• Copenhagen Summit – Day 9 Summary

    COP15The UN climate conference in Copenhagen entered its decisive phase on Tuesday, as heads of state and government began to arrive for the final three days of negotiations. The leaders will be facing “a defining moment in history”, said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

    Prince of Wales speech at Copenhagen - The Prince of Wales has arrived in Copenhagen to promote forest issues.He delivered a speech today at the UN Summit.

    Foreign Secretary ‘determined’ to secure ambitious deal - Britain is determined to make sure that Copenhagen produces an ambitious deal on tackling climate change in which Europe plays a ‘critical role’.

    UN conference gearing up for make-or-break finale - World leaders “face a defining moment in history”, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said as the Copenhagen conference formally entered its high-level stage Tuesday.

    South Korea to bridge rich and poor nations - As the first emerging economy to take on absolute reduction commitments, South Korea hopes to play a key role in Copenhagen. Read more

    China: Poor countries are first in line for funding – So far the majority of internationally funded projects under the Kyoto Protocol have been in China. But other countries need the funds more urgently according to Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei. Read more

    Merkel concerned over Copenhagen pace – German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced concern Tuesday about the pace of climate negotiations in Copenhagen and said she is “somewhat nervous” about prospects of success. Read more

    Forest negotiations are making headway – There is mounting agreement on rewarding tropical countries which slow deforestation under a new deal. This is the first issue where significant progress has been made in Copenhagen. Read more

    Further commitments needed to break negotiation deadlock – A blueprint, released Tuesday in Copenhagen, outlines three options for long-term climate aid from developed to developing countries. Read more

    Japan to unveil 10 billion dollars in climate aid – A pledge of funds from rich countries will be a key ingredient for any climate change deal in Copenhagen. Japan is ready to make an offer. Read more

    Australian PM warns of failure – Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Monday urged world leaders to be more flexible as a consensus looks difficult to achieve. Read more

    Schwarzenegger says states key to climate fight – Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says countries cannot solve the problem of climate change without the help of states, cities, regions, activists, scientists and universities. Read more

    Developing world threatens battle on drafts  -African countries, Brazil, China, South Africa and India say they have produced a default proposal to be used only if rich countries try to shortcut UN-led negotiations in Copenhagen. Read more

    >>>Full in depth article visit COP15 and Act on Copenhagen

    >>> View other MoreEco News & Views Summit Summary’s

    December 16, 2009

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    Copenhagen Summit – Day 4 Summary

    COP15It’s day five of the negotiations and UK Ministers are starting to arrive, gearing up for the Ministerial segment of these crucial negotiations. Ed Miliband has joined the UK negotiating team and will today go into a series of bilateral meetings with key counterparts including the United States, China, South Africa and Denmark.

    Yesterday the overarching plenary was suspended, but the negotiations have continued in other sessions on issues such as technology, finance, and adaptation.

    As always the team at MoreEco have summarised the events of Day 4 for your.

    Capping temperatures is ‘achievable’ says AVOID scientist - Carbon emissions must start to fall within the next 10 years to keep the rise in global temperatures below the 2 degree C level that would trigger environmental devastation, one of the UK Government’s leading climate scientists says.

    US is determined to achieve strong agreement – Stern – The chief negotiator for the United States says that Washington is determined to get the ’strongest possible agreement’ in Copenhagen. Todd Stern said he was under no illusion that success would be easy but said that there was a strong political commitment to an agreement from the US Government.

    A message from Global Agenda Council Members to World Leaders - More than 200 senior figures across business, finance and academia have called on world leaders to agree a ‘bold new deal’ to curb global warming and generate low carbon growth. The signatories, who are members of the Global Agenda Council on climate change of the World Economic Forum, an independent body, warned that climate change threatened to put ‘our very society at risk’.

    Sweden pledges 800 million euro for climate change fund – Sweden says it will give 800 million euro (1.2 billion US dollars) to help developing nations fight climate change.

    G-77: Personal call on President Obama - The Group of 77, representing the majority of the world’s developing countries, urges the US to join the Kyoto Protocol and commit to emission reductions comparable to those of other industrialized nations.

    >>>Full in depth article visit COP15 and Act on Copenhagen

    >>> View other MoreEco News & Views Summit Summary’s

    December 11, 2009

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    Copenhagen Summit – Day 1 Summary

    COP15The much anticipated United Nations Climate Change negotiations have begun in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. It’s two weeks to go and it’s crunch time for a binding global climate deal.

    The Bella Centre is a hive of activity, as 192 countries converge to agree a global deal on climate change. The formal sessions begun this morning, with an opening plenary at 10am, local time. Outside the negotiations hall, demonstrators, NGOs and others are also gathering, pressing on the urgency of a global deal.

