The French government is working towards implementation of a direct carbon tax by July 2010. France’s Constitutional Council struck down the first version of the carbon tax bill last 29 December. On 21 January 2010, the government proposed a number of amendments to the original legislation, which is aimed at encouraging French consumers to be [...]

In a state not short of green ideas, British Columbia once again looks forward to displaying its green credentials but this time on the international stage. The Vancouver 2010 winter Olympic organisers aim to make the 2010 Winter Olympics a showcase of the state and city’s progress in embracing sustainable eco-values. Historically, Olympics have not [...]

On 30 April, the Ministry of the Environment (MoE) announced the final data regarding the amount of emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the 2007 fiscal year. According to MoE, the amount of GHG emissions in the 2007 fiscal year was approximately 1.37 billion tons (CO2 equivalent), exceeding the amount of GHG emissions in the [...]

Climatico’s Jennifer Helgeson gives her impressions and conclusions from this week’s Climate Congress The science that will direct the UN Climate Change Conference to be hosted by the Danish Government in December 2009 was discussed by more than 2500 delegates from almost 80 countries from 10-12 March 2009 in at the Copenhagen Climate Congress. The [...]

On March 5 2009 Climatico released its first assessment report of national climate policy across twelve of the G20 countries. This, the first of four reports leading to COP-15 in December 2009, tracks progress in government climate policy between 1st November 2008 and 20th February 2009.  Through this tracking the report draws conclusions about general trends between [...]

The economics of reducing greenhouse gas emissions are a complicated business. And this is especially true when you want to set up a domestic cap and trade system in a carbon-dependent economy, a process both the USA and Australia are in the process of beginning to work through. At the outset there are the problems [...]

The UNFCCC Climate Change Conference is drawing ever closer (9 days at time of writing). But what are we expecting from this mass meeting? What is Poznan actually aiming at? The answers to these questions initially seem obvious: to prepare the ground for the near-legendary ‘Copenhagen Protocol’. However, dig any deeper than this and it [...]