Doha Climate Gateway

cop18cmp8_533What is being called the “Doha Climate Gateway,” more formerly the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP18) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), wrapped up this past weekend in Doha.  It was the first conference of the parties to take place in the Middle East and, according to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin of the venerable IISD, the conference drew around nine thousand folks, including 4,356 government officials, 3,956 representatives of UN bodies and agencies, intergovernmental organizations and civil society organizations, and 683 members of the media. Continue reading


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Carbon Emissions Going Up

As reported yesterday by the Global Carbon Project in its Carbon Budget 2012 report, the top four emitters of carbon from fossil fuel combustion and cement production in 2011 covered 62% of global emissions:  China (28%), United States (16%), EU27 (11%), and India (7%).  These four entities emitted about 5.62 billion tons of carbon.  (Multiply by 3.67 to get the carbon dioxide output which then equals about 20.6 billion tons.)  You can see that the US and the EU have stabilized and even lowered their emissions in recent years. Continue reading


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Doha – The Climate Talks

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established 20 years ago at the Earth Summit in Rio.  The Earth Summit was an extraordinary and genuinely groundbreaking event.  It, arguably, ushered in the present age of international initiatives on sustainability.  Philip Shabecoff, in his excellent history of the environmental movement, A Fierce Green Fire, wrote “….the human community was ready to alter the collision course it was on with the physical world that sustains it and might at last meet the challenge of creating an ecologically rational, prosperous, and just global economy…” Continue reading


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