Kelly Rigg

Watching the climate negotiations in Bonn last week, I had an unsettling sense of déjà vu. Large conference room, familiar faces, and the same basic conundrums that derailed Copenhagen, complicated Cancun, and got papered over in Durban. Let's face it, the climate negotiations have become a Gordian knot awaiting the...

When the chief economist for the International Energy Agency (IEA) issues a dire warning, you'd think the world's leaders would sit up and take notice. If this statement by Fatih Birol last week wasn't a dire warning, then I don't know what is: "What I see now with...

Dear Presidents and Prime Ministers, Kings and Queens:

Once every generation or so, you're asked to step outside your national mindset and collectively figure out how to safeguard the planet and all its inhabitants. I grant you this: it's no easy task.

I'm honored to be speaking here on the National Mall today, in a place where so many people have made their voices heard over the years. Their words called out to the people in the Capitol building over there, to the occupant of that big white mansion down the street,...

I've just had a fascinating up close and personal experience of the right-wing climate denial echo chamber in action. It all started with an ABC Australia report on Thursday, by a journalist who apparently thought he had a scoop in publishing information from a purportedly secret document produced by the...

If there's one thing that all Americans pretty much agree on, it's that we hate paying high prices for gasoline. Eighty-five percent of us hate it so much in fact that we think the President and Congress ought to do something about it. With gas selling at $4...

From Tahrir Square to the streets of New York, citizens worldwide are protesting the status quo. In a world where the gap between rich and poor is widening, where corporate influence carries disproportionate weight, and where we are rapidly spending down nature's capital, the public is saying "Enough!" Is this...

Many organizations collaborating around the Rio +20 Earth Summit see it as a moment for youth mobilization. In my recent piece "Rio+20: The Future We Want Means Taking Action NOW I wrote that "Rio 2012 is an important opportunity to foster a new generation of activists -- not...

"When our political leaders can't agree on whether climate change is a threat, the majority of people can't either. The public is divided because our political leaders are polarized."

This is the upshot of a recent study on U.S. public attitudes towards climate change according to one of...

When it comes to the international climate negotiations, skeptical science is a non-issue. The last time I recall a government trying to make it one was in 2009, right before the Copenhagen climate summit.

The lead negotiator for Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Al-Sabban, told the BBC he thought the...

Once every 10 or 20 years, something remarkable happens. World leaders take note of the perilous state of our planet and its poorest inhabitants and think, "Good heavens, someone ought to do something about this."

And looking around they realize, "Oh... that would be us." So they have a Summit....

The Canadian government and its vested oil interests should have realized that in a year that produced the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements, business as usual is no longer good enough. Just last month the head of the International Energy Agency, an institution renowned for its promotion of fossil...

The British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead died more than 60 years ago, but he could have been talking about the Durban climate conference when he said, "Necessity is the mother of invention is a silly proverb. Necessity is the mother of futile dodges is much nearer the truth."

Reactions to...

And so it begins.

The United Nations climate negotiations re-opened today in South Africa, and the gloves are off. With the echo of the opening gavel still reverberating in the Durban International Convention Center, acrimonious political differences are already playing out in the media.

Rumors about rich...

A recent comment by Maldives President Mohammad Nasheed exemplifies the communications challenges that will arise when representatives of 194 countries meet in Durban, South Africa, as parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The current negotiation process is stupid, useless and endless. It is based...

What a difference a year can make in the World Energy Outlook (PDF). Released just last week, the International Energy Agency's press release led with an attention-grabbing clarion cry:

"The World is Locking Itself into an Unsustainable Energy Future Which Would Have Far-Reaching Consequences..."

What consequences...

Am I going mad, or are climate politics becoming as weird as the weather itself? Based on developments over the last week, I'd say the latter.

Less than a month before the annual climate conference begins in Durban, confusing signals from a series of international meetings make it harder to...

The skeptic case against climate change is unraveling before our eyes like someone walking away from an old sweater, thread in hand.

For those who have ever put the skeptic arguments to the test, it has always been clear that their criticisms rarely stand up to even the most...

Climate change skeptics would have you believe that global warming is an abstract theory, a dispute between scientists with differing interpretations of computer models, temperature data and ice measurements. So when the conversation turns to real people facing real hardship on the frontlines of climate change, it's no surprise that...

Negotiations are underway in Panama, the last gathering of climate diplomats prior to the big Durban Climate Conference at the end of the year.

Last June Yvo De Boer, former head of the UN climate convention and for years THE stalwart champion of the negotiating process, commented that "this process...