In December 2009, world leaders will meet in Denmark to forge a new climate accord that replaces the Kyoto Protocol. This time, all signs point to the United States being a leader -- not an obstacle. But unless the U.S. takes action to curb global warming pollution even before an accord is reached, it could be too late. Follow this series from NRDC's representatives to the Copenhagen conference.
On Sunday, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will embark on a five day trip to the United States for the first official state visit of the Obama administration. The visit will be highlighted with a state dinner with President Obama...continued→
Earlier this week, NRDC's China program director Barbara Finamore was at China's official state guesthouse--the same spot President Nixon stayed when he opened U.S.-China relations in 1972--when U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that the United States and China...continued→
U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu visits Delhi ahead of Prime Minister Singh's upcoming state visit to the U.S., and talks about increased cooperation between the US and India on climate change and clean energy. But he tells a meeting...continued→
Today, during President Obama's first full day here in Beijing, he and President Hu Jintao announced a package of clean energy partnership initiatives between the United States and China that adds substance to the structure of the US-China MOU on...continued→
China and the U.S. just announced a Joint Statement (available here) and a package of agreed actions on clean energy. This meeting between these two countries that account for around 40% of the world's CO2 emissions from fossil fuels couldn't...continued→
President Obama is on a swing through Asia and is now in China for high-level meetings on a range of issues. At the top of his agenda with China is how these two key players can individually and jointly move...continued→
In conjunction with President Obama's trip to China, I had the great privilege of speaking today at a high-level Clean Energy Roundtable in Beijing with top government officials from the U.S. and China. Over 100 experts attended, including the heads...continued→
We tend to think of climate change as an air pollution problem, or a threat to our atmosphere, but in fact water and especially watery ecosystems (wetlands, mangroves, mountainous cloud forests, and more) will play a major role in...continued→
This morning (Singapore time), leaders from 19 countries -- including the US, China, Mexico, Australia, South Korea, and Japan -- joined a last minute breakfast to discuss the upcoming global warming meeting in Copenhagen. The breakfast meeting, hosted by the...continued→
As President Obama heads to China, it is important to recognize just how much has changed in the past year. For the first time ever, an American president is traveling to Beijing with the issue of climate change at the...continued→
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is hopeful that the December climate conference in Copenhagen will be elevated to the head-of-state level, assuring that the session will receive top-order attention from the world's leaders. He told me that on Tuesday when...continued→
We are less than a month away from the start of the Copenhagen Summit and the debate on climate change in India - and the media coverage - is intensifying. Nitin Desai — former UN official and member of Prime...continued→
The Senate has started debating the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, and in just a few weeks, the United Nations climate meetings in Copenhagen will begin. I have chosen this moment to release my first book, Clean...continued→
The last round of global warming negotiations before the Copenhagen meeting begins are just wrapping up here in Barcelona. Much of the actual negotiations were focused on getting the negotiating text and the underlying details contained in the text into...continued→
I have been an environmental advocate for more than 35 years. And throughout that time, I have written policy briefs, magazine articles, and blog posts, but never before had I been inspired to write a book. That changed several months...continued→
One of the chief talking points of opponents of US clean energy and climate legislation is the claim that the bills working their way through Congress would have little impact on global warming. Taking US action in isolation, they claim...continued→
Last Friday, Senators Kerry and Boxer released a more detailed draft of the clean energy and climate legislation they introduced last month. This new version brings welcome clarity and offers an excellent starting point for Senate Environment and Public Works...continued→
Today is 350.org's International Day of Climate Action. It is inspiring to see such concern about the urgent need to address climate change being displayed through more than 5,000 actions in 181 countries throughout the world (check out the images of...continued→
Over the last week or so, I have been blogging about the impacts of climate change on several of our BioGems. From the tundra of America's Arctic in Alaska to the tropics of Costa Rica, all of our BioGems are...continued→
The Heart of the Boreal Forest is a breathtaking expanse of woodlands, marshes and over 1.5 million lakes straddling the border between the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba, Canada. The forest is a haven for caribou, wolves and wolverines, great...continued→
NRDC's President, Frances Beinecke, traveled last July to the Peace-Athabasca Delta BioGem in Alberta, Canada. She wrote in her blog about the visit that: All four major bird flyways in North America converge in one spot in the boreal, right...continued→
Bristol Bay in Alaska is NRDC's newest BioGem. The Bay's watershed sits on the eastern-most arm of the Bering Sea, about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska. Its massive salmon runs provide food for grizzlies, wolves, eagles, beluga whales and...continued→
