|
|
C.I.A. Is Sharing Data With Climate Scientists
19 01 2010  A satellite image of the East Siberian Sea from 1999-2008. This image has been degraded to hide the satellite’s true capabilities. USGS The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change. They seek insights from natural phenomena like clouds and glaciers, deserts and tropical forests. The collaboration restarts an effort the Bush administration shut down and has the strong backing of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the last year, as part of the effort, the collaborators have scrutinized images of Arctic sea ice from reconnaissance satellites in an effort to distinguish things like summer melts from climate trends, and they have had images of the ice pack declassified to speed the scientific analysis.
|
|
|
|
|
Fault Lines Remain After Climate Talks - Column
18 01 2010 The recently concluded climate talks in Copenhagen suggested to many commentators and participants that the global community, as represented by the United Nations, was incapable of broad agreement on just about anything. Others argued that such judgments were too swift and praised the outcome — a five-page document — as an historic first-step toward meaningful global action on the climate. Opinions have been as varied and discordant in the aftermath of the meeting as they were at the sessions in the Bella Center in Copenhagen, where thousands of delegates argued and postured — to uncertain ends — in the twilight of 2009...
|
|
|
|
|
The Copenhagen That Matters - Op-Ed
01 01 2010 As I listened to Denmark’s minister of economic and business affairs describe how her country used higher energy taxes to stimulate innovation in green power and then recycled the tax revenues back to Danish industry and consumers to make it easier for them to make and buy the new clean technologies, it all sounded so, well, intelligent. It sounded as if the Danes looked at themselves after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, found that they were totally dependent on Middle East oil and put in place a long-term strategy to make Denmark energy-secure and start a new industry at the same time...
|
|
|
|
|
Council in France Blocks a Carbon Tax as Weak on Polluters
01 01 2010
|
|
|
|
|
The Caucus: Obama’s Agenda Carries a Few Bruises - Feature
01 01 2010 On any list of tough sales jobs in American politics, tax increases, higher energy prices and foreign aid would rise to the top. The worldwide negotiations on curbing climate change involve all three — while Americans suffer 10 percent unemployment. Yet talks here in Copenhagen drew America’s leading Democrats, including President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, like moths to a flame. It provided a fitting coda to Mr. Obama’s first year in office. He made policy ambition his hallmark; Congressional Democratic leaders have followed, with historically remarkable early results...
|
|
|
|
|
E.U. Blames Others for ‘Great Failure’ on Climate
01 01 2010 European Union leaders on Tuesday sought to deflect criticism that they had fumbled their strategy at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting, just as a feudbetween the British and the Chinese over whom to blame for the outcomeworsened. Andreas Carlgren, the environment minister of Sweden, the countryholding the rotating E.U. presidency, said that the summit meeting hadbeen a “great failure” partly because other nations had rejectedtargets and a timetable for the rest of the world to sign on to bindingemissions reductions.
|
|
|
|
|
5 Nations Forge a Climate Deal, but Many Goals Remain Unmet
01 01 2010 President Obama announced here on Friday night that five major nations, including the United States, had together forged a climate deal. He called it “an unprecedented breakthrough” but acknowledged that it still fell short of what was required to combat global warming. The agreement addresses many of the issues that leaders came here to settle. But it has left many of the participants in the climate talks unhappy, from the Europeans, who now have the only binding carbon control regime in the world, to the delegates from the poorest nations, who objected to being left out of the critical negotiations. By the early hours of Saturday, representatives of the 193 countries who have negotiated here for nearly two weeks had not yet approved the deal and there were signs they might not. But Mr. Obama, who left before the conference considered the accord because of a major storm descending on Washington, noted that the agreement was merely a political statement and not a legally binding treaty and might not need ratification by the entire conference.
|
|
|
|
|
Copenhagen, and Beyond - Editorial
01 01 2010 The global climate negotiations in Copenhagen produced neither a grand success nor the complete meltdown that seemed almost certain as late as Friday afternoon. Despite two years of advance work, the meeting failed to convert a rare gathering of world leaders into an ambitious, legally binding action plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It produced instead a softer interim accord that, at least in principle, would curb greenhouses gases, provide ways to verify countries’ emissions, save rain forests, shield vulnerable nations from the impacts of climate change, and share the costs...
