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BONN (AFP) – Hopes of hoisting the UN process for climate change out of the mire after December's flawed Copenhagen summit suffered a setback at talks here on Friday. In their first parley since the stormy December meeting, countries in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) divided over how to plot the way forward and the mood was soured by fresh finger-pointing. "The one thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history," said Tosi Mpanu Mpanu of the Democratic Republic of Congo, representing African nations. Copenhagen damaged "the trust that is necessary for any...

The UN's top climate change official, Yvo de Boer, has resigned in the latest blow to the debate over global warming. Yvo de Boer was said to be exhausted after the Copehagen summit. Photo: REUTERS As Secretary General of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Mr de Boer was in charge of negotiating a new international deal to stop global temperature rise. However after four years in the post he has decided to step down to go and work for global accounting firm KPMG. The former Dutch civil servant insisted he had been planning to stand down for...

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – UN chief Ban Ki-moon set up a high-level advisory panel Friday to mobilize funding to help developing nations battle climate change. The panel, to be led by Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Ethiopian counterpart Meles Zenawi, aimed "to mobilize the resources for climate change pledged at the recent climate change conference in Copenhagen," Ban told reporters. The group, evenly balanced between developed and developing nations, "will develop practical proposals to significantly scale up long-term (public and private) financing for mitigation and adaptation strategies in developing countries," he added. The UN boss said the group...

PARIS (AFP) – After the near-train wreck of last month's Copenhagen climate summit, what lies ahead for efforts to beat back global warming? Next week may yield the first clues. Countries are being asked to say by Sunday whether they will endorse an 11th-hour deal, the "Copenhagen Accord," which saved the marathon meeting from collapse but sparked accusations of failure and betrayal. By week's end, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will have a picture of the response, its officials say. What emerges will be a litmus test of the Accord's credibility and whether a comprehensive and binding...

Original Message From: Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 9:03 PM Subject: Announcement on U.S. Center at Copenhagen Climate Change Meeting (State launches COP-15 Web site to serve as resource for public information) U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Office of the Spokesman November 25, 2009 MEDIA NOTE U.S. Department of State Announces U.S. Center at Copenhagen Climate Change Negotiation and Launches COP-15 Web site http://www.cop15.state.gov For the first time, the U.S. Department of State, in coordination with the White House and multiple federal departments and agencies, is organizing and hosting a U.S. Center at the annual Conference of the Parties to the...

20,000 people, 192 countries. Welcome to the carbon circus Robin Pagnamenta, Energy Editor It has been billed as the last-chance saloon; a final opportunity for the world to seal a deal to prevent catastrophic climate change. With only 44 days to go until the meeting in Copenhagen, the world is waiting to see if its politicians can deliver, and live up to the hype. Whatever the outcome of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Copenhagen is braced for a carbon circus. Hotels in the Danish capital are nearly fully booked, meaning...

Not content with his humiliation at Copenhagen, Denmark this past September, President Obama will be traveling there again in December to attend the UN COP15 Climate Change Conference. This agreement would commit the United States to punitive and expensive greenhouse gas regulations dictated by the United Nations without recourse. COP stands for "Conference of the Parties" and the December Copenhagen conference will be the 15th under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), hence COP15. According to their website, it will be one of the largest conferences ever held outside the New York or Geneva headquarters, with an...

Audio From Glenn Beck's Radio Program on October 19, 2009- Glenn interviews Lord Monckton on the new Climate Change Treaty and what it means for us= One World Government. Part 1- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xy5_L1vJKQ Part 2- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY5msesd-2c

POZNAN, Poland (AFP) – After a year in which it nearly lost its compass, the campaign against climate change heads into 2009 needing top-level political commitment, creative thinking and a deep well of money. Next year holds a big dream: by its end, the world will have forged a treaty in Copenhagen to shrink global warming from mankind-threatening juggernaut to manageable problem. Unprecedented in scale and complexity, this accord, due to take effect from 2012, will rein in the greenhouse gases that stoke global warming and throw a lifeline to poor countries exposed to mutated weather patterns. But realising this...

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told UN delegates locked in climate talks on Monday that the world economic crisis should not slow down the fight against global warming. "There are some people who say that we can't afford the fight against global warming while our economies are down, but the exact opposite is true," he told some 10,000 delegates in Poznan, Poland in a video message. "The green rules and regulations that will help save our planet will also revive our economies," he said. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is charged with hammering out for a new...

