Blog

The high priests of climate change are wrapping up their latest meeting today in Poznan, Poland, where the United Nations is hosting a conference on global warming. But don't expect a real solution to emerge. While most of these politicians and negotiators concur global warming is a man-made problem, there is still fierce opposition to the quickest method for spreading man-made solutions: free trade.

During the October 7 debate at Nashville’s Belmont University, after a summer in which gasoline prices topped $4 per gallon, Senator Barack Obama declared that the highest priority facing the next president was the nation’s energy crisis.

Ever since he signed California's 2006 law to reduce emissions linked to global warming, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has made the transition sound startlingly easy.

Under normal circumstances, November 2008 might have been remembered as a key moment in the American climate-change policy debate. Two independent evaluations were made public that analyzed California's groundbreaking, path-setting 2006 law dictating a sharp state increase in the use of cleaner, costlier energy — specifically Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's repeated assertions that not only would the law not be a drag on the economy; it would actually make the state's economy healthier. Similar claims are common in Washington and many state capitals, which are all considering California-style regulations.

As climate change negotiators headed back into the Poznan International Fair after a two-day break, there was a frosty atmosphere inside and out.

You don't have to be a "climate change sceptic" to assert this unwelcome fact. Professor Gwyn Prins, Director of the LSE's Mackinder Centre for the Study of Long Wave Events, has been advocating measures to reduce what he sees as man-made climate change since 1986. He was a lead author on the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and on the Advisory Board of Friends of the Earth UK. For some years now, Prof Prins has been warning that the Kyoto approach is hopelessly flawed – and his unpopularity in the environment ministries of Europe has grown, precisely as his criticisms of their approach have been vindicated.

India is not a "major emitter" of greenhouse gases and will not volunteer to take on responsibilities that would see it accept legally binding limits, the country's special envoy on climate change has told the Guardian.

European Union nations on Monday dug in for a battle over the costs of tackling climate change, with few signs of compromise emerging ahead of a summit of EU leaders later this week.

Christopher Booker is correct when he talks about global warming policy as an economic suicide note. Yale economist William Nordhaus recently estimated the full costs of unchecked global warming of 3C at about $22 trillion. That's a lot of money, although it reflects all the assumptions of the global warming alarmists, which Mr Booker rightly questions.