    Highlights from  day 1 are;

    COP15 Cultural Opening Ceremony –  Short film and Danish jazz legend open COP15. More than 2000 delegates watched the four-minute long film ‘Please Help the World’ when COP15 opened this morning. Thousands of other delegates watched the opening on screens in meeting rooms at the Bella Center. “We have made a film which speaks to the heart rather than to the brain,” says the Danish director of the film Mikkel Blaabjerg Poulsen.

    Wave March - More than 50,000 people joined a climate change march in central London calling for world leaders to agree a deal to protect the environment at their negotiations in Copenhagen this month. Celebrities and campaigners joined workers, students and families on a colourful and musical march, called The Wave, from the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square to the House of Parliament.

    UK’s Pay as You Save scheme – Hundreds of homeowners across the country are being offered the chance to install energy saving technologies at no upfront cost in an initiative timed to mark the launch of the climate change conference in Copenhagen. Homeowners in Birmingham, Sunderland, Stroud and the London Borough of Sutton will test out new ways to finance whole house energy makeovers under the Government’s £4m Pay As You Save scheme.

    UK’s Pay as You Save scheme Hundreds of homeowners across the country are being offered the chance to install energy saving technologies at no upfront cost in an initiative timed to mark the launch of the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

    South African targets for reducing the growth in carbon emissions - South Africa has become the latest emerging economy to set out targets for reducing the growth in carbon emissions. President Jacob Zuma said that South Africa would undertake mitigation actions that will result in a deviation below the current emissions baseline of around 34% by 2020 and by around 42% by 2025.

    Hopes rise as Obama and Singh commit to attend final day of talks - Hopes of a global deal on climate change were further raised after US President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced they would attend the final negotiating stages of the Copenhagen summit.

    The White House said that the President would arrive for the final day of official negotiations on 18 December rather this Wednesday,  9 December, as originally planned.

    Newspapers urge governments to make Copenhagen a success - As the historic climate change conference opened in Copenhagen and optimism of a successful outcome continued to build, Britain’s leading newspapers used their final leader columns to urge the world’s governments to make the meeting a success.

    The Guardian used the whole its front page on Monday 7 December to carry a joint editorial being shared by 56 newspapers in 45 countries across Europe, North America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

    PM :’I will do everything in my power to succeed’ - Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband used the final weekend before today’s opening of the Copenhagen climate change conference to hammer home the message that there is a scientific consensus behind the need for action.

    In a series of interviews in newspapers and on television politics programmes, they warned that people who spread doubt over the science behind man-made global warming risked ’sabotaging’ an agreement to cut harmful greenhouse has emissions.

    World only a ‘few billion tonnes’ short of climate target – The offers that countries have already made to reduce their carbon emissions are only a ‘few billion tonnes’ short of the total cuts needed to hot the target of capping the rise in global temperatures, Lord Stern said in Copenhagen as the climate change conference got underway.

    Countries meeting at the United Nations climate change conference may be closer than some observers realise to agreeing the emissions cuts required to give the world a reasonable chance of avoiding global warming of more than 2˚C above pre-industrial levels, he said.

    >>>Source; Act On Copenhagen


    Homeowners in Birmingham, Sunderland, Stroud and the London Borough of Sutton will test out new ways to finance whole house energy makeovers under the Government’s £4m Pay As You Save scheme.

    December 8, 2009

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    Larry Elliott: We Should Pay for the Developing World to go Green

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    Larry Elliott, from the Guardian, discusses Gordon Brown’s notion that rich western banks should pay for the world to go green:

