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 over [...]

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 last [...]

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 emissions [...]

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 [...]

The last time global negotiations collapsed like this was in Doha, in 2001. After the trade talks fell apart, the World Trade Organisation assured delegates that there was nothing to fear: they would move to Mexico, where a deal would be done. The negotiations ran into the sand of the Mexican resort of Cancún, never [...]

Klein & McKibben: Take off the kid gloves with Obama.
Uploaded by theuptake. – News videos hot off the press.

var showHover=false;

IT’S crunch time. Two years ago in a huge conference hall in Bali, after a marathon negotiating session that left some delegates in tears, envoys from 192 nations set themselves a deadline of 2009. The task in question? To come up with a way of extending the essence of the Kyoto protocol beyond 2012.
The final [...]

COPENHAGEN, Dec 8 (IPS/TerraViva) – As the climate change summit in the Danish capital moves into a second day, environmental groups warn that by pushing carbon offsetting and trade, governments of developed countries are bypassing their responsibility to significantly reduce domestic emissions and provide aid to developing countries.
Activists think that even if the best possible [...]

‘We don’t have a leader who is able to grasp [the issue] and say what is really needed. Instead we are trying to continue business as usual,’ say James Hansen.
The scientist who convinced the world to take notice of the looming danger of global warming says it would be better for the planet and for [...]

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world’s peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country’s government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee’s tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and [...]