Recession Pinches Climate Change Progress

Posted on Aug 1, 2010

Wikimedia Commons

A coal power plant in China. As many countries look toward economic recovery, some are turning their heads away from climate change responsibilities.

Amid recession worries and economic hardships, much of the industrialized world has pushed international goals of curbing climate change far off into the future. Politicians are wavering over caps on carbon emissions, citing the economic costs of cutting emissions. —JCL

Reuters:

International action on climate change looks likely to drift over the next two years as politicians waver on tougher carbon caps in the wake of the financial crisis.

Recession in industrialized countries has focused attention on the cost of cutting emissions. And green motivations suffered a huge blow with the failure of U.N. negotiations to deliver a deal in Copenhagen in December.

Talks resume next week in Bonn, Germany, but a new draft text is as vague as ever on targets and a timetable to cut carbon emissions.

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.