Posted by Jake Schmidt in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Illegal logging has a huge impact on the loss of tropical forests in the key countries that account for the vast majority of deforestation (as I discussed here). These forests are being lost at the rate of two football fields...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Want to Protect Farms and Ranches Here? Protect them there. Ending deforestation in the tropics isn’t just some tree-hugger’s cause. Those are the opening lines of a new advertisement campaign run by the Ohio Corn Growers Association and Avoided Deforestation...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
In the ongoing onslaught on the science underlying global warming, one recent criticism has focused on the finding that global warming could cause large-scale dieback of Amazon rainforest as cited in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (a...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
There was an extensive debate in the lead-in to the Kyoto Protocol (and after) about whether incentives for reducing deforestation would be recognized as a part of the agreement. For a number of reasons countries didn’t agree to include deforestation...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
During the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh an unnoticed announcement could have a huge impact on global warming pollution. Unreported at the time (I missed it and I was in Pittsburgh), the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced that: "We are...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Greening China , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Today begins a week dubbed "climate week" because of all the high-level climate discussions that are occurring. And they just all happen to be occurring in the US at an important time for the US domestic debate to pass...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
You might be wondering what the four things in the headline to this post have to do with each other. Frogs? Deforestation? SOS? and NRDC's Leaders???? Excellent question! They are connected in a very simple way: NRDC's President Frances Beinecke...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
I've been spending a lot of my time recently trying to get a strong structure for addressing the loss of the world's tropical rainforests as a part of the US climate bill. This took two parallel tracks -- developing a...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
In a recent New York Times article New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Rain Forests, some confusion arose on the need to stop the loss of tropical deforestation (or at least that is the way I read the article). We...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Today, NRDC joined a diverse group of environmental, conservation, and development organizations; businesses; and leading academics in a "Call for Leadership" to address deforestation (available here and a list of partners here). Frances Beinecke, our President, helped launch this "Call" with a...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Greening China , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Reflecting back on the last two weeks of the Poland climate talks, it is hard not to think how much we need "leaders to lead" us to ambitious solutions to global warming, while creating millions of green jobs and helping...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
As I briefly discussed on Earthbeat, on Monday Brazilian President Lula da Silva signed a national climate change plan, which included a pledge to cut Brazil's deforestation rate in half from today's levels by 2018 -- from approximately 4,633 to...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
UPDATED 12/19/08: I had some subsequent conversations with key negotiators, other NGOs, other key policymakers which helped to clarify some of the positions. As always these negotiations move fast and in real-time so I hope you bear with me on any...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Greening China , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
The first week of the Poland Climate Negotiations has ended and progress is slow. This isn't a surprising outcome at this stage in negotiations. Without the new US leadership in place and with many of the key pieces of the post-2012...
Posted by Jake Schmidt in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
I spoke yesterday from Poland on the radio program Earthbeat about some of the happenings in Poland these first days of the climate negotiations. It is too early in the negotiations for any news on details of the negotiations, but...
