Copenhagen // Current TV

Copenhagen 'fails forest people'

A multi-billion dollar deal tabled at the Copenhagen climate summit could lead to... more

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Mohammad Yunus at Roskilde Festival

kasket kejserne films http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An6DYY6eOh8

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Greenpeace (Rainbow Warrior)

kasket kejserne films http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OvwwiMlGlM

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Open Letter to President Obama and the Congress - In Haiku

This is a letter To President Obama And all of Congress It is in Haiku For those... more

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UN Climate Chief OK With Countries Missing Copenhagen Accord Deadline

The head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat brushed off concerns on Wednesday that... more

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Impeach Obama!!! Ron Paul on Wall Street Bailout Fraud: Use Geithner to Impeach Obama …VIDEO

United States Representative and former GOP Presidential hopeful Ron Paul of Texas... more

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UN Admits Climate Change Mistake

The IPCC has now admitted that they made a 'mistake' when saying that... more

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Todd Stern: Next Few Weeks Critical for Copenhagen Accord

Over the next few weeks, leading nations will be deciding the fate of the Copenhagen... more

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Copenhagen Summit Turned Junket?

(CBS) Few would argue with the U.S. having a presence at the Copenhagen Climate... more

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Overcoming the Copenhagen Failure: How We Can Still Respond Before It's too Late

Pretty speeches can take you only so far. A month after the Copenhagen climate conference, it is clear that the world's leaders were unable to translate rhetoric about global warming into action.

It was, of course, nice that world leaders could agree that it would be bad to risk the devastation that could be wrought by an increase in global temperatures of more than two degrees Celsius. At least they paid some attention to the mounting scientific evidence. And certain principles set out in the 1992 Rio Framework Convention, including "common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities," were affirmed. So, too, was the developed countries' agreement to "provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology, and capacity-building" to developing countries.

...Underlying the failure in Copenhagen are some deep problems. The Kyoto approach allocated emission rights, which are a valuable asset. If emissions were appropriately restricted, the value of emission rights would be a couple trillion dollars a year -- no wonder that there is a squabble over who should get them.

Clearly, the idea that those who emitted more in the past should get more emission rights for the future is unacceptable. The "minimally" fair allocation to the developing countries requires equal emission rights per capita. Most ethical principles would suggest that, if one is distributing what amounts to "money" around the world, one should give more (per capita) to the poor (ESPECIALLY GIVEN THEIR LACK OF HISTORICAL EMISSIONS--brackets are my thoughts).

Perhaps it is time to try another approach: a commitment by each country to raise the price of emissions (whether through a carbon tax or emissions caps) to an agreed level, say, $80 per ton. Countries could use the revenues as an alternative to other taxes -- it makes much more sense to tax bad things than good things. Developed countries could use some of the revenues generated to fulfill their obligations to help the developing countries in terms of adaptation and to compensate them for maintaining forests, which provide a global public good through carbon sequestration.

A system of border taxes -- imposed on imports from countries where firms do not have to pay appropriately for carbon emissions -- would level the playing field and provide economic and political incentives for countries to adopt a carbon tax or emission caps. That, in turn, would provide economic incentives for firms to reduce their emissions.

Time is of the essence. While the world dawdles, greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere, and the likelihood that the world will meet even the agreed-upon target of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius is diminishing. We have given the Kyoto approach, based on emission rights, more than a fair chance. Given the fundamental problems underlying it, Copenhagen's failure should not be a surprise. At the very least, it is worth giving the alternative a chance.

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23593

Joseph E. Stiglitz is former head of the World Bank and now University Professor at Columbia University. Among many books, he is the author of Globalization and Its Discontents. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 for research on the economics of information. Most recently, he is the co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

picture --http://ale1980italy.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/climate-change1.jpgPretty speeches can take you only so far. A month after the Copenhagen climate... more

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Weekly Mulch: Climate Reform’s Good, Bad, and Ugly

By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger

The next United Nations climate change conference is almost a year away, and health care is still dominating the legislative agenda in Washington. That means climate reform opponents, from the coal industry to the global warming skeptics, have plenty of time to work, out of the spotlight, to derail progress. Here’s a glimpse of the enemies of reform—and the companies and individuals that are still fighting for change in 2010.

Take the case of Cape Wind, an offshore wind farm planned for Massachusetts’ Nantucket Sound, as an example. The project faced yet another roadblock this week, when the National Park Service said the site could be listed as a historical place, prized by Nantucket’s Native American tribes. But as Kate Sheppard writes in Mother Jones, the park service’s decision counts as a victory for a less sympathetic opponent as well. William Koch is the founder and president of the Oxbow Group, a privately-held group of companies, and he has laid out more than a million dollars to fight Cape Wind.

