Latest Kyoto Stories

By Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentOSLO -- About 190 nations meet in Canada next week to try to enlist the United States and such developing nations as China and India in the U.N.-led fight against global warming beyond 2012.Negotiators will meet in Montreal from November 28 to December 9 for talks on how to replace the U.N.'s 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a tiny first step to curb rising emissions of heat-trapping gases from power plants, factories and cars.Environment ministers from around...

By Ed StoddardZANDSPRUIT, South Africa -- Stanley Diphofa is happy to be hooked up to South Africa's power grid.And he's not worried by the fact that the massive coal-fired stations which power it emit large quantities of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change."If you have no electricity, you have no business," he said outside his modest computer service center -- housed in a corrugated iron shed -- on the edge of a crowded squatter camp just north of Johannesburg.One section of...

By Jeremy LovellLONDON (Reuters) - Ministