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Climate war games

Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson is one contestant in a ‘climate war game’ taking place this week in Washington, where four teams representing China, India, Europe and the United States are negotiating a new deal on curbing global greenhouse gas emissions.

As Daniel Cressey reported yesterday on The Great Beyond blog:

"Today the participants woke up in the year 2015, and the outlook on global warming is significantly worse than it was just seven years earlier. ... Droughts, heavy rains, floods and other extreme weather events are on the rise. Some 250,000 refugees from Bangladesh are camped out on the border of India, two years after their country was ravaged by a typhoon." “It feels a bit like a grown-up version of Dungeons and Dragons to me, but I'm willing to give it a try,” says Tollefson.

If yesterday's roleplay scenario is anything to go by, it seems the EU and US may completely swap stances on climate policy by 2015! For an explanation of just how that might happen, check out Jeff's progress over on Nature's conference blog.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on July 29, 2008
Categories: Climate Policy, Features, In the News, Notes from the Field, Olive Heffernan, Politics | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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G8 Hokkaido Summit: Climate Feedback coverage

Next week, here on Climate Feedback, I'll be reporting directly from Hokkaido, Japan's nothernmost island, where leaders from rich nations and emerging economies will be meeting to discuss some of the world’s most pressing problems.

Gathering from July 7-9 will be the Group of Eight (G8) - an exclusive but informal bloc of nations, comprising the world's seven leading economies Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus Russia. This year's summit will extend to an additional eight industrialised nations on the final day to facilitate US President George Bush’s Major Economies Meeting.

Climate Change is expected to top the agenda of both meetings. Pressure is on G8 delegates to go above and beyond the political breakthrough of the 2007 Summit in Heilegendamm, Germany, where leaders agreed to seriously consider slashing emissions by half of 1990 levels by 2050. And George Bush seems keen to leave some sort of a legacy on tackling climate change through this meeting of major economies (or just any sort of a legacy other than Iraq actually).

But are binding emissions a realistic expectation of the G8? Will oil prices and global food shortages bump global warming down the agenda? And what progress on climate change is likely under the current US administration? I've written a preview in this week's Nature on what's being hoped for, and expected, from what should be a very interesting round of talks.

Tune in here from next Monday to follow the events as they take place.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on July 02, 2008
Categories: Features, In the News, Major Economies Meeting, Notes from the Field, Olive Heffernan, Politics | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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