U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer will step down to join a consultancy group as an adviser, he said on Thursday, two months after a Copenhagen summit failed to support a legally binding climate pact. His decision is not expected to further derail U.N.-led climate talks to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, divided [...]

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union has decided to stick to its lowest offer for cutting carbon emissions under a U.N climate accord, but will maintain a conditional pledge to do more if others follow suit, EU diplomats said on Wednesday. Their comments after EU ambassadors met in Brussels confirmed the 27-nation bloc’s commitment to [...]

AUSTRALIA has declared it will not go beyond a 5 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 without guaranteed action by major emitters including the US, China and India. The Government’s formal submission to the Copenhagen Accord – the widely criticised agreement hatched between the US and major developing countries at the conference [...]

World talks on climate change may not yield a legally binding pact by year’s end, UN pointman Yvo de Boer said on Wednesday in his first public assessment after last month’s turbulent Copenhagen summit. De Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said he had taken stock among a number [...]

WASHINGTON — Just a month after world leaders fashioned a tentative and nonbinding agreement at the climate change summit meeting in Copenhagen, the deal already appears at risk of coming undone, the top United Nations climate official warned on Wednesday. Facing a Jan. 31 deadline, major countries have yet to submit their plans for reducing [...]

The future of the EU’s Low Carbon Revolution hangs in the balance as it becomes likely its emissions targets will be delayed again. The ongoing uncertainty is rooted in the EU’s offer to the Copenhagen climate summit of a 30% emissions cut. But this was dependent on “comparable effort” from other big polluters. Observers say [...]

The Copenhagen summit on climate change taught Europe a hard lesson about its trans-Atlantic partner. Great hope had greeted President Obama when he replaced George W. Bush at the American helm, but a year later Europeans are realizing that Mr. Obama is going to have a very difficult time delivering on his agenda. During the [...]

The Land of Make Believe Our leaders have failed us. Our leaders are failing us. Our leaders will continue to fail us. As the farce of the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit recedes, the failure of our leadership stands naked before us — again. But only ever-so-briefly, before ducking back behind the glossy ad-campaign facade of [...]

As we exit the last year of the first decade of the 21st century, we can see the unveiling of the new world order. The sleeping giant has been awakened and the rest of the world has fallen into a complacent slumber. One of the most ancient civilizations on the planet has bided its time [...]

China has dismissed claims made by a British minister that it “hijacked” efforts to reach an agreement at the climate summit in Copenhagen. Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband had accused China of vetoing two agreements on limiting emissions. Beijing’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the accusations were a political plot made by leaders who [...]