Green Times

The head of the UN’s Nobel-winning panel of climate scientists on Friday said only seven years remained for stabilising emissions of global-warming gases at a level widely considered safe.Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), delivered the bleak warning at a gathering of European Union ministers where he pleaded with the […]

A major climate change report for Australia’s government on Friday recommended the rapid introduction of an emissions trading scheme to curb greenhouse gases and warned that delay could be disastrous.”Without early and strong action, some time before 2020 we will realise we’ve indelibly surrendered to forces that have moved beyond our control,” said the report’s […]

Global warming legislation will be enacted for the first time in Pennsylvania when Governor Ed Rendell signs the Pennsylvania Climate Change Act as he is expected to do. The measure was overwhelmingly approved today by both houses of the Pennsylvania General Assembly.A coal-rich state, Pennsylvania emits one percent of the world’s greenhouse gases responsible for […]

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda Saturday urged all major greenhouse gas emitters to tackle climate change as he sought to galvanise efforts ahead of July’s G8 summit.”It is necessary for all major emitters to participate in efforts” to fight climate change, he said, speaking in front of lawmakers from the world’s eight most industrialised nations […]

G8 rich nations and major emerging economies probably won’t achieve a big breakthrough in talks on global warming in Japan next month, Britain’s climate envoy said on Thursday, echoing other forecasts for modest progress at best.Climate change is a key topic for the July 8 Group of Eight leaders’ summit as well as an expanded […]

Russia’s environmental problems are a threat to national security and could make parts of the country uninhabitable within 30 years, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday.On a televised visit to Saint Petersburg, the Russian leader said that after post-Soviet hardship in the 1990s it was time to turn to environmental questions.
“Our country is in a […]

A discussion of the effects of climate change on Africa, excerpted from “Africa’s Development: Promises and Prospects - Report of the Africa Progress Panel 2008.”Global warming is well underway, and its consequences are already visible in Africa. Severe drought lurks behind the Darfur conflict, for example, and it is very likely that the problem […]

A new global deal on climate change should be achieved at a meeting in Copenhagen next year despite disagreement at talks this week, the head of the U.N climate change secretariat said on Tuesday.”I really am confident that at the end of the day, the deal will be struck,” Yvo de Boer said in a […]

The US Environmental Protection Agency used to insist that it lacked the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions - until the Supreme Court ruled otherwise a year ago. Since then, scientific research has provided new evidence for the urgency of acting to slow global warming. But the Bush administration drags its feet anyway, leaving the […]

Outraged poor nations bearing the brunt of global warming have become increasingly bold in UN-led climate talks, but some worry that recent trysts of large countries are leaving them out in the cold.A grouping of 192 countries under the United Nations is leading the way in negotiating a groundbreaking climate change treaty, and most of […]