December 19th, 2009

Green Right Now Reports

The two week summit on climate change in Copenhagen wound to a close Saturday with the United Nations issuing a news release that many nations had agreed upon the issues that need to be addressed.

The agreement, seen either as a foothold or a failure in the fight against climate change, fell far short of the hoped-for signed treaty that would have included firm commitments on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the countries around the world.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called it “an essential beginning.”

“The importance will only be recognized when it’s codified into international law … We must transform this into a legally binding treaty next year,” he told the BBC.

The accord provides for industrialized nations to commit to specific emissions reductions targets by stating them within the agreement by the end of January, 2010. The top GHG-polluting nations include China, the United States, Russia, India and Japan, followed by Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Korea and Iran.

Here is the news release from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the arm of the UN that oversaw talks:

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December 17th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Personally, I’ve taken a low carbon emissions position on Copenhagen, watching the action from my desk here in the U.S.

You may be too. If so, I wanted to offer cool Internet tool you can use to assess how policy and science intersect. (Earlier I mentioned a Copenhagen Target Converter by SandbagClimateGame.org — where you can adjust emissions targets against various years so they can be better compared.)

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December 17th, 2009

Green Right Now Reports

Greenpeace doesn’t want American citizens to forget who’s stalling progress on climate action, namely, entrenched industrial polluters.

Greenpeace at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Building (Photo: Robert Meyers)

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December 15th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler Green Right Now Aiming to help put the Copenhagen climate talks on a track toward success, 1 Sky has called for President Obama to tap fossil fuel subsidies to fund developing nations. “Outrageously, the U.S. spends more than $10 billion of taxpayer money per year on subsidies to fossil fuel companies. Meanwhile, [...]

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