Login
Register
+7 /495/ 641 04 26facebook
 

News

maryrobinsonSecretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed former Irish President Mary Robinson as his Special Envoy for Climate Change to mobilize political will and action ahead of the climate summit that the United Nations chief will convene in September.

Mrs. Robinson, who will continue to serve as President of the Mary Robinson Foundation-Climate Justice, will work closely with Special Envoys John Kufuor and Michael Bloomberg in her new role.

co2 5The politically expedient way to mitigate climate change is essentially no way at all, according to a comprehensive new study by University of Chicago climatologist Raymond Pierrehumbert.

Among the climate pollutants humans put into the atmosphere in significant quantities, the effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the longest-lived, with effects on climate that extend thousands of years after emissions cease. But finding the political consensus to act on reducing CO2 emissions has been nearly impossible.

Environment AssemblyA United Nations body that focuses on the environment and has representatives from all 193 UN Member States is meeting for the first time today in Nairobi, to discuss issues such as illegal wildlife trade, chemical waste and air pollution, and new universal development goals.

The UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) “places environmental concerns on the same footing with those of peace, security, finance, health and trade for the first time,” the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a news release from its headquarters in Kenya. “For many, the creation of UNEA is the coming of age of the environment as a world issue.”

forest treesEvery spring, as the weather warms, trees up and down the East Coast explode in a display of bright green life as leaves fill their branches, and every fall, the same leaves provide one of nature's great color displays of vivid yellow, orange, and red.

Thanks to climate change, the timing of those events has shifted over the last two decades, Harvard scientists say.

earth1Geochemists have calculated a huge rise in atmospheric CO2 was only avoided by the formation of a vast mountain range in the middle of the ancient supercontinent, Pangea. This work is being presented to the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Sacramento, California.

Around 300 million years ago, plate tectonics caused the continents to aggregate into a giant supercontinent, known as "Pangea".

paris1As many as 50,000 people are likely to attend the December 2015 talks in Paris aimed at forging a UN pact on climate change, host France said on Tuesday.

"Between 40,000 and 50,000 people from 195 countries are expected," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters at the site in Le Bourget, just north of the French capital, where the talks will be held.

ecologistssuEcological energetics integrates information about species’ physiological limits, such as metabolic cost of thermoregulation, digestion, growth, locomotion or reproduction, with biotic and abiotic ecological constraints of the environment in which it lives.

A research group led by the University of Western Australia and Kings Park and Botanic Gardens is championing 'ecological energetics' as an essential tool for ecologists in understanding rapidly changing ecosystems.

wind turbine15 June 2014 – Launching the United Nations Decade of Sustainable Energy for All, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today hailed modern energy services as the source of profound and life-changing opportunities – for the poorest communities and the richest investors – and urged generating the innovative ideas and vital partnerships to wholly transform the global energy landscape.

“We are here because we understand that sustainable energy is central to the post-2015 sustainable development agenda,” the UN chief told the first annual Sustainable Energy for All Forum, which opened yesterday in New York and wraps up tomorrow, aiming to generate momentum for Mr. Ban’s eponymous 2011 initiative that brings together governments, civil society and business to make sustainable energy for all a reality by 2030.