When psychologists identified the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance — the ability to believe two contradictory things at the same time — they might have been describing the world of international climate change negotiations. Only this month, two authoritative international agencies have pointed out that the world has only a few years left in which to begin taking sufficient action to combat dangerous global warming. The United Nations Environment Programme's Bridging the Emissions...

Like stags fighting, the first days of each annual UN climate summit start with delegations circling each other politically, looking for weaknesses, gauging strengths. The summit that began this week in Durban, South Africa, has been no different - and though it might seem that little has been accomplished so far, a number of blocs have at least made their positions clearer than ever before. And that's vital if effective negotiations are...

India ranks a dismal 134 among 187 countries in terms of human development index in the UNDP's latest Human Development Report. Against this bleak backdrop, the bugle of caution is rightly sounded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its latest Human Development Report (HDR), released in Copenhagen on November 2 jointly by Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and UNDP Administrator Helen Clark. As the international community is busy preparing...

Some of the developing world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters are bidding to delay talks on a new climate agreement. To the anger of small islands and other vulnerable countries, India and Brazil are joining rich nations such as the US and Japan in wanting to start talks on a legal deal no earlier than 2015. The EU and climate-vulnerable blocs want to start as soon as possible, and have the deal finalised...

-AP   As delegates gather in South Africa to plot the next big push against climate change, Western governments are saying it’s time to move beyond traditional distinctions between industrial and developing countries and get China and other growing economies to accept legally binding curbs on greenhouse gases. It will be a central theme for the 20,000 national officials, lobbyists, scientists and advocates gathering under U.N. auspices in the coastal city of Durban...