Rich nations 'give up' on new climate treaty until 2020 | Environment Governments of the world's richest countries have given up on forging a new treaty on climate change to take effect this decade, with potentially disastrous consequences for the environment through global warming. Ahead of critical talks starting next week, most of the world's leading economies now privately admit that no new global climate agreement will be reached before 2016 at the earliest, and that even if it were negotiated by then, they would stipulate it could not come into force until 2020. The eight-year delay is the worst contemplated by world governments during 20 years of tortuous negotiations on greenhouse gas emissions, and comes despite intensifying warnings from scientists and economists about the rapidly increasing dangers of putting off prompt action. After the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 ended amid scenes of chaos, governments pledged to try to sign a new treaty in 2012.
U.N. climate adaptation fund running out of cash Climate Change: Bangkok preliminary meeting signals trouble ahead Since the Copenhagen Climate summit we’ve known there is something very wrong with the U.N. political framework for climate change. Early morning compromise decisions by exhausted negotiators have become the rule at Climate Change meetings. It happened again at the preparatory talks in Bangkok last week. Delegates have consumed three and a half days just to agree on an agenda containing the headings of the Cancun Agreements, and a couple of “additional matters”. Christiana Figueres, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, said that discussions have been about the scope of the work ahead as well as the expected outcome in Durban. To me this is as much of an agenda as one can get. The head of the U.S. delegation, Jonathan Pershing, described the meeting as “an arduous process with promising results”. What’s so wrong with this process? Global conditions were very favorable in Copenhagen. If a meaningful agreement depends on domestic political support, then it becomes a bottom-up approach.
China's Coal Use and Estimated CO2 Emissions Fell in 2014 | Barbara Finamore's Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC [Backyard in Datong with coal/Peter Van den Bossche] Good news! China's coal consumption fell by 2.9 percent in 2014, the first drop in 14 years, according to official Chinese energy statistics released yesterday. [Glenn Peters/Responding to Climate Change] Here are three reasons why China is acting on climate change and air pollution: National War on Pollution: Much of the drop in China's coal consumption can be attributed to efforts to tackle the country's staggering air pollution. It is still too early to predict just how quickly China will phase out coal, though a number of analysts believe that China's coal use is very likely to peak before 2020. [Backyard in Datong with coal/Peter Van den Bossche] Good news! [Glenn Peters/Responding to Climate Change] Here are three reasons why China is acting on climate change and air pollution: National War on Pollution: Much of the drop in China's coal consumption can be attributed to efforts to tackle the country's staggering air pollution.
Paris 2015: How can we compare the climate pledges so far? - ECIU As the UN climate talks continue this week in Bonn, so far 10 countries or groups have submitted their emission pledges to the UN. This already includes several major emitters: the US accounts for 15% of global emissions and the EU for about 11%. Adding up the total, pledges submitted so far account for about a third of global emissions. Later this year, the UN climate convention (UNFCCC) and others will be calculating how much these pledges add up to, and whether they put the world on track to stay below the ‘safe’ threshold of 2oC of global warming. The climate pledges submitted to the UN have a range of different conditions attached, and different baselines, making them hard to compare: and here are some of the reasons why. Different methods and baselines The pledges are known in UN-speak as INDCs, which stands for intended nationally determined contributions. Under the Kyoto Protocol, virtually all countries with targets used the base year of 1990, making pledges easier to compare.