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Urgent action is needed to boost carbon prices to €150 per tonne ($215.65/ton)—2,250% higher than current levels—if the EU is to meet its decarbonization goals by 2050, the former secretary-general of the UNFCCC has told EurActiv in an interview. “We very quickly need to see a carbon price in the order of €150 a tonne because that’s the kind of level that drives the price signals that we really need,” Yvo de Boer said on a phone line from Manila, in the Philippines. EU carbon allowances are currently trading at €6.60 per tonne ($9.49/ton), but a price of around €150...

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...

The United States and other rich nations must do more to help clinch a landmark deal on climate change this year, a top U.N. official said at a meeting of global environment ministers. The three-day meeting of the Group of Eight industrial countries and major developing economies, which opened in Sicily on Wednesday, has been hailed as a stepping stone to a U.N. deal on climate change, due to be signed in December in Copenhagen. All eyes were on the U.S. delegation since President Barack Obama's pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 injected momentum...

Washington (PTI): India and China should not be bound by the same restrictions on carbon emissions as those imposed on the United States and other developed nations, a top UN official has said. As US President George W Bush is expected to call on American Congress to pass a law combatting global warming, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate treaty secretariat, said India and China should not be bound by the same restrictions that will have to be imposed on the US and other developed countries. "I don't think that's realistic," de Boer told The Washington Times,...

BALI, Indonesia - World powers meeting at a UN climate change conference in Indonesia this week won't be able to craft a meaningful plan to address global warming without co-operation from the United States, the top emitter of greenhouse gases, the UN's climate chief said Sunday. The United States refused to sign the last major international treaty on reducing greenhouse gases, undermining its effectiveness. Delegates from 190 countries will gather on the resort island of Bali on Monday for one of the largest global warming conferences ever, bringing together about 10,000 people including Hollywood luminaries, former vice-president Al Gore, fishermen...

VALENCIA, Spain — The U.N.'s top climate official challenged world policymakers Monday to map out a path to curb climate change, charging that to ignore the urgency of global warming would be "nothing less than criminally irresponsible." Yvo de Boer issued his warning at the opening of a weeklong conference that will complete a concise guide on the state of global warming and what can be done to stop the Earth from overheating. It is the fourth and last report issued this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace prize. Environmentalists and authors...

VALENCIA, Spain - The U.N.'s top climate official warned policymakers and scientists trying to hammer out a landmark report on climate change that ignoring the urgency of global warming would be "criminally irresponsible." Yvo de Boer's comments came at the opening of a weeklong conference that will complete a concise guide on the state of global warming and what can be done to stop the Earth from overheating. It is the fourth and last report issued this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace prize. Environmentalists and authors of the report expected tense...

VIENNA (Reuters) - China says its one-child policy has helped the fight against global warming by avoiding 300 million births, the equivalent of the population of the United States. But delegates at U.N. climate change talks in Vienna said on Thursday birth control is unlikely to find favor as a major policy tool, partly because of opposition by the Catholic Church and some developing nations trying to increase their population. Some scientists say that birth control measures far less draconian than China's are wrongly overlooked in the fight against climate change, when the world population is projected to soar to...

The United Nations suggested this week that wealthy nations ought to be able to reduce their own emissions by paying developing countries to do it for them. This practical idea from Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, was met with predictable outrage from environmental groups. They insist the problem of climate change cannot be altered unless rich and poor nations curb their emissions together. What rot. This is a clever plan that just may work. Why should I, a middle-class Canadian, have to count the number of plastic bags I use, worry about my...

VIENNA, Austria - It's the business end of climate change: ensuring that the $20 trillion the world will spend on energy over the next two decades is as environmentally friendly as possible. This week's latest round of talks on global warming, which get under way in Vienna on Monday, will focus on giving governments and private investors tips and incentives to keep a lid on greenhouse gas emissions. "We need to 'climate-proof' economic growth," Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official, told reporters Sunday. More than 1,000 delegates were gathering in the Austrian capital for discussions on advising nations,...