Yesterday a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee held a hearing to discuss helping the "world's most vulnerable nations" to respond to the droughts, floods and refugees created by climate change. In general, the Senators and witnesses agreed that the US should...continued→
One of the planet's last truly wild frontiers, the America's Arctic BioGem is a landscape of dramatic mountain ranges, frozen tundra, and ice-sheets. It is home to remarkable species capable of enduring the harshest conditions, like the polar bear, caribou,...continued→
Recently there has been a lot of heartening news from India on climate change. See our earlier blogs on India's new solar power and energy efficiency policies (see here and here) and the dramatic shift in India's approach to the...continued→
The game changed on Sunday. The New York Times op-ed written by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democratic Senator John Kerry calling for clean energy and climate legislation transformed the debate from "maybe some time in the next year or...continued→
I'm in Copenhagen where Indian Minister of State for Environment & Forests Jairam Ramesh just gave a speech where he said: "We come to Copenhagen as a deal maker, not a deal breaker". No I didn't mistake the dates of...continued→
The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games have become history, but the Olympic spirit of "Citius, Altius, Fortius" appears to have been instilled into China's building industry. The 2009 Green Building and Energy Efficiency International Conference hosted by McGraw-Hill Construction in Shanghai...continued→
The two-week global warming negotiations in Bangkok, Thailand are just wrapping up. There are five key elements to the Copenhagen Agreement (as I've discussed on a number of occasions): Strong leadership from developed countries with firm and aggressive emissions reductions...continued→
Last week, leaders from the world's two biggest democracies met in Washington D.C. to discuss opportunities to collaborate on catalyzing innovation in efficiency and cleantech. NRDC President Frances Beinecke and members of the NRDC India team participated in the US-India...continued→
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...continued→
I just participated in a briefing that the International Energy Agency (IEA) provided to climate negotiators in Bangkok. It was an excerpt from their soon to be released World Energy Outlook which is the IEA's regular projection of global energy...continued→
You know the saying: "it's the little things that matter". Well you can't really take that saying too literally when discussing global warming pollution as it is the big things that ultimately matter such as pollution reduction cuts, assistance for...continued→
When I first visited Jiangsu over ten years ago to propose energy efficiency measures to the rapidly industrializing province I was skeptical I would ever see this day. But to my great pleasure, the People's Government of Jiangsu Province of...continued→
Here in Bangkok at the climate negotiations, the US lead negotiator Jonathan Pershing sparked a little heat on the first day of the session (as you can see from this and this news coverage). Within the climate negotiations there is...continued→
The typhoon Ketsana is pouring down on Bangkok this morning as I ready myself for day four of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings. Representatives of countries and hundreds of civil society organizations will continue to meet...continued→
Senators Boxer and Kerry have just released a strong bill that will help America curb climate change and strengthen our economy. The bill, called the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, is the right step at the right time....continued→
The Clean Energy Jobs Tour rolled into Pittsburgh last week, with rock and country bands, labor, environmental and political leaders, as well as a special video message from former Vice President Al Gore. It was a great way to wrap-up...continued→
Ever imagine an airport that serves only one route with only one flight that only operates on Monday, Wednesday and Friday? Welcome to Guangyuan in Sichuan Province, a city with 2200-plus years of history. Situated on a flattened top of...continued→
Well "climate week" has just wrapped up with the conclusion of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh. This week was an important one to build international and US momentum for addressing global warming pollution (as I discussed here). As I discussed...continued→
The G-20 meeting will conclude later today here in Pittsburgh, but we can say already that for climate policy, this has not been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. Here's my highlight reel for the week: Court rings bell on...continued→
The G20 Summit has arrived in Pittsburgh on the heels of the Climate Summit in New York. These back-to-back meetings on the world's climate and the world's economy signify that protecting the planet has economic dimensions. So let's ask the question that's on...continued→
This week world leaders have met in New York and Pittsburgh to discuss global warming. These high-level meetings are aimed at providing a much needed boost to international efforts to secure a strong agreement to address global warming in Copenhagen,...continued→
Yesterday my colleague Jake Schmidt and I spoke with WNYC's Brian Lehrer, who asked me to evaluate the significance of President Hu Jintao's speech at Tuesday's UN Climate Summit (you can listen to the interview here). Was his announcement that...continued→
Climate week began with world leaders participating in a full day of discussions on global warming. Over 100 world leaders were in attendance -- the largest gathering of world leaders on global warming and the first in many respects. The...continued→
On Wednesday, the last "Made in America" rally took place in Pennsylvania. Members of the United Steelworkers other unions joined forces with environmentalists to show their support for clean energy and climate legislation just before world leaders pull into town for...continued→
NRDC President Frances Beinecke and I did a press conference at the United Nations yesterday with HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco and others to highlight the impacts of global warming on the Arctic and the urgent need to both...continued→
