Bangkok Environment – Is there life after Kyoto

Up to 190 senior officials are staking out their starting positions as talks begin in Bangkok on the first global binding treaty to address climate change.

A new U.N. treaty to fight climate change should aim to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the U.N.’s top climate change official said last week.

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn, said that studies by the U.N. Climate Panel indicated that emissions of greenhouse gases had to peak within 10 to 15 years and halve by mid-century to avert the worst effects of global warming.

“That for me personally is the measure of success,” he told Reuters, saying the goals should be cornerstones of a broad treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December 2009. “It’s not going to be easy.”

Yvo de Boer spoke the week before 190 nations’ senior officials meet at Bangkok to kick off negotiations for a new global binding treaty on climate change.

The Bangkok talks starting on April 2 aim to set out a detailed work plan leading to the new global agreement against global warming to be signed in 2009 in Copenhagen.

The new treaty will replace the Kyoto Protocols, the main provisions of which end in 2012, and is expected to bind Kyoto’s outsiders such as the United States, China and India.

Meeting for the first time since marathon talks in December on the Indonesian island of Bali, world climate negotiators will try to thrash out differences that almost derailed their last gathering.

Bali saw countries, including the United States — which never ratified the Kyoto deal — agree to launch the new negotiations. In Bangkok, nations should produce a specific plan “outlining who does what, when and why,” the UNFCCC’s spokesman, John Hay, said.

Talks in Bali fail to deliver any binding and short-term agreement on curbing emissions over opposition from the United States.

Talks had almost fallen apart amid disagreement between the United States and developing countries over who should pay the bill to curb emissions globally.

After a dramatic session in which Washington was booed for opposing demands by poor nations for the rich to do more to help them fight warming climate the US negotiators stepped back and allowed the deal to go ahead.

The final text of the conference called on developed nations to consider “quantified” emissions cuts and developing countries to consider “mitigation actions.”

The Bali meeting also agreed to launch a U.N. fund to help poor nations cope with damage from climate change such as droughts or rising seas.

In Bangkok, the crucial question of emissions will dominate negotiations, but activists warned that no agreement on the issue was likely to come out of the talks.

“There are no great breakthroughs to be expected, because the countries are wrestling for their starting positions,” said Martin Hiller, spokesman of conservation group WWF.

Angela Anderson, director of the global warming programme with the US-based Pew Environment Group, said she expected positive momentum in Bangkok, but warned that individual interests would be on the climate brokers’ minds.

“They are out of the dialogue process and into negotiating, so countries tend to lay down some stronger markers at the beginning,” she told AFP.

“You’re going to see some tough positions floated, probably some pretty serious reaction.”

Blair calls for Revolution against global warming

Tony Blair last month urged the world’s heaviest polluters to start a revolution to fight global warming.

Blair warned a gathering of G20 nations near Tokyo that the action needed is clear and urgent and a failure to act now would be “unforgivably irresponsible”.

“We have reached the critical moment of decision on climate change. There are few, if any, genuine doubters left”, he said.

Carbon trade and green protectionism

Plans to set up and widen carbon markets in America and Europe are feeding demands for protectionism measures.

American companies and labour groups are lobbying the Congress to add an import tax to federal plans of setting up a carbon emissions’ market.

Such a provision would equalize market conditions and protect national industries, they argue.

Will London’s Olympics be green?

The promise was to make “the greenest games in history”.

Though the tag is save from discussion, the environmental strategey for London 2012 Olympic Games is already under the fire of the Green Party that this week came to denounce the games’ low environmental standards.

With four years and four months to go, London 2012’s environmental plans are facing harsh criticism.

How Sherlock Holmes got his looks

A tall man in an Inverness cape and a deerstalker hat. Who else but Sherlock Holmes?

The features of Sherlock Holmes are no secret for the enthusiasts of Conan Doyle’s stories. But few know how did he get his looks.

It was by mistake that the artist Sindey Paget ended up chosen to illustrate Holmes’ stories. The editor of Strand magazine wanted to appoint his brother but the commission fell accidentely in the hands of Sindney.