The Durban conference on climate change ended on a much better note than many expected, but continued to delay the toughest questions for at least three years. The final outcome of the conference, COP-17, is a two-page, breakthrough document called the “Durban Platform for Enhanced Action” [...]

The end of the Durban conference is approaching, and in all likelihood, the end of the Kyoto Protocol along with it. Developments in the last few days indicate the outcome is more likely to confirm a global disagreement, rather than agreement, over the idea of a second Kyoto commitment period, or “Kyoto II,” for all countries, both developed and developing. [...]

With the Durban climate change negotiations barely a week old, key countries are drawing their “red line” positions in the sand. On one side of the line, where the Group of 77 (G77) + China and other developing countries firmly sit, is a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol that continues binding targets for current country signatories after the first period expires at the end of 2012 (excluding Canada, which has announced that it is pulling out of the treaty altogether). On the other is a European Union plan for a new global agreement with binding targets for all countries beginning in 2015 and in force by 2020. [...]

Heading into Durban and the United Nations Climate Change Conference, otherwise known as the Seventeenth Conference of Parties (COP-17), the G77 remains committed to its long-standing position of achieving a legally binding agreement. Given the ongoing stalemate between developed and developing countries, however, many media accounts say they are unlikely to achieve it anytime soon [...]

It has taken a long time in China, but official policies finally aim to achieve a sustainable balance between environmental protection and economic growth in significant ways. Developments over the last several weeks and months include a draft proposal for new rules on fines for pollution, discussions of an environmental tax and increased environmental spending, [...]

Among the Republican Party candidates vying to contest Obama in the 2012 presidential election, there is a recurring theme: the idea that environmental regulation prevents job creation. While only one candidate attacked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Monday’s Tea Party Express debate, Herman Cain’s comment that the agency has “run wild” drew enthusiastic applause. [...]

Debates are underway in the United States as contenders seek the Republican party nomination to challenge Barack Obama in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. Last week’s debate was the first for Texas Governor Rick Perry, whose front-runner status appeared to take a slip to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney following controversial remarks on social security. [...]

While Ontario’s ambitious feed-in-tariff (FIT) policy is being put to the test by domestic and international opposition, including a challenge from Japan, Japan has just achieved a major breakthrough for its own FIT policy as it continues to recover from the tsunami and nuclear disaster this past March. Both examples will have implications for renewable [...]

U.S. President Barack Obama late last week announced an aggressive agreement to  increase the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) to 54.5 miles per gallon for cars and light-duty trucks by model year 2025. The agreement, made with 13 major automakers, including Ford, GM, Chrysler, Honda, Jaguar/Land Rover, Hyundai, BMW, Kia, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Nissan, Toyota and [...]

Charged meaningless by some and pathetic by others, yesterday’s debate in the United Nations Security Council on the security implications of climate change disappointed the hopes of those in the policy community who, for years, sought action on climate change by the Security Council in absence of any effective multilateral agreement by the United Nations [...]