30 Jan 2010

Copenhagen Accord: country submissions

By now, Australia, US, China and EU have all sent their letters to UNFCCC secretariat regarding their ‘willingness to support’ the Copenhagen Accord or not. It is interestingly to break down the communication and to read between the lines.

12 Jan 2010

Somebody recently asked me why India supported the Copenhagen Accord. It is correct to say that the proposed accord has no meaningful targets for emission reduction from Annex 1 (industrialized countries). Global emissions will increase or reduce at best marginally. So it will be bad for the world’s efforts to combat climate change. We are victims of climate change.

30 Dec 2009

Monday, December 14, 2009: Standing in line in the freezing cold, waiting to be registered to the conference of parties to the climate change convention being held in Copenhagen, I have strange sense of foreboding that this will be an eventful but disappointing week.

15 Dec 2009

The Copenhagen conference will definitely go down as the worst meeting in global climate negotiations. There is a complete mess here: lines of people standing outside the Bella Centre, where the conference is taking place, wanting to get in. Inside the meeting has broken down for the umpteenth time because industrialized countries refuse to commit to cutting emissions.

18 Nov 2009

Late yesterday, US president, Barack Obama and the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, issued a joint statement on climate change. The statement was much awaited. It was believed that President Obama on his maiden visit to the region would get the Chinese to change their position on climate change.

26 Oct 2009

It is now more or less clear that the world will not be ready with an ambitious legally binding agreement at Copenhagen, which sets interim targets for industrialized countries or the funds and technology for participation of developing countries. Already the Kyoto Protocol, which sets binding targets for the industrialised countries is being bashed.

22 Oct 2009

Let me be straight: As the clocks ticks to Copenhagen, how low is the world prepared to prostrate to get climate-renegade US on board? Is a bad deal in Copenhagen better than no deal?

02 Oct 2009

Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the governor of West Bengal knows that we need to learn to walk the talk. He lives, as he says, in a 84,000 sq feet building – the majestic Raj Bhawan (Governor’s residence) – in a massive 11 hectare plot of land in the heart of Kolkata city.

30 Sep 2009

The leader of the newly elected Democratic Party of Japan Yukio Hatoyama created quite a stir with his bold mid-term target for emission reduction -- 25 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020.

01 Sep 2009

There has been a growing interest in the issue of black carbon -- light absorbing carbon particles, also called soot in our world. It was earlier believed that these particles cooled the Earth, now scientists say the impact is the reverse. The particles absorb sunlight and warm up the atmosphere and so the earth. Also, deposits on snow, absorb sunlight and so heat and melt the glaciers.

Pages