It’s been a bummer of a week for climate news. The Senate bill continues to languish behind health care and there have been some disconcerting rumbles that it might now be back-burnered even longer as an increasingly spineless nervous Senate focuses on jobs and deficit. And out of Singapore on Sunday we hear that Copenhagen definitely won’t produce a legally-binding agreement, but will rather be the first piece of a “one-agreement, two-step” process, the controversial (and dangerous (pdf),…

Even if you flew to Copenhagen, they probably wouldn’t let you in to the conference. But don’t despair: You don’t have to be a delegate to help stave off catastrophe.

Keep track of the treaty: Negotiators are working on a draft treaty—raising objections, making changes, and shaping the fate of the world. Keep track of it at 350.org/treaty-tracker.

Get to know the negotiators: Find out who will represent your country in Copenhagen and what they think. Adoptanegotiator.org has  “trackers”…

That which is unsustainable cannot go on. Unsustainable things that are propped up too long snap and collapse suddenly. Our way of life is unsustainable. The sooner we transform our economy into one that can generate sustainable prosperity, the better off we’ll be, and with every passing day, the risks of catastrophe grow larger and more certain. We need change now.

These shouldn’t be radical statements; they’re all demonstrably true. Yet they cleave right down the middle…

The conference is still a few months away, but we asked several activists to predict what they will be talking about after the conference wraps up. Here is what they think they’re going to be saying next January:

Richard Graves, founder of Fired Up Media, blogger for the TckTckTck campaign, and editor of ItsGettingHotinHere.org:

What surprised me was the startling diversity of groups, beyond environmentalists, that got involved—from youth groups to union leaders to the Dalai…

What’s on the table at Copenhagen?

End Goal

The long-term goals of preserving a habitable planet will effectively be boiled down to a single number: the target concentration of CO² in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million. For the past few years, conventional wisdom has called for a target of 450 ppm. But the most recent science points to something more conservative: A 350 ppm ceiling is required if, as the NASA climatologist Jim Hansen puts…

As Morgan noted this morning, word from the APEC meetings in Singapore was that the world will have to wait until sometime next year for a legally-binding international agreement on climate change. Instead, COP15 will serve as just the first part of a “one agreement, two step” process that’ll supposedly be resolved in 2010. And just like that, hopes and expectations for next month’s meetings in Copenhagen have been deflated. And everyone who has been…

It seems that we wont actually be getting any sort of climate agreement coming out of the meetings next month in Copenhagen, and we’ll just be waiting until sometime in 2010 for everyone to get together and make a deal. This is because the Obama administration is pretty sure it’s not going to get climate change legislation done in the next few weeks, while we’re still dithering over health care. And because developing nations feel that…

The Copenhagen Climate Treaty is a proposal for what an ideal vision of a COP15 agreement might look like. The treaty was drafted by Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, IndyACT (the league of independent activists), Germanwatch, the David Suzuki Foundation, the National Ecological Centre of Ukraine, and experts from around the world. The prospective document was distributed to negotiators from the 192 attending nations with the hope that it would influence what happens at the conference.…

When the United Nations holds its international get-togethers, countries are traditionally sorted into five regional groups: African states, Asian states, Eastern European states, Latin American and Caribbean states, and Western European and other states (incidentally probably the only time the United States gets listed as “other”).

In theory, these groupings give smaller countries a chance to speak as part of a louder, unified voice. In practice, though, the groupings have far less of an impact on negotiations than…

Copenhagen, ho!

There’s a famous Danish proverb that roughly translates to, “He who is afraid of asking is ashamed of learning.” So, lest you get caught in a cycle of fear and shame in anticipation of the world’s convergence on Copenhagen, we offer this primer on all things COP15—and all things Copenhagen.

Point of Clarification: The COP in COP15 doesn’t stand for Copenhagen. It stands for Conference of the Parties, and it’s the 15th such event.…

It’s been a bummer of a week for climate news. The Senate bill continues to languish behind health care and there have been some disconcerting rumbles that it might now be back-burnered even longer as an increasingly spineless nervous Senate focuses on jobs and deficit. And out of Singapore on Sunday we hear that Copenhagen definitely won’t produce a legally-binding agreement, but will rather be the first piece of a “one-agreement, two-step” process, the controversial (and dangerous (pdf),…

As Morgan noted this morning, word from the APEC meetings in Singapore was that the world will have to wait until sometime next year for a legally-binding international agreement on climate change. Instead, COP15 will serve as just the first part of a “one agreement, two step” process that’ll supposedly be resolved in 2010. And just like that, hopes and expectations for next month’s meetings in Copenhagen have been deflated. And everyone who has been…

It seems that we wont actually be getting any sort of climate agreement coming out of the meetings next month in Copenhagen, and we’ll just be waiting until sometime in 2010 for everyone to get together and make a deal. This is because the Obama administration is pretty sure it’s not going to get climate change legislation done in the next few weeks, while we’re still dithering over health care. And because developing nations feel that…

The United States will come under some serious heat this month, but the climate drama won’t be taking place at United Nations talks.

With more than a month to go before the Copenhagen climate talks, the press are practically tripping themselves to write off the talks as a failure. Now, I’m not here to blow sunshine and tell you that all’s going great here in Barcelona, and that we’re well on our way to a fair, ambitious, and binding…

The global grassroots climate movement is finally here, and huge.