“Koch … has made his fortune off mining and marketing coal, natural gas, petroleum, and petroleum coke products,” Sheppard explains. “He’s the son of Fred Koch, founder of oil and gas giant Koch Industries, and brother of David and Charles Koch—who have supported conservative groups like Citizens for a Sound Economy (which later merged with another group to form FreedomWorks) and Americans for Prosperity, which has campaigned against both climate legislation and health care reform.”

Mother Jones is also on the case of the Atlas Foundation, a think tank that promotes climate change skepticism (and also receives funding from Koch). Josh Harkinson examines this group and other foundations that are supporting “a loose network of some 500 similar organizations in dozens of countries” and that are in turn financed by “carbon-spewing American industries.” The Atlas Economic Research Foundation alone has supported more than 30 other foreign think tanks that buy into climate change skepticism, Harkinson reports.

“The foreign groups’ finances are opaque, yet an Atlas Foundation spokesman acknowledges that some of them wouldn’t exist without dollars being pumped in,” Harkinson writes. “In the coming months, these groups will lead the fight in their own countries to derail the shaky deal made in Copenhagen—which will likely prompt American skeptics to cite widespread international opposition to taking action on climate change.”

Of course, the skeptics do have opponents, including the solar and wind power industries that stand to gain from climate change legislation. One group that can be added to that list: Farmers. Lynda Washington of the Iowa Independent reports that “most, but not all, [agricultural] producers will benefit from the package passed earlier this year by the U.S. House of Representatives,” according to a new study by Kansas State University (KSU) researchers.

The American Farmland Trust, which funded the KSU study, will have plenty of strange bedfellows as it lobbies Congress on climate change legislation. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! reports that the groups joining the battle on Capitol Hill include “venture capitalists, the natural gas lobby, America’s most iconic soup maker Campbell Soup,” according to a new analysis of federal records.

“The sheer range of interests registered to lobby on climate change is expected to create further delays in the Senate’s effort to complete a successful bill to curb fossil fuel emissions,” Goodman explains.By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger The next United Nations climate change... more

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Why do I like Avatar? Because it helps me sleep at night.

After a year of restless sleep and nightmares that involve the state of the planet, I slept with a sense of ease and comfort of an innocent child after seeing Avatar. Added bonus, and I didn’t even after to pay extra. (If you haven’t seen the movie~ stop now. Open a new page on your browser and buy yourself a ticket to the next showing (in 3D of course).

I’ve been trying to put my finger on what shifted in my nervous system since being exposed to that story. The journey of the wounded warrior? The vision of a world that lives in balance and in appreciation of life? The connection to land told in an authentic voice? Or the sheer thrill of watching a storyteller speak the truths of two society’s at once? Because when I wake from my own dreams to find news like It’s manatee vs. military in pending habitat ruling and Namibia’s landmark trees dying from climate change it feels like we are in the nightmare of the Pandora’s attack, no?

Was it that the good guys won against all possible odds? It wasn’t all good or easy, and after all, it sucked seeing myself in both parts of the story~ as both the good and the evil doers (hats off Cameron).

I think the truth lies somewhere between 1) My friend Dara said it best with, “Isn’t it kind of amazing that this is the story that is getting out to the masses?” I’m not a movie buff, so before going to see the movie, all I knew about it (and what drove me to see it) is that they developed a new technology that reinvented movie making. Cameron could have used any story and a lot of people would have bought tickets. But they used this story, and people are going back multiple times (someone on the fan site attended 5 times). So that inspires me, that this is the story that served as the vehicle for this radical new technology. And then of course~2) I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I fully fell in love with the world Cameron created.

But there is another piece to this story which inspires and is part of the meta narrative. James Cameron’s almost ridiculous story of how he got into filmmaking. I’m sure there are plenty of pieces missing from Wired’s account of Cameron’s plight, but at the end of the day I love the image that a truck driver saw Star Wars and knew that he could (and should) do better. It’s just more of the same, the little guy rising up against the big societal systems that seem impossible to permeate and succeeding against all odds.

There has been plenty of criticism about it’s lack of originality, but at the end of the day, there are just a few stories told over and over, it’s all about how you tell the story. One of my favorite sayings in writing is to show, don’t tell, and Cameron and team accomplished that over and over again in the way they showed the power of connection between various species and the planet. I think that is what I found exciting~ to see this technology used in a way that wasn’t just about fight scenes, but dedicated mostly to the details of what it can mean to connect to the natural world (the irony that it is these technological advances spreading the message of connection to nature is…well, delicious).

But maybe a piece of the power of this story is that it just has good timing. (complete post at the link)After a year of restless sleep and nightmares that involve the state of the planet, I... more