    The response was predictable. No sooner had Gordon Brown expressed enthusiasm for a global transaction tax than the backlash began. Not something we like, said the Americans. We want lower not higher taxes, said the Canadians. Too hard to enforce, said the International Monetary Fund.
    This is the last gasp of an ancien régime. The banks in 2009 are the Bourbons in 1789, the Romanovs in 1917. They existed in a bubble of privilege and took the public for a ride. They caused a financial crisis and triggered the biggest economic crash since the 1930s. They now expect the state to clear up the financial mess caused by this greed and stupidity through public spending cuts and higher taxes.
    As the prime minister noted in St Andrews on Saturday, this is not on. “There must be a better economic and social contract between financial institutions and the public, based on trust and just distribution of risks and rewards,” Brown said. Amen to that. He is 100% right and he deserves support.
    Finance ministries were initially dismissive about debt relief but were eventually won over. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have both backed the idea of a transaction tax; Brown’s intervention means there is now a powerful bloc challenging the status quo.
    Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, was sniffy about Brown’s idea at the weekend, but Downing Street is encouraged by the Obama administration’s willingness to cooperate internationally in a clampdown on tax havens.
    The political argument in favour of reform is strong. Firstly, policymakers want to put in place measures to reduce the risks of future financial crises. Secondly, financial institutions provide an easy source of revenue at a time when governments are counting every penny.
    Poor countries did not cause the crisis yet have been badly hurt by it. They need money to develop low-carbon growth strategies. Without a willingness by the west to bankroll greener economic strategies in the developing world there will be no climate change deal. The portents are bad for next month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen. Indeed, the negotiations are starting to echo the global trade liberalisation talks, which began in Doha eight years ago this week and are still going nowhere.
    Rich countries have found that the bigger developing nations are no longer prepared to be pushed around. In all previous rounds, the European Union and the United States have imposed a private deal on the rest of the WTO membership: the big change during the Doha talks has been the no-nonsense approach of Brazil, India and China. They have refused to roll over in the face of bullying tactics from Brussels and Washington, demanding that the developed world provide compensation to poor countries for the biased outcomes of previous rounds.
    The stakes are much higher in Copenhagen. If the scientists are right, then the international community cannot afford a decade of delay in concluding a deal on climate change. Developing countries say – with some justification – that the west has been responsible for the lion’s share of greenhouse gases and that rich countries should therefore shoulder most of the burden when it comes to cutting emissions. India has more people without electricity than live in the EU.
    Rich countries – particularly the US – argue that there can be no deal unless the larger developing countries participate. They, too, have a point. While the stock of greenhouse gases is certainly the responsibility of the developed world, the flow of new emissions will come from the fast-growing emerging countries, where demands for energy are increasing exponentially. Four-fifths of the growth in emissions between now and 2030 will come from those developing nations.
    Please read the full article at Guardian.co.uk

    The response was predictable. No sooner had Gordon Brown expressed enthusiasm for a global transaction tax than the backlash began. Not something we like, said the Americans. We want lower not higher taxes, said the Canadians. Too hard to enforce, said the International Monetary Fund.

    This is the last gasp of an ancien régime. The banks in 2009 are the Bourbons in 1789, the Romanovs in 1917. They existed in a bubble of privilege and took the public for a ride. They caused a financial crisis and triggered the biggest economic crash since the 1930s. They now expect the state to clear up the financial mess caused by this greed and stupidity through public spending cuts and higher taxes.

    As the prime minister noted in St Andrews on Saturday, this is not on. “There must be a better economic and social contract between financial institutions and the public, based on trust and just distribution of risks and rewards,” Brown said. Amen to that. He is 100% right and he deserves support.

    Finance ministries were initially dismissive about debt relief but were eventually won over. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have both backed the idea of a transaction tax; Brown’s intervention means there is now a powerful bloc challenging the status quo.

    Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, was sniffy about Brown’s idea at the weekend, but Downing Street is encouraged by the Obama administration’s willingness to cooperate internationally in a clampdown on tax havens.

    The political argument in favour of reform is strong. Firstly, policymakers want to put in place measures to reduce the risks of future financial crises. Secondly, financial institutions provide an easy source of revenue at a time when governments are counting every penny.

    Poor countries did not cause the crisis yet have been badly hurt by it. They need money to develop low-carbon growth strategies. Without a willingness by the west to bankroll greener economic strategies in the developing world there will be no climate change deal. The portents are bad for next month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen. Indeed, the negotiations are starting to echo the global trade liberalisation talks, which began in Doha eight years ago this week and are still going nowhere.

    Rich countries have found that the bigger developing nations are no longer prepared to be pushed around. In all previous rounds, the European Union and the United States have imposed a private deal on the rest of the WTO membership: the big change during the Doha talks has been the no-nonsense approach of Brazil, India and China. They have refused to roll over in the face of bullying tactics from Brussels and Washington, demanding that the developed world provide compensation to poor countries for the biased outcomes of previous rounds.

    The stakes are much higher in Copenhagen. If the scientists are right, then the international community cannot afford a decade of delay in concluding a deal on climate change. Developing countries say – with some justification – that the west has been responsible for the lion’s share of greenhouse gases and that rich countries should therefore shoulder most of the burden when it comes to cutting emissions. India has more people without electricity than live in the EU.

    Rich countries – particularly the US – argue that there can be no deal unless the larger developing countries participate. They, too, have a point. While the stock of greenhouse gases is certainly the responsibility of the developed world, the flow of new emissions will come from the fast-growing emerging countries, where demands for energy are increasing exponentially. Four-fifths of the growth in emissions between now and 2030 will come from those developing nations.

    Please read the full article at: Guardian.co.uk

    November 9, 2009

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