Green Options

Both the developed and developing world agree that they have got to act quickly to curb carbon emissions but none is willing to take the initiative on the economic front of the fight against climate change.

Unlike the typical video conferencing tool, holding a virtual conference ‘Second Life’ can include all the elements of a real-world event with none of the travel-related emissions.

Skiers including Olympic gold medalists made an appeal at the UN climate talks in Poland to do more to slow global warming, keeping skiers in business.

Yvo de Boer briefs the press on the strategic goals of the COP14 UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland,

The meeting is the fourth of its kind this year. And even though the U.S. delegation in Poznan will be comprised of the outgoing Bush team, the pending change in American leadership is palpable in Poznam, as global climate conferees see Barack Obama potentially ushering in a new era of U.S. leadership on the environment.

The UN Climate Conference in Poznan, Poland, starting today is raising hopes and fears across the green spectrum. As reported in the Christian Science Monitor.

A year-long push to devise a new global climate-change treaty – one that picks up where the Kyoto Protocol leaves off – gets under way Monday in Poland, with delegates from more than 190 nations set to resume grappling with the thorny issues of how much more to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and who will pay.

The talks, in their first round, are focused on reducing human influence on climate from occurring, according to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). More or less, this means keeping global warming to about 2 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels by the end of the century. Expectations however are low for this meeting.

President-Elect Obama’s pledge to reduce greenhouse gases to pre 1990 levels in the next 12 years notwithstanding, this group has a lot of challenges ahead. This first round of talks is primarily to develop working groups to tackle the various issues surrounding climate change in both developed and developing countries. But, with the global economic crisis on everyone’s mind, it will be hard to keep the conversation on track and work toward lower carbon emissions.

And while they are working to devise ways to reduce carbon emissions, they’ll create quite a few. AFP reports: