1. Home
  2. Articles posted by: Rona Fried (Page 726)

Moving Beyond Copenhagen – the Ball is in Motion

COP.jpg

By Rona Fried After two years of negotiations leading up to the Copenhagen finale, few of us are waiting with baited breath for the outcome. Maybe it’s too much to ask for hundreds of countries to successfully negotiate complex issues – even with such high stakes, the challenge is just too great. If we add up all the commitments made at Copenhagen, the sum total is about half of what’s necessary to stave off climate change. This graph from the Climate Action Tracker shows that countries’ reduction proposals leave us with a temperature increase of 3.9°C, equivalent to 770 ppm of carbon dioxide (CO2). Science tells us catastrophic climate change will occur if we exceed 1.5°C – 350 ppm of CO2. Unfortunately, the US continues to hold the world back. Under President Obama’s leadership, we’re finally moving ahead with serious commitments to energy efficiency, green manufacturing and renewable energy. But our specific GHG emission reduction targets are pathetic – and an embarrassment. As the world’s leading polluter for the past century (and the creator of climate change), the US should take a strong leadership position on emission cuts – 40% by 2020, not a measly 3% by 2020 below 1990 […]

Read More

Green Week in Review podcast – December 18, 2009

GWiR_logo(tiny).jpg

The Green Week in Review is a podcast, hosted by SustainableBusiness.com News Editor Bart King. It’s posted every Friday morning and is about 15 minutes long. You can listen to it through your browser or download it to a portable MP3 player. Sign up for our General News RSS Feed and it will be automatically downloaded to your computer’s media player each week. In this week’s show… Copenhagen Week 2 Coverage: Copenhagen Summary: Signs of Hope? Copenhagen Summary: Two Days Left US Announces $350M Initiative for Clean Energy in Developing Nations Copenhagen Summary: Day 8 Copenhagen Summary: Halfway Mark Copenhagen Summary: Day 5 Editorial: Copenhagen is About More Than Climate Change Plus, a summary of the week’s top cleantech headlines. ++++ Email comments or questions to bart@sustainablebusiness.com

Read More

Editorial: Copenhagen is About More Than Climate Change

Bart.jpg

Whether you believe recent reports that global climate change is on course for worst-case scenarios, or you believe hacked emails from the University of East Anglia prove it’s all a big hoax, one thing is undeniable: international negotiations on climate change have brought us to a critical juncture in world history. The international community will soon agree to a common path for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or abandon the idea altogether, return to our respective corners and wait to see what happens. Following two years of laborious negotiations, world leaders are meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, Dec. 7-18, in an effort to reach final agreement on emissions targets for the year 2020 and funding for poor nations–two obstacles that have thus far proven insurmountable. These elements would be the core of a protocol to take effect in 2012 when the current Kyoto Protocol comes to an end. The Kyoto Protocol, which was devised as a test period for global greenhouse gas reduction strategies, is already widely considered a failure. This is largely because the United States chose not to participate, thereby undermining the protocol’s economic and political effectiveness. President Obama has pledged to the world that the United States will participate […]

Read More