United Nations
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Will Poznań be a good COP, a bad COP, or just another COP out?
International negotiators are flocking to Poznań, Poland to figure out how to extend the Kyoto protocol, whose climate targets end in 2012. I believe that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process is essentially dead — especially from a United States perspective — as I will discuss this week. Still, Poznań will be […]
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Massive U.N. study attempts to do for biodiversity what IPCC did for climate
When Wall Street saw around $1-$1.5 trillion dollars go up in smoke from the financial sector, the world rightfully freaked the hell out. Meanwhile, the world is burning up between $2 trillion and $5 trillion of capital a year through global forest loss. That’s the cumulative value of the lost services forests provide, including carbon […]
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Danish P.M. urges United States to reengage in climate talks
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is in the United States this week to encourage engagement in the negotiations over a new global climate pact between now and the United Nations Climate Change Conference scheduled to take place in Copenhagen in late 2009. In a speech before a meeting of the Environmental Grant Makers Association […]
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We waste a lot of food and a lot of water, says report
The world grows more than enough food to sustain the global population, but half of that food is wasted — and thus half of the water used in food production is wasted as well, says a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, International Water Management Institute, and Stockholm Water Management Institute. […]
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Yao Ming to serve as UNEP ‘environmental champion’
Yao Ming, Chinese basketball player extraordinaire and eco-activist green Olympian, recently agreed to be the United Nations Environmental Program’s first-ever “Environmental Champion.” Yao accepted the UNEP’s invitation the day after the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing. Said Yao, “In my role as ‘Environmental Champion,’ I will work with governments, the private sector, and the public […]
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Jeffrey Sachs, economist and eco-problem solver, chats about his plans to save the world
Jeffrey Sachs speaks at the University of North Carolina. Photo: Kevin Tsui Jeffrey Sachs — the renowned economist who devised a grand plan in 2005 to rid the world of poverty — is now focused on an even broader ambition: saving the planet and all of us who call it home. His new book, Common […]
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U.N. food summit ends without agreement on solutions
A high-level three-day United Nations food summit ended Thursday without wide agreement on solutions to the world food crisis. At the meeting, delegates sparred over trade barriers, biofuels’ role in keeping food prices high, agricultural subsidies, how food aid should be spent, and how much aid to give. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the conference […]
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Latest IPCC climate report comes out strong, lays groundwork for Bali talks
“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” warned the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its hardest-hitting report yet, released on Saturday. Delegates from more than 140 countries came to agreement on the document, which summarizes three previous reports and warns of the grave dangers posed by climate change. The new report is […]
