Island nations beg for help: they’re disappearing underwater

Source: The Washington Post | By Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS — The Palestinians want the United Nations to recognize a state. And the island nation of Tuvalu wants the United Nations to act — now — to keep their state above water. The high drama surrounding the historic Palestinian bid for statehood has to a degree overshadowed other issues facing the U.N. General Assembly, which Saturday heard from the leaders of island nations where the impact of climate change is already having a profound effect.

Washington Post interviews former UN climate chief

Source: Washington Post | by Juliet Eilperin

Until this month, Yvo de Boer served as executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the body that oversees international climate negotiations. After supervising the Copenhagen climate talks last year, a process he has called frustrating, de Boer suddenly announced in February that he would be stepping down. After nearly four years on the U.N. job (he describes it as “three years and 11 months,” but who’s counting?), he just started work as an adviser on climate change and sustainability at KPMG International in London. The Washington Post’s national environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin spoke with de Boer last week about leaving the United Nations, why he never kept Al Gore out in the cold and how President Obama has his brain in the right place.

World leaders welcome the Copenhagen Accord

Source: COP-15 Copenhagen | by Rie Jerichow

Despite its lack of targets to curb emissions, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders agree to defend the new climate deal.

Backgrounder: U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen

Today began the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The United Nations Office in Washington DC has prepared a background note to understand what the conference is and its importance in the negotiations towards a new international treaty to fight global warming.

Climate change: UN Chief in Washington to lobby US Congress

Source: United Nations

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged the United States to take a leading role in forging a new international pact to combat global warming, warning that the consequences of failure outweigh the cost of tackling climate change.

UN chief damps climate treaty hopes

Source: Financial Times | By Ed Crooks

A new international climate change treaty is very unlikely to be signed at the Copenhagen talks next month, Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, signalled on Tuesday, saying people had to be “realistic” about what could be achieved.

He said he hoped for a “very strong binding political commitment” that could be turned into a treaty in the first half of next year.

US refuses to include Kyoto targets

Source: The Guardian | by John Vidal

The US threatened to derail a deal on global climate change today in a public showdown with China by expressing deep opposition to the existing Kyoto protocol. The US team also urged other rich countries to join it in setting up a new legal agreement which would, unlike Kyoto, force all countries to reduce emissions.

The future of global warming policy

Source: The New York Times | By John M. Broder

The Obama administration’s senior negotiator on global warming warned Thursday that developed and developing nations remained deeply divided in talks on reducing greenhouse gases and that time was running out before United Nations treaty negotiations in December.