Climate 411

This post is by Peter Goldmark, Program Director, Climate and Air, Environmental Defense. Also see his previous dispatch from Bali

The ministers have arrived – environmental ministers, energy ministers, finance ministers, ministers ordinary and plenipotentiary, and ministers who will one day wind up in the penitentiary. They are driving to and fro in limos with police escorts, blaring their horns at those of us on bicycles.

What this means is that we are entering the last 72 hours of the conference. The nights are getting longer, and the strokes shorter.

But measured even against the background experience that large international conferences frequently undergo a moment of dark despair before dawn brings some sort of last-minute agreement, the last two nights of discord have been dismaying.

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This post is by Peter Goldmark, Program Director, Climate and Air, Environmental Defense. Click here for his previous dispatch from Bali.

In the second and final week of climate talks here in Bali, wisps and patches of a larger fabric are beginning to appear.

An informal non-group, with unofficial non-co-chairs from South Africa and Australia, has given birth semi-anonymously to a text which issued from an informal non-meeting and has been widely circulated as a non-paper. It addresses tentatively, with conflicting opinions on some key points, the major open issues facing this conference. These include the touchy questions of what the developing countries should be expected to do, and how to advance the talks on incorporating deforestation into the broader climate framework from which they were excluded a decade ago.

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This post is by Peter Goldmark, Program Director, Climate and Air, Environmental Defense.

We are coming to the close of the first week of the Bali climate talks – spring training, you might say, before the major league coaches and star players arrive next week. These closing days of warm-up week were punctuated by several trumpet blasts coming in from overseas.

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This post is by Sheryl Canter, and Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

In last Friday’s post on the Bali climate talks, Kyle mentioned giving countries incentives to leave their forests standing. This was also the topic of an excellent piece on NPR this morning, "Climate Experts Mull Payment to Stop Deforestation". Our own Annie Petsonk was interviewed for the story:

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This post is by Kyle Meng, a research fellow at Environmental Defense.

Next week, delegates and negotiators from some 190 countries will descend on the Indonesian island of Bali to determine the fate of a global climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. Continuing our long-standing presence at these negotiations, Environmental Defense is sending a team of experts to Bali. Here’s what we’ll be working on.
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The author of today’s post, Keith Gaby, is Communications Director of the climate campaign at Environmental Defense.

Today the White House is hosting a meeting of 15 nations with some of the highest greenhouse gas emissions in the world. They have gathered together to discuss solutions to climate change. The President of Environmental Defense, Fred Krupp, is among a small number of outside speakers who will address the delegates. He decided to attend the conference because – with all those world leaders gathered in one place (not to mention Bush Administration officials) – it’s a chance to push for real action. The White House, which so far has opposed mandatory action on climate change, might not want to hear it, but Fred’s message will be simple and direct:

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