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Pew’s Diringer discusses progress at Poznan talks, previews Copenhagen negotiations (video, transcript to come)
Monica Trauzzi, OnPoint, E&E TV
With the United Nations’ annual climate change conference in Poznan, Poland, wrapping up last week, all eyes are now on the United States and how the transition to the Obama administration will affect the road to a new climate treaty.
During today’s OnPoint, Elliot Diringer, vice president of international strategies at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, gives highlights of the Poznan meeting and looks ahead to next year’s climate talks. Diringer also explains what the United States must do in 2009 to effectively engage in next year’s climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.
(16 December 2008)
Don’t expect recession to mean lower carbon emissions
Adam Vaughan, The Guardian
Environmentalists who hope a slowing global economy will mean big falls in greenhouse gas emissions are likely to be disappointed.
Because despite a gloomy economic forecast for 2009, the annual growth in emissions of 3% is only likely to slow modestly, and may even rise over the long term because of the downturn’s impact on global climate talks and the funding of renewable energy projects.
Figures from the UK’s Committee for Climate Change suggest even a 1.6% fall in UK GDP – a serious dip – would result in a saving of just 200,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2009. That is a tiny fraction of the UK’s projected total of 533m tonnes.
(17 December 2008)
Believe it or not, this was the tenth hottest year ever
Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor, The Independent
You may not have realised, as you shivered under the grey and drenching skies of August, that you were living through the 10th hottest year ever recorded – but you were.
Figures released by the UK Met Office show the last 12 months constitute the 10th warmest year in the global register, which dates back to 1850. The world’s average temperature for 2008 was just over 14.3C, which is 0.3 degrees above the long-term average for 1961-1990.
Yet Britain experienced one of its poorest summers in 2008: it was the seventh wettest, and August was the dullest on record. Not only that: it followed immediately on 2007’s record as the wettest of all summers in the record books. The two succeeding damp, cool and often sunless summers were disastrous not only for holidaymakers in Britain; they also played havoc with wildlife, especially insects, and butterflies in particular. For many people, 2008 was “the summer of no butterflies”.
(December 17, 2008)