Few seem willing to address the issue openly, but one of the toughest issues to address when delegates gather in Copenhagen in December for the global conference on climate change will be governance. Many developing nations attending have stressed and...continued→
This week, as people from all over the world assemble at the United Nations for Climate Week, I am reminded of another international gathering spot I went to just 10 days ago--Beijing's Olympic Village. What do these two places have...continued→
President Hu Jintao of China has just unveiled before the world a new set of actions that China will undertake to curb their global warming pollution. The remarks were made today as a part of the UN Secretary General's...continued→
There are 76 days until Copenhagen. 76 days. This morning's UN Summit on Climate Change was a good example of just how far we've come in the global climate discussions. Every world leader who spoke mentioned our collective responsibility to...continued→
At the United Nations Summit on Climate Change this morning, President Obama spoke about the importance of assisting developing countries on adaptation and technology. He also reiterated the need for developing countries with rapidly growing emissions to "commit to strong...continued→
As Congress continues to grapple with health care reform this week, heads of state meet at a UN summit to face the challenge of climate change in preparation for a December conference in Copenhagen. Given the dire health consequences of...continued→
Climate Week has begun, and I am already inspired by the sense of momentum. From the U.N. Secretary General's Summit on Climate Change on Tuesday to the G20 Summit in Pittsburg at the end of the week, world leaders are...continued→
"Unease is no excuse for inaction." These were President Obama's words at the United Nations in his most significant speech on climate change since taking office, setting the tone for a bold vision that will hold the U.S.-- and...continued→
Climate Week has begun, and as foreign dignitaries descend on the United Nations and the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting, I think most of the world's nations will be singing a shared refrain: it is time for the United States...continued→
In a distinct shift in its position from earlier this summer, India announced, yesterday, that it agrees to pass legislation that would set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions based on national actions. This is a welcomed breakthrough and puts...continued→
Todd Stern the Special Envoy for Climate Change, just testified before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming on: The Road to Copenhagen and International Climate Agreement. His testimony (available here) and response to several questions for...continued→
Congress has returned to work on one of the most ambitious legislative agendas we have seen in years. What does this mean for people who support clean energy and climate legislation? It means the urgency has never been greater. Three...continued→
Congress has returned to work on one of the most ambitious legislative agendas we have seen in years. What does this mean for people who support clean energy and climate legislation? It means the urgency has never been greater. Three...continued→
For over a year now, South Korea has been undertaking an extensive dialogue to establish a target to cut their global warming pollution (see my discussion here and this ClimateWire story -- sub req. -- from last year). And now...continued→
If you read or heard about Secretary Clinton's visit to India earlier this week, you probably were convinced that there is a huge chasm between our nations in regard to climate change. For example, The Wall Street Journal gleefully reported, "India...continued→
Yesterday Hillary Clinton discussed her upcoming trip to India at the Council on Foreign Relations, noting that "external affairs minister Krishna Nai will lay out a broad-based agenda that calls for a whole of government approach to our bilateral relationship."...continued→
If you aren't in Italy you might not realize, but two events are occurring on global warming pollution where leaders of the 17 largest emitting countries are trying to make progress in the run-up to Copenhagen (this December). The first...continued→
As I savor last Friday's historic House vote to pass clean energy and climate legislation, I can't help but think about last June, when leaders in the Senate tried to pass a groundbreaking climate bill. What has changed since then? ...continued→
In the midst of the fight of our lives (the House floor debate on the American Clean Energy and Security Act), a coalition of major U.S. groups called for the Obama Administration to outline its "yardstick" on global warming. What...continued→
This Friday the House of Representatives will consider one of the most important pieces of legislation of our time: a bill that would simultaneously jumpstart our economy, create millions of jobs, lay the groundwork for a clean energy future, and...continued→
This past Wednesday (June 17, 2009) the Appropriations Subcommittee of the House of Representatives that has jurisdiction over the international global warming pieces of President Obama's budget passed a bill that supported increasing US commitments to these needed efforts. ...continued→
Yesterday, at a U.S.-India Business Council Summit in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the start of U.S.-India 3.0 - a new era of "dramatic expansion of our common agenda." Emphasizing that U.S. trade with India has doubled since...continued→
Here is the latest from India on climate change and energy compiled by Bidisha Banerjee: President Obama has extended an invitation to newly-reelected Prime Minister Singh to visit Washington. And Secretary Clinton may visit India late next month. India is...continued→
Two weeks of negotiations on the new international agreement to address global warming pollution are just wrapping up here in Bonn, Germany. What has emerged this week clearly signals that the international negotiations need to move "onward" with progress...continued→
