The Copenhagen climate summit is now less than one month away and observers are not optimistic that states will agree to a deal cementing either specific greenhouse gas emission reductions or increased environmental assistance to the developing world so they can meet the standards without threatening growth vital to fighting poverty.
Last month, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lo…

In late October, the United States National Academy of Sciences released an interesting on-line “prepublication” edition of a report called Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use. The October 19 New York Times reported the key finding on the costs of air pollution from burning fossil fuels:
Burning fossil fuels costs the Unite…

This past week, the news related to the ongoing climate negotiations was quite confusing. On Monday the 19th of October, the BBC reported optimistically:
“It’s an uphill battle, but I just feel today it’s more do-able than (I did) yesterday,” Mr Miliband [UK climate secretary] told journalists in a briefing directly after the MEF meeting closed on Mon…

Do you remember when I mentioned “Greenfinger” on this blog a couple of months ago? Greenfinger would be a rich master environmental criminal — perhaps pursuing climate geoengineering without international approval.
In the October Atlantic Monthly, representatives of the ICE Coalition wrote to the editors to offer a legal solution to the potential Green…

This past weekend, Carol Browner, Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy proclaimed that the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade climate bill (which passed the House this summer) is not going to become law prior to the upcoming climate negotiations. The NYT :
“Obviously, we’d like to be through the process,” Carol Browner said durin…

Last August, the UN Environmental Programme reported that “around $300 billion or 0.7 per cent of global GDP is being spent on energy subsidies annually.” These subsidies are particularly important because most are devoted to fossil fuels. They artificially reduce the price of those fuels, thereby increasing consumption and dramatically influencing greenhou…

For more than a century, the overwhelming majority of greenhouse gases have been emitted by advanced industrial states. Recently, however, China has assumed the top spot in annual emissions. On a per person basis, of course, China still trails the global leaders by a good distance.
Those statistics highlight the related problems of scale (China is really big) and inequality (mu…

Representatives from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are meeting in Vienna this week and the looming threat of Copenhagen is clearly on their agenda. I wrote “threat of Copenhagen” because OPEC states are primarily devoted to selling a commodity that is a significant source of climate change. The U.S. Energy Information Administration…

The Copenhagen conference starts in three months and this blog will cover key negotiation issues. Let’s start with the framework for negotiation, OK?
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change dates to the June 1992 Earth Summit. The overwhelming majority of nations are parties to this agreement — even the United States, which did not ratify the fol…

To understand climate politics, one really needs to study both international and domestic factors. My field is international relations and I’ll likely be blogging here a good deal about national interests and state bargaining power. However, it is important to keep in mind internal actors and their interests.
For example, it would not be surprising for a U.S. Senator fro…