I read a really good book by Steve Schlesinger a few years back called Act of Creation. It’s about the San Francisco conference at which the United Nations was born. There was a lot of intrigue and high drama, with plenty at stake. There are stories of heroes, too, like Edward Stettinius, the unsung Secretary […]
There’s plenty of sturm und drang coming from COP 15. The “FT” reports this morning that the African states first walked out then returned, having claimed “…that they had won some concessions.” The “Financial Times” front page this morning declared China signals climate funds shift. Apparently, the PRC “… abandoned its demand for funding from […]
I have not been, like most of the rest of the climate change cognoscenti, writing nonstop about Copenhagen this week. I have been working on reviewing thesis work from students in the MS in Global Affairs program at NYU where I teach on climate change. I’ve had one blockbuster thesis on how to make the […]
I wrote here recently about what the initial stakes of various big players are for Copenhagen. Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, and one of the world’s leading experts on the economics of climate change and energy, says, in this “FT” op-ed piece yesterday, that with what’s […]
As part of the ongoing, comprehensive coverage that the “Financial Times” has been devoting to the issue of climate change, including of the Copenhagen conference, here is a truly terrific and most informative interactive graphic depicting several levels of how carbon dioxide emissions are calculated, by country total and per capita, by individual year and […]
You may have been hearing about the contretemps regarding emails to and from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia. I have no particular desire now, frankly, to get into all the allegations, counter-allegations, etc., etc. that have been flying around in the news, the blogosphere and beyond. There is a […]
“People Want Action on Climate Change” – That’s the conclusion of a poll out this week that was commissioned by the World Bank and carried out by WorldPublicOpinion.org. The press release says “People signaled they would support public measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions and step up adaptation measures.” The report on the poll, Public […]
“I have seen the future and it works,” Lincoln Steffens famously said, albeit prematurely, in 1921 about Soviet Communism. (After ten years time, however, he realized it didn’t. In any event, it’s a great line.) Well, the Germans are showing us the future now: It’s renewable energy. For how, see the segment on “The German […]
If you play poker you know that all the players have to ante up with a stake before each new deal. You have to “feed the kitty” – or you don’t play. Perhaps not coincidentally, parties that have an interest in a particular project, enterprise or, in the case of COP 15, addressing the looming […]
If you’ve been betting on Copenhagen, as many of us have, then things are looking up. “President Barack Obama will attend climate-change talks in Copenhagen next month, offering an emissions-cut goal of about 17 percent by 2020…” reports Bloomberg News here. The White House blog confirms this and bullets the major initiatives that the administration […]
I wrote about The Earth here a while back. It was really about soil and focused on a fantastic article in “National Geographic Magazine.” I’ve become more and more interested in “cool farming,” teach this stuff in my climate change classes, and have even had the opportunity to write an article about biochar. Here is […]
There are all sorts of prognoses for what’s going to happen in a couple of weeks at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP15). Some are calling this the most important international meeting of minds since the Bretton Woods and San Francisco conferences created much of the political architecture for the postwar […]
I’ve been reading Al Gore’s new book, with a view to using it for both my MS and continuing ed classes this spring at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs. It’s looking pretty good to me as there are excellent up-to-date perspectives on all sorts of important topics, particularly the promise of renewables, energy efficiency, green […]
Several recent posts here have looked at the state of play leading up to the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). I’ve been generally optimistic about prospects – although the title of my last post may belie that. There are several reasons why I’m […]
José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, has been a leading proponent of strong action against climate change, not only in the 27-nation European Union, but globally. The EU has been in the vanguard, particularly when the executive branch of the US was for eight years a captive to special interests and a politics […]