|
|
|
|
|
Off to the Races - Op-Ed
01 01 2010 I’ve long believed there are two basic strategies for dealing with climate change — the “Earth Day” strategy and the “Earth Race” strategy. This Copenhagen climate summit was based on the Earth Day strategy. It was not very impressive. This conference produced a series of limited, conditional, messy compromises, which it is not at all clear will get us any closer to mitigating climate change at the speed and scale we need. Indeed, anyone who watched the chaotic way this conference was “organized,” and the bickering by delegates with which it finished, has to ask whether this 17-year U...
|
|
|
|
|
A Grudging Accord in Climate Talks - Feature
01 01 2010 After two weeks of delays, grandstanding and frantic dealmaking, the United Nations climate change talks concluded here early Saturday morning with a grudging agreement by the participants to “take note” of a pact shaped by five major nations. The final accord — a 12-paragraph document — was a statement of an intention to act rather than a binding pledge to begin doing so. Many countries said it was a flawed but essential step forward. Yet there are doubts that the agreement will provide for a sig...
|
|
|
|
|
Obama Presses China for Accountability on Climate
01 01 2010 President Obama called on world leaders to come to an agreement on climate change, no matter how imperfect, and pressed for an accord that would monitor whether countries — primarily China — are complying with promised emissions cuts. Speaking just hours after arriving here for what is supposed to be the last day of difficult talks to address global warming, and clearly frustrated by the absence of any agreement, Mr. Obama was both emphatic and at times impatient.
|
|
|
|
|
Obama Has Goal to Wrest a Deal in Climate Talks - Feature
01 01 2010 President Obama arrives here on Friday morning bent on applying a combination of muscle and personal charm to secure a climate change agreement involving nearly 200 countries. He injects himself into a multilayered negotiation that has been far more chaotic and contentious than anticipated — frozen by longstanding divisions between rich and poor nations and a legacy of mistrust of the United States, which has long refused to accept any binding limits on its greenhouse gas emissions. The world is looking to Mr...
|
|
|
|
|
U.S. Offer of Long-Term Aid Pushes Climate Talks Forward
31 12 2009 With time running out on the stalled Copenhagen climate negotiations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clintongave new hope that an agreement might still be reached when sheannounced Thursday that the United States would help raise $100 billiona year by 2020 to help poor nations combat climate change. The talks are scheduled to end Friday, when President Obama and more than 100 other heads of state are due to arrive. Mrs. Clinton’s announcement signaled the first time the Obamaadministration had made a commitment to a medium-term financing effort,even though she did not specify the American contribution to this fund.She also cautioned that the United States’ participation was contingenton reaching a firm agreement this week, one that would require acommitment from China about greater transparency in its emissions reporting.
|
|
|
|
|
Two Days and Counting - Editorial
31 12 2009 Most of the news from Copenhagen is grim. With only two days left to go, negotiations for a new climate treaty were stumbling toward stalemate. We hope President Obama and other leaders will realize how much is at stake and pull off a last-minute breakthrough. The talks appear to have produced at least one positive development: a tentative agreement under which rich countries would pay poorer countries to save the world’s rain forests. If rich countries agree to mandatory caps on emissions — still a big if — they would be able to use these payments to offset their own emissions while they make the transition to cleaner energy sources...
|
|
|
|
|
Police Beat Back Massed Climate Protesters
30 12 2009 Police officers fired tear gas and wielded batons on Wednesday to beat back hundreds of demonstrators outside the global climate meeting in Copenhagen, as a police spokesman said 250 people had been arrested. The police tried to disperse the chanting, drum-beating protesterswho had marched from a train station about a mile away to try to maketheir way to the Bella Center, where representatives from nearly 200countries are meeting to try to reach an accord on climate change.A group of 50 to 100 delegates emerged from the convention center,seeking to meet with the protesters, but they, too, were driven back bythe police. In another development, the Danish chairwoman of the conference,Connie Hedegaard, said she was stepping down and that the Danish primeminister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, would take her place as heads of statefrom around the world begin arriving in Copenhagen. Ms. Hedegaard, aconservative, was Denmark’s minister of climate and energy and herplacement as chairwoman of the conference was seen as part of ashifting of global environmental issues from the fringe into thepolitical mainstream.
|
|
|
|
|
Delegates at Talks Scramble as Gulf on Issues Remains
16 12 2009 Impatience was clearly rising Tuesday at global climate negotiations here as delegates struggled without success to surmount disputes over issues like emissions targets and financial aid for developing countries. With less than four days left in the two-week conference, a newdraft negotiating text circulating among delegates reflected the widegulf over those issues and others like monitoring emissions ofheat-trapping gases.
