Tag Archives: climate conference

The mood in Paris last December was unmistakable, the optimism palpable. After decades of gridlock and disappointment, the negotiation at the COP21 climate conference held to its promise of progress. As Andrew Deutz, Director of International Government Relations for the Nature Conservancy told me, what was different about COP21 from past negotiations was this time “there were no villains.” From the very first day, …

In less than two months nations from around the world convene in Paris for the COP21 climate conference. With one more official round of negotiations before Paris, co-chairs for the United Nations ADP (Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action)  Ahmed Djoghlaf of Algeria and Daniel Reifsnyder of the U.S. have been hard at work whittling down the climate treaty draft text to a …

Living in a post-carbon world – The largest international scientific meeting on climate change concluded this week in Paris, reinforcing the idea that 2015 is a crossroads for action on global warming. The international conference Our Common Future Under Climate Change (CFCC15) included 2000 scientists from nearly 100 countries discussing a large breadth of interests and disciplines. A total of 165 session over the four-day conference considered …

A first step on the road to Paris – Last week the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) announced that important progress had been won on the road to Paris, where, at the COP 21 climate conference later this year, the goal is to reach a binding global climate treaty. Any hope of achieving such a pact rests in the hard work of participants in a series of …

Many are once again disappointed with the outcome out of this year’s climate negotiations, but as with previous years, we did manage to salvage an agreement at the eleventh hour.  At the end of the first week of negotiations at COP 19, it looked like the climate talks would remain deadlocked, but as has often been the case, we saw a breakthrough only after …

Coal and climate in Warsaw Perhaps one of the biggest ironies at the ongoing COP19 climate conference is the open acceptance of corporate sponsorship by Poland, this year’s host country for the talks – sponsors that are, as Giles Parkinson points out in RenewEconomy, mostly fossil fuel companies as Lotos, a Polish oil company and brown coal producer PGE. In fact, Poland has a rather spotty record …

Despite the expectation that we will see progress on climate finance, there are a number of people who are cynical about the outcome of COP 19. Every year around this time, as we settle in for UN climate talks, an army of pundits come out and tell us why we will not see anything of great consequence from the negotiations. They usually end up …