Energy and Environment

[P]oliticians in the European Union (EU) and the US have been peddling protectionism – threatening to impose restrictions on imports from countries that refuse to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is no doubt music to the ears of the labour unions and environmentalists that have been calling for such tariffs, but it is bad news for everyone else – especially the poor.

Government officials from around the world have descended on the Indonesian resort island of Bali for two weeks of climate negotiations. The talk is of a new Kyoto-like treaty, with global caps on emissions of greenhouse gases. But such a treaty would harm the poor, hampering their adaptability to climate change, while doing little to prevent it.

Governments should reject calls for a post-Kyoto treaty “Kyoto 2”

Civil Society Report says climate policy should focus on removing barriers to adaptation

Governments and activists have been celebrated from 12-21 September the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Protocol that saved the ozone layer - or did it? This well-published author shows how other factors in real life up in the stratosphere had more effect than the CFC ban. He fears similar hype will lead to radical and expensive policies in the attempts to alter climate change - and the cost will hit the poorest hardest.

Independent assessment of UN climate change report refutes alarmist claims made in official “Summary for Policymakers”

In the global warming debate the big issues is whether what human beings do contributes significantly to global warming. That global warming is occurring is not much in dispute, although some scientists do make a good deal of the point that there have been warming periods in the past, some of them far greater than those being recorded in our time.

In advance of the release of the latest alarmist report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of 26 civil society organizations has formed a new global coalition. Alternate Solutions Institute is part of this coalition which seeks to offer more rational approach to the issue based on independent evaluations of the evidence and assessments of the policy options.