Climate activists have been waiting two long decades to see what a global climate movement would look like. As of last Saturday, we know. And as movement mentor and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote in an email after watching photos of grassroots actions around the world projecting from the giant, iconic screens of Times Square, “it looked diverse and creative and beautiful.”

Diverse? There were events on every continent…

The United States and other industrialized countries have to face up to historical responsibility.

When it comes to climate change, the burden of historical responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of the developed West. There’s no avoiding the fact that industrialized nations, which have grown economies, developed infrastructure, and generated great wealth by burning fossil fuels, have also affected countries throughout the developing world. The impacts of climate change aren’t some future threat—they are happening now, damaging…

Just before he won the Nobel, Obama got dissed at climate talks in Bangkok. TreeHugger spoke with Oxfam’s lead climate representative about the contentious summit and what needs to happen next. World, know that America can be serious about this: the prospect of a climate bill passing before Copenhagen has just been rekindled, and California just levied a fee of 15 cents on each ton of big polluters’ greenhouse gas emissions to help pay for its landmark cap-and-trade system, set…

 Enough of the fear, let’s build on hope!

The Copenhagen Story is a web-based, collaboratively created story of a doable and desirable future in 2025 where people have met the climate change challenge.

Check out our blog at www.thecopenhagenstory.wordpress.com and our invitation website at www.thecopenhagenstory.org.  We’re spreading the word now – more later!

It is founded on science and motivates action on climate change through an ancient, proven method of sparking re-invention:

The mission of The Copenhagen…

America can make or break the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen—depending on what happens in Washington.

I’m getting a lot of emails here in Bangkok—where I’m currently tracking the U.N. climate treaty negotiations for TckTckTck’s Adopt a Negotiator project—from folks back home wondering what they can do to help secure a deal. How can concerned citizens back on the home-front possibly impact the high-level diplomatic talks on the other side of the globe? The answer, it turns…

Even if you flew to Copenhagen, they probably wouldn’t let you in to the conference. But don’t despair: You don’t have to be a delegate to help stave off catastrophe.

Keep track of the treaty: Negotiators are working on a draft treaty—raising objections, making changes, and shaping the fate of the world. Keep track of it at 350.org/treaty-tracker.

Get to know the negotiators: Find out who will represent your country in Copenhagen and what they think. Adoptanegotiator.org has  “trackers”…

That which is unsustainable cannot go on. Unsustainable things that are propped up too long snap and collapse suddenly. Our way of life is unsustainable. The sooner we transform our economy into one that can generate sustainable prosperity, the better off we’ll be, and with every passing day, the risks of catastrophe grow larger and more certain. We need change now.

These shouldn’t be radical statements; they’re all demonstrably true. Yet they cleave right down the middle…

The conference is still a few months away, but we asked several activists to predict what they will be talking about after the conference wraps up. Here is what they think they’re going to be saying next January:

Richard Graves, founder of Fired Up Media, blogger for the TckTckTck campaign, and editor of ItsGettingHotinHere.org:

What surprised me was the startling diversity of groups, beyond environmentalists, that got involved—from youth groups to union leaders to the Dalai…

What’s on the table at Copenhagen?

End Goal

The long-term goals of preserving a habitable planet will effectively be boiled down to a single number: the target concentration of CO² in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million. For the past few years, conventional wisdom has called for a target of 450 ppm. But the most recent science points to something more conservative: A 350 ppm ceiling is required if, as the NASA climatologist Jim Hansen puts…

The Copenhagen Climate Treaty is a proposal for what an ideal vision of a COP15 agreement might look like. The treaty was drafted by Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, IndyACT (the league of independent activists), Germanwatch, the David Suzuki Foundation, the National Ecological Centre of Ukraine, and experts from around the world. The prospective document was distributed to negotiators from the 192 attending nations with the hope that it would influence what happens at the conference.…

When the United Nations holds its international get-togethers, countries are traditionally sorted into five regional groups: African states, Asian states, Eastern European states, Latin American and Caribbean states, and Western European and other states (incidentally probably the only time the United States gets listed as “other”).

In theory, these groupings give smaller countries a chance to speak as part of a louder, unified voice. In practice, though, the groupings have far less of an impact on negotiations than…

Copenhagen, ho!

There’s a famous Danish proverb that roughly translates to, “He who is afraid of asking is ashamed of learning.” So, lest you get caught in a cycle of fear and shame in anticipation of the world’s convergence on Copenhagen, we offer this primer on all things COP15—and all things Copenhagen.

Point of Clarification: The COP in COP15 doesn’t stand for Copenhagen. It stands for Conference of the Parties, and it’s the 15th such event.…

The Most Important Meeting in History

In 1997, delegates from all over the world met in Japan to create a worldwide framework for reducing carbon emissions. The resulting treaty, which took effect in 2005, aimed to reduce global emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels. Since then, the Kyoto Protocol has been the watchword of environmentalists everywhere—a shorthand for the kind of international cooperation needed to fight climate change (and a reminder of the U.S. Senate’s…

As the world gets closer to the COP15 Climate Change conference, it’s important to look at from where the emissions around the world are coming. In the last year, some countries have started  to clean up their act, while other countries continue to pump out carbon dioxide. Our latest Transparency is a look at the five highest emitters in each region of the world as of 2007 and whether they have increased or decreased both…