Climate and Energy

Is Morocco’s promising progress on renewable energy reliant on repression & human rights abuses in Western Sahara ?

Where does the key to the divestment movement’s success lie? And how much does the success of COP 22 depend on divestment?

The case of the small village of Trun in Bulgaria – threatened by a new gold-mining project – is a stark illustration of how the interests of biodiversity, nature and ordinary people living in the area can simply be dismissed. A proliferation of such projects could have a serious impact on the ecology of the entire region, as well as contributing to a global impact on the climate.

The Swedish power company Vattenfall, its mining activities and its impact throughout Europe – especially in Germany – illustrates the need for Greens to Europeanise their battles and their cooperation. Environmental protection and cross-national cooperation are two values that European Greens pride themselves on upholding. Vattenfall is and should be a test case for European Greens.

Climate change includes major changes in temperature, precipitation, and of course many other effects that will occur over several decades or longer. Now, we must address how a possible Brexit might impact climate change and future climate negotiations at the national, European and global levels.

The concept of loss and damage due to the impacts of climate change first entered into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiating text in 2008. Eight years on, the issue still appears to be little known to people outside of a specific community of policy actors, NGOs and academics working on the issue.

Did the agreements that came out of the December 2015 COP 21 in Paris really hold any meaningful weight?

The consumption of meat and animal by-products is something we take largely for granted. Up until two years ago, I was a blind omnivore, consuming more than my fair share of factory farmed meat and dairy and never once thinking about where the food I ate came from, or the resounding impact it had upon so many levels of society and industry. In the aftermath of COP21, it is time to examine the shady nature of one of the most environmentally degrading industries in the game.

And so, the COP 21, the Paris talks on climate change which have been on everyone’s mind for the past 15 days are over but already registered in limbo for some. Will these talks really go down in history, as Hollande has repeatedly claimed?

Applause had already broken forth when the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laurent Fabius, brought his gavel down. On Saturday, after two weeks of arduous climate negotiations in an old airport hangar at Le Bourget outside of Paris, the world had come to an agreement, thus concluding a process spanning decades and adopting the first truly global climate deal.