Two interesting car-related events today. First, the European Union announced its plans to crack down on high-emitting vehicles, with direct penalties on carmakers who continue to churn out gas-guzzlers. This was announced on the day that this correspondent finally placed his order for a Toyota Prius, and is happy to be shortly retiring his thirsty current model. (more…)

After all the histrionics, eventually a roadmap of sorts was agreed at the UN climate conference in Bali. This roadmap first leads to Poznan in Poland in a year’s time, and then on to Copenhagen in late 2009 – that’s the scheduled final destination on the Bali roadmap.

Getting a deal signed here was always going to be hugely problematic. When the world’s superpower sets its face against an issue, as the Bush administration has so firmly done on climate change, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, dramatic breakthroughs are never on the cards. (more…)

As we write, it appears that the UN climate summit is ‘on the brink’ of a deal. A bloc comprising the US, Japan and Canada have been working together to block any agreement that imposed any actual deadlines or any actual targets, in other words, their clear objective has been to sink the summit in a sea of fudge. (more…)

That’s how Australia’s new prime minister, Kevin Rudd today set it out to delegates in Bali on climate change. “There is is no other planet any of us can escape to”.

Rudd recently thrashed outgoing PM, John Howard, and the stick of Australia’s outrageous climate denial over the last 11 years beat Howard not just from high office, he even lost his own seat. Guess you can’t fool all the people all the time. (more…)

“Watch out for Canada, the US and Saudi Arabia” – that was the warning from a spokesperson for Climate Action Network, quoting a leaked memo from Ottowa ordering Canadian delegates to demand binding reductions from all major emitters, ie. China and India before they would sign up. (more…)

Ho ho ho. Vaclav Klaus thinks that the movement to prevent global warming is in fact a new ideology that threatens to undermine freedom and the world’s social and economic order. Klaus feels so strongly about this that he has written a book, ‘Blue Planet in Green Chains’ (yes, seriously). (more…)

You have to hand it to Al Gore. Yes, his hopeless presidential campaign in 2000 gifted the Presidency to the most rapacious group of robber barons since their heyday in the late 19th Century. Yes, he is a bit of a hypocrite, and yes, his house in Tennessee is almost as obscenely large as one of Michael Smurfit’s holiday homes. (more…)