The negotiating teams are now tasked under the Durban Platform with identifying a new comprehensive policy architecture. The negotiators are therefore hungry for new ideas, in particular for outside-the-box thinking.

Americans are behind Obama, in the sense that they support the president's concept of a national clean energy standard. But they're also behind, in the sense that the voting public is unwilling to go as far as the president wants to go because of costs.

Whether or not the submissions by China and India are part of a diplomatic dance or represent a real step backward from their positions in Durban, the fact remains that the Durban Platform, by replacing the Berlin Mandate, has opened an important window.

If the fix for climate change was as simple as changing a light bulb then the disagreements over these details might not matter much. However, we're being asked to undertake the wholesale re-engineering of the entire global political and economic order.

Crossposted with TheGreenGrok.com.Steady as we go with energy but definitely not on our climate target. Presidential Disconnect? A little more than tw...

The national delegations from around the world now have a challenging task: To find a way to include all key countries in a structure that brings about meaningful emissions reductions on an appropriate timetable at acceptable cost.

Two weeks of international climate negotiations begin today in Durban, South Africa. These are the Seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP-17) of ...

Crossposted with TheGreenGrok.com, the blog by the dean of Duke's Nicholas SchoolWhether at Christmas time or in the heat of summer, nobody likes a lu...

The international community may have begun to recognize that incremental steps in the right direction are better than acrimonious debates over unachievable targets

The world is facing an escalating global epidemic. Today, it claims 350,000 deaths per year and in 2030 the annual death toll will be approaching one million -- the majority of them will be children.

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger The United Nations-led Climate Conference at Cancun was not a diplomatic disaster, but for climate activis...

Cancun, Mexico - On Friday, as the final hours of the COP 16 conference approached, representatives of countries most affected by climate change came ...

Cancun, Mexico - On the antepenultimate (scheduled) day of the COP 16, I sat down with Bolivia's climate negotiator Pablo Solón to discuss how the CO...

It's crunch time. There are two days left for government leaders and their representatives to come to an agreement. Can they make progress? Can they find solutions?

Cancún, Mexico - Yesterday afternoon, United Nations Environment Programme released the Emissions Gap Report, which seeks to assess how we are doing ...

It remains to be seen what emerges from the negotiations in the days to come.

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger The most recent round of United Nations-led climate change negotiations began this week in Cancun, and alt...

Obama's administration is seeking to undermine the existing international climate regime and replace it with something fundamentally and dangerously weaker.

Yesterday some 15,000 delegates, business leaders, activists and journalists gathered in Cancun to kick off the UN Framework Convention on Climate Cha...

HELSINKI — Emissions cuts pledged by countries in a nonbinding climate accord last year fall short of what's needed to avoid the worst consequen...

The climate talks in Tianjin last week did very little to improve the prospects for a binding international treaty, which would reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are warming the globe.

The six-day Tianjin climate talks, which concluded this weekend, made so little progress that some diplomats openly wondered whether continuing the UNFCCC process was even politically worthwhile.

With only days remaining until diplomats are due to arrive in Tianjin for the final round of climate negotiations before the Cancun summit, scientists...

Although China and Japan are deeply connected trading partners, the Asian giants sit on opposite sides of the climate debate. In spite of their differences, the two countries have a history of climate cooperation.

The World Resources Institute recently released updated estimates of the "fast-start" climate mitigation and adaption commitments rich nations made to...