You might think that the international global warming negotiations are occurring in some backroom, filled with smoke, and outside the view of the world. That is after all, what some opponents to global warming solutions would have you believe....continued→
This December, the nations of the world will meet in Copenhagen to forge a new climate accord that replaces the Kyoto Protocol. With those meetings just six months away, world leaders are gathering this week in Germany to make progress...continued→
I've been participating since last Monday in the global warming negotiations in Bonn, Germany. This is the second session of the year. There are 53 days of official negotiations before Copenhagen and this is day 17 (the first 10...continued→
Here is the first edition of our news from India on climate change and energy which was compiled by Bidisha Banerjee: The Hindu covers the leak of new Government of India draft strategy to advance solar as part of its...continued→
News coming out of China provides some hints that they might adopt a domestic limit to reduce their global warming. As China Daily is reporting: " China will put in place carbon dioxide emissions targets for its economic and social...continued→
In the climate negotiations occurring in Bonn, Germany there is an emerging debate on the form of "commitment or action" developing countries will undertake (as the Economic Times in India points out). This has been a long running debate...continued→
"India Enlightened" - the cover story of just-released Summer 2009 edition of OnEarth magazine - puts human faces on the critical issues that are being debated now at the climate negotiations this week in Bonn. The author George Black and...continued→
I've discussed in part 1 -- shared vision and developed country emissions reduction commitments -- and part 2 -- developing country emissions reductions and the incentives to encourage them to go further -- key proposals that have now been...continued→
As I discussed in my previous post, the draft negotiating texts for the Copenhagen agreement are now out. With the release of these texts the world now begins the serious work to get an agreement in Copenhagen -- marking...continued→
The draft negotiating texts for the Copenhagen agreement are now out. Just like in the US Congressional debate on climate legislation and other parliamentary debates around the world, you need to have a proposal on paper before you can...continued→
It has been a good week in the Countdown to Copenhagen. We have seen a remarkable amount of climate action in the past few days, and if this pace keeps up, the United States might actually arrive at the international...continued→
The Waxman-Markey "American Clean Energy and Security Act" (HR 2454) is now out (see here for the full bill and here for NRDC's top line summary of the entire bill). The House Energy and Commerce Committee is focused this week...continued→
For the first time ever, the president of the United States invited a group of House Democrats to the White House on Tuesday to urge them to agree on draft climate legislation. The meeting achieved some concrete results, but more...continued→
A new coalition of U.S. Representatives, faith and military leaders unveiled a new push to secure strong global warming policy and ensure that the most vulnerable throughout the world are supported in efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate...continued→
The first meeting of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) on Energy and Climate has just concluded. This forum is a critical channel to help secure a strong agreement in Copenhagen. This process provides a unique setting for the largest emitting...continued→
Ministers from 17 developed and developing countries will be coming to Washington, DC next week (April 27-28) for the Major Economies Forum (MEF). This will be the first of three reported meetings of this "forum" through June of this year...continued→
We have 228 days until the international climate negotiations begin in Copenhagen, but today stands out among them. It is Earth Day. And though I nodded in agreement when I read Energy Secretary Steven Chu's comment in the New York...continued→
The international global warming negotiations in Bonn, Germany are just wrapping up. They began with a loud applause that the US is back and are ending with the reality of the work that needs to be done over the next...continued→
We have just completed the first week of international global warming negotiations for 2009 -- held in Bonn, Germany. This is the beginning of the serious negotiations in the lead-in to Copenhagen later this year where the world has committed...continued→
People always ask me: how do we get a strong international commitment to solve global warming pollution? What "tools" do U.S. negotiators (and others) have to secure an equitable commitment from all major emitters to reduce global warming pollution? How...continued→
Yesterday marked the long-awaited release of the Waxman-Markey "discussion draft" of a clean energy and climate bill. I welcomed this development. After all, I have worked for more than a decade to prepare for the moment we find ourselves in:...continued→
While Todd Stern, the US Special Climate Envoy, has been actively discussing international global warming issues since his appointment, as I discussed here and here, he hasn't done that in front of all 180 plus countries that make up the...continued→
If you've read my previous posts, you'll know that the international global warming negotiations have already commenced (see here, here; and here). But if last year was the "dry run", this year will be need to be the real thing. ...continued→
I don't usually do "New Year's Resolutions". But this is such an important year for the planet that I'll break from my usual pattern and make a New Year's Resolution -- not a normal one like exercising more or eating...continued→
How to generate millions of jobs, break our dependence on oil and reduce the pollution that causes global warming.
