Climate change

The Marrakesh Accords, the Bali Roadmap, the Cancun Agreements, the Durban Outcomes, the Doha Climate Gateway, the Lima Call for Climate Action – the grand names given to decisions taken under the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) stand in contrast to the meagre progress made on

The latest round of negotiations for the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change closed in Bonn last Friday with mixed results. With ten formal negotiating days left until crucial climate negotiations resume in Paris later this year, the clock is ticking. Bonn Climate Change Conference, 1 June

In 2002 David Dollar and Art Kraay, both at the World Bank at the time, published an article in the Journal of Economic Growth called 'Growth is Good for the Poor'. Dollar and Kraay showed that if an economy's growth increased by a percentage point, then growth of the incomes of the poor increased

By Eva Westfield, who was an Australian volunteer based in Port Vila. Consistently rated the most dangerous countries in the world in terms of disaster risk, Vanuatu is no stranger to the destruction caused by natural hazards. Talk of Cyclone Pam hitting Vanuatu started about a week before it

As haggard negotiators left the UN climate change conference in Lima in the early hours of Sunday morning, many observers noted the contrast between the political acrimony that characterised the final days of these tortured discussions and the sense of optimism that many felt going into the talks

The UN Climate Change Summit is taking place in New York tomorrow, with attendance by several world leaders including US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Over the past weekend, nearly 300,000 people marched in the streets of New York to urge a global consensus on

I argued back in April that China's 'synthetic natural gas' (syngas or SNG, which is gas made from coal) is 'bad economics, bad science and an environmental catastrophe'. I also said that 'what is striking is the ambition of Chinese plans versus the widespread scepticism of SNG worldwide and

Two reader comments I'd like to flag in response to my piece highlighting new research by the Brookings Institution's Charles Frank, written up in The Economist, which suggests renewable energy is still way too expensive to take over from coal, oil and gas. Here's OfKember: The basic inadequacy

A newly released IPSOS Global Trends Survey  shows, according to a Guardian columnist, that Anglophone countries are particularly inclined towards climate denialism: When you click on the interactive version on the IPSOS website, you see that the bottom red line (for the US) shows 32%

In September 2010, the Australian Labor Party's Greg Combet sat down with The Australian's Samantha Maiden to explain why the coal industry 'absolutely' had a future. Given Australia is a leading coal exporter, this should have been unexceptional, except that Combet had been put in charge of the

With the repeal today of Australia's two-year-old carbon pricing scheme, the Abbott Government has formalised Australia's transition from climate laggard to climate wrecker. But just how serious a blow to global climate efforts is this repeal? To answer this question we can compare Australia

Sam Roggeveen yesterday showed us how much demand for coal has risen in Asia during this century. Now consider what the future will hold. A recent joint publication from the International Energy Agency and the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia forecasts what is in store for the

Australian public opinion on global warming since 2006. (Screen capture from the Lowy Institute poll interactive.) One of the most striking findings from the 2014 Lowy Institute Poll is that Australians are taking climate change seriously. Since the 2006 poll, concern about climate change had

Yesterday I gave an interview to the Sydney Morning Herald for a story published today: 'Stopping climate change talks "could hurt" G20' (p. 8 in the paper version). Here I want to offer a little more background to the three direct quotes that made it to the final story: Climate change will be

A new trailer for the Godzilla reboot has just emerged, and it looks pretty awesome: Judging by the trailer, environmentalists should be ecstatic with this one. In fact, maybe James Cameron and his Hollywood actor pals could have saved themselves the effort of making a worthy documentary about

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report makes for gloomy reading. The world needs 'drastic changes' to reduce carbon emissions and prevent global temperature rises, reports the ABC; investment in renewable energy needs to triple, says the BBC; the emissions problem is

After its first few months, the Abbott Government's domestic and international climate credibility is threadbare, as is its commitment to commercialising clean energy alternatives. Threadbare, but not yet in complete tatters. This year will be revealing. 2014 will determine whether the Abbott

With the start of the Warsaw climate change talks today, combined with the election of the Abbott Government and its proposed repeal of the Gillard Government's carbon tax regime, climate change is back on the political agenda. There was considerable consternation at the linking of climate change

Roger Pielke Jr is a Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado. Australia’s longest-running tragedy is starting a new season with a new cast but the same familiar follies. Of course I am talking about Australian climate policy. Before Julia Gillard was deposed she had

China watcher James West writes for The Atlantic on his latest train trip through China, and has a short accompanying video (above): I have never before been as dumbfounded as during a train ride this week from Beijing through a swathe of China’s northeast coal belt... ...The scene could be a

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's clumsy remarks on climate change ('a so-called market, in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one') have been roundly criticised and interpreted as a 'dog whistle' to the climate sceptic wing of his party's supporter base. So what was he really getting

John Connor is CEO of the Climate Institute. The past year has been historic in Australia, with around 300 businesses beginning to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions for the first time under carbon laws that had a troublesome gestation and a difficult birth. The last year and the couple

Nicholas Gruen is CEO of Lateral Economics, Chairman of the Australian Centre for Social Innovation, an entrepreneur involved in a number of internet startups, and a regular Fairfax columnist. I concluded my previous post on climate change (cross-posted at Club Troppo) by asking rhetorically

Further to the thread I started on Monday about Martin Wolf's pessimistic column, I've had an email from economist John Quiggin which goes directly to the source of Wolf's (and my) pessimism. For Wolf, the problem is that the case for acting against climate change is always based around privation