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Breaking: Norway to announce 40% reductions by 2020
8 Oct 2009
An announcement is expected here at the UNFCCC climate talks in Bangkok today that the Norwegian government will commit to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2020 – based on 1990 levels. Below are interviews from International Climate Action Network members Bard Lahn of Friends of the Earth Norway and Dale Marshall of Canada’s […]
C’mon Aussies
8 Oct 2009
Australia seems to be making progress – moving recently from its insistence on ending at 6pm to allow an extra hour of fun for KP discussions. But Australia, this simply will not do. We cannot get to an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen under such conditions. You have got to do away with the pleated pants and […]
Africa Must Unite on REDD
8 Oct 2009
Africa’s forests are attracting increasing attention. And for two good reasons: One, they hold great potential as a carbon sink. Two, unsustainable land use, agricultural expansion, commercial harvesting and urbanisation are causing massive deforestation and forest degradation. When African REDD [Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation] negotiators put together their country strategies, ECO highlights […]
LULUCF Report Card
8 Oct 2009
End of term is nearing for LULUCF and ECO presents the report card for some Parties, indicating their grade based on interesting statements made in Wednesday morning’s contact group on Annex I Parties’ emission reductions. ECO notes that this subject is a difficult one with several Parties routinely handing in incomplete assignments and struggling to understand […]
Baby Steps on Finance
8 Oct 2009
The US proposal on financial architecture has received considerable interest over the last few days, and with good reason. It is an interesting mix of new and old, good and bad, promising and perverse. ECO can see movement in two respects. First, after consistently resisting calls for a new institution, the US has now endorsed […]
No Time to Lose
8 Oct 2009
All the talk about how little negotiating time remains before Copenhagen inspired ECO to turn to our dictionary of quotations for wisdom and guidance. Apparently 1960s British artist Andy Warhol once said: “They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” This is just how ECO feels about the time […]
Tick Those Kyoto Boxes
7 Oct 2009
It is high time that certain rules and issues under the Kyoto Protocol get resolved if countries are to complete them by Copenhagen. Some of these have been discussed for two years or more and Bangkok needs to bring these to a close. After all, the more time spent talking about base year, for example, […]
IEA World Outlook: Our Planet is Worth Saving
7 Oct 2009
The benefits of taking serious steps to solve global warming far outweigh the costs, says the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its World Energy Outlook 2009 Climate Change excerpt report released yesterday. A tool for the IEA’s regular projection of global energy use and global warming pollution, its report this time is particularly significant as […]
Algerian Embassy Delivered a Fossil of the Day Award
7 Oct 2009
As many of you know, the International Climate Action Network announces a “Fossil of the Day” award for countries acting particularly poorly at international climate talks. On Sept. 29th at the UNFCCC talks in Bangkok we announced Algeria as the first place Fossil of the Day for blatantly not representing the interests of the African […]
Saudi Arabia Awarded Fossil of the Day Again
7 Oct 2009
Bangkok, Thailand, 6 October 2009: CAN International gave its Fossil of the Day award to the following country judged best at blocking progress over the past day of negotiations. First Place: Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, during an informal meeting, blocked agreement on having a new informal session between Barcelona and Copenhagen. Although every other country […]