warming threshold
A coalition of 47 environment, science, and faith-based groups have sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to pursue a goal of keeping global warming to less than 2 degrees Celcius in upcoming international meetings. “Failure to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius will have the greatest impact on the most vulnerable nations […]
-
The Climate Post: Something wrought in the state of Denmark?
The word “Copenhagen” hangs over climate discussions everywhere from Washington to Wagga Wagga. That’s because in December the world travels to the Danish capital for the 15th Conference of Parties meeting, affectionately referred to as COP15. There, nations large and small hope to reach a new international agreement that would ratchet down global emissions beginning […]
-
Counting the real progress on climate action
This piece was co-written by Nina Hachigian and Julian Wong of the Center for American Progress. —– We are now entering the six-month period before the U.N. climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, which are intended to hammer out a successor treaty to the Kyoto protocol that expires in 2012. Progress on climate policy domestically will […]
-
Tripping over the fine print on the way to Copenhagen
Punctuation can be the greatest impediment to getting nations to see eye-to-eye on any issue.Jennie Faber via Flickr It was only a comma, albeit a hotly disputed one. For me, the single punctuation mark represents a major reason why the world may fail to get to grips with global warming in time, and why a […]
-
Towards the Copenhagen climate change agreement: Round One
The international global warming negotiations in Bonn, Germany have just wrapped up. They began with a loud applause as U.S. Special Climate Envoy Todd Stern announced that the U.S. is back. And they ended with the reality of the work that needs to be done over the next 8 months to ensure a strong agreement […]
-
Aviation industry proposing solutions to solving their global warming pollution?
Photo: The Shane H via Flickr While most of the climate negotiations in Bonn have been focused on key issues around the overall agreement, as I’ve discussed here and here, there has also been some side discussions on other key issues. I’ve been involved in a couple of discussions (outside the formal negotiations) around how […]
-
Providing the tools to get a strong international climate agreement
People always ask me: how do we get a strong international commitment to solve global warming pollution? What “tools” do U.S. negotiators (and others) have to secure an equitable commitment from all major emitters to reduce global warming pollution? How do we support the most vulnerable developing countries in adapting to the impacts of global […]
-
U.S. climate envoy tells international gathering all the right things about climate
If you’re looking for rays of hope amidst the torrent of idiocy and bad news — not that I’m projecting — you could do worse than reading U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern’s speech to the recent international climate gathering in Bonn, Germany. How’s this for a rousing beginning? I am pleased to be here in […]