LONDON (Reuters) - The cost of efforts to avoid dangerous global warming may be 170 percent higher than 2007 estimates, a report for the U.N.'s climate agency said on Thursday. The report comes four days before the U.N. leads a fresh round of talks in Poland to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol in ongoing negotiations marred by squabbles over who should bear the cost of fighting climate change. The U.N. report cited research by the International Energy Agency (IEA), energy adviser to 28 countries, and others which showed growing capital costs especially in the energy sector. "The increased...

(AFP) – Hundreds of billions more dollars are likely to be needed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by a 2030 target, according to UN estimates published on Friday ahead of global talks on climate change. The report, to be presented at the December 1-12 conference in Poznan, Poland updates 2007 estimates that said investment to mitigate carbon emissions had to be ramped up in the coming years, reaching between 200-210 billion dollars annually in 2030. The goal, in this benchmark scenario, is to reduce levels of global-warming pollution to 25 percent below 2000 levels in 2030. In the new report, the...

WARSAW (AFP) – The world financial crisis must not become an excuse for backsliding on efforts to curb global carbon emissions, a top UN environmental official warned Thursday. While acknowledging the severity of the financial turmoil, Yvo de Boer, who oversees the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said: "To use the financial crisis as an excuse not to act on climate change would basically amount to setting yourself up for the next financial crisis." De Boer spoke at a Warsaw conference of governments and leaders from the energy, steel, cement and aluminium sectors, which are among the major...

PARIS (AFP) – The UN climate chief said Wednesday he was "very encouraged" by Barack Obama's stance on global warming, and said he hoped the US president-elect would join in key talks in December before taking office. "It is impossible to advance on this important topic without the full engagement of the United States," Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told AFP by phone. "I am very encouraged by the stated commitment of Senator Obama to the issue of climate change, and I really hope that he or his representatives can come to...

A multibillion-dollar experiment designed to curb global warming is stumbling as regulators question whether the program is doing enough environmental good. The United Nations is the main global policeman in an effort by wealthy nations to reduce the impact of their own pollution by paying for cleanups in the developing world. The program, known as the Clean Development Mechanism, is one of the most important coordinated efforts to attack global warming. [Graphic] In recent months, however, U.N. regulators who administer the program have objected to dozens of these developing-world projects, ranging from hydroelectric plants to wind farms, questioning whether the...

WASHINGTON - A top government health official said Wednesday that climate change is expected to have a significant impact on health in the next few decades, with certain regions of the country — and the elderly and children — most vulnerable to increased health problems. Howard Frumkin, a senior official of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gave a detailed summary on the likely health impacts of global warming at a congressional hearing. But he refrained from giving an opinion on whether carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, should be regulated as a danger to public health. "The CDC...

Here's a deliciously inconvenient truth: five days after Nobel Laureate Al Gore told CBS's Lesley Stahl that folks who don't believe man is responsible for warming the planet are "like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the Earth is flat," the BBC proclaimed "Global Temperatures 'To Decrease.'" You really can't make this stuff up.

BANGKOK (AFP) - Negotiators here are working on the world's most ambitious pact yet against global warming, but questions are growing about how to force governments to live up to the promises they make. Week-long talks in Bangkok are aimed at laying the groundwork for global action after the Kyoto Protocol's commitments run out in 2012 for rich nations to slash greenhouse gas emissions blamed for heating up the planet. The United States is the main holdout from the Kyoto Protocol, arguing it is too costly. But Kyoto signatories such as Canada, Japan and some southern European countries are all...

BANGKOK (AFP) - A global decision on how much rich countries should slash their greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade should be made after the United States has a new president, the UN climate chief said Tuesday. Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Convention on Climate Change which is chairing talks in Bangkok, said the highly sensitive issue should be thrashed out next year, after the US elections in November. "There are some topics which it makes sense to leave for later in the process, for example what sort of targets or commitments are industrialised countries going to...

Three months after the landmark agreement on a road map towards strengthened international action on climate change reached in Bali, Indonesia, the next round of negotiations shifts to the neighbouring country of Thailand and its capital, Bangkok. The talks are taking place between 31 March to 4 April 2008 at the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC) of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). The climate change talks in Bangkok will convene sessions of both the Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (first session) and the Ad hoc Working Group on...