The United States and China remained at a tenseimpasse over China’s refusal to accept international monitoring on itsturf.
|
|
|
|
|
Climate Talks Near Deal on Preservation of Forests
16 12 2009 Negotiators have all but completed a sweeping deal that would compensate countries for preserving forests, and in some cases, other natural landscapes like peat soils, swamps and fields that play a crucial role in curbing climate change. Environmental groups have long advocated such a compensation program because forests are efficient absorbers of carbon dioxide, the primary heat-trapping gas linked to global warming. Rain forest destruction, which releases the carbon dioxide stored in trees, is estimated to account for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally. The agreement for the program, if signed as expected, may turn out to be the most significant achievement to come out of the Copenhagen climate talks, providing a system through which countries can be paid for conserving disappearing natural assets based on their contribution to reducing emissions.
|
|
|
|
|
Talks Stall as Poorer Nations Threaten to Walk Out
16 12 2009 Ongoing climate negotiations were temporarily upended on Monday whendozens of developing countries threatened to walk out in protest,saying that the world’s richer countries were not doing enough to cuttheir greenhouse gas emissions. The move seemed to be tactical, as climate talks entered a second,more serious week, and by Monday afternoon, representatives fromdeveloping countries said they were ready to return to the table.Still, the threat of nonparticipation underscored the tenuous balancebetween richer and poorer nations.
|
|
|
|
|
Senate Poses Obstacles to Obama Pledge on Climate
14 12 2009 President Obama jets off to Copenhagen later this week to try to place an American stamp on a global climate change agreement. He will be trailed by a cloud of diplomats and bureaucrats all proclaiming the progress his administration has made on global warming in its 11 months in office.
What he will not be carrying is the assent of Congress to whatever he commits the United States to do. That’s a problem for a leader who represents the world’s second biggest greenhouse gas polluter, behind China.
|
|
|
|
|
Green Inc.: Week of Posturing at Copenhagen Climate Talks
14 12 2009
|
|
|
|
|
Europe Pledges Billions for Climate Aid for Poor Nations
13 12 2009 The European Union will contribute about $3 billion starting next year to help poorer countries deal with climate change, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain announced on Friday, a move that seeks to improve the chances of reaching an accord next week at climate change talks in Copenhagen. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking alongside Mr. Brown here at a summit of E.U. heads of state, said that France would contribute some $620 million next year to the so-called fast-start fund, which is designed to run over a three-year period until 2012, and could amount to an European contribution of more than 6 billion euros — or nearly $9 billion — in total. Mr. Sarkozy said further contributions to the fund would build credibility among some of the nations most exposed to the effects of global warming and that have demanded funding as part of any agreement reached in Copenhagen.
|
|
|
|
|
Protesters Gather to Urge Action on Climate Change
13 12 2009 Tens of thousands of demonstrators from around the globe took to thestreets here Saturday for the largest protest planned in two weeks ofinternational talks on a global strategy to combat climate change.
|
|
|
|
|
This Week in Copenhagen - Editorial
12 12 2009 There is no chance of even an interim agreement from the global warmingconference without the enthusiastic participation of China.
|
|
|
|
|
Senators Offer New Climate Proposals
11 12 2009 Three Senators released a broadly-worded blueprint of a climate change and energy bill on Thursday afternoon that they believe can win the 60 votes needed to push the bill through next year. The proposal was timed to help persuade delegates to the UnitedNations climate change conference in Copenhagen that the Senate isserious about passing a climate bill and not mired in a partisan morass. Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, Lindsey Graham,Republican of South Carolina and Joseph I. Lieberman, Independent ofConnecticut, sent President Obama a letter on Thursday outlining theirplan.
|
|
|
|
|
Dot Earth: Skeptics Hold Fast in Copenhagen
10 12 2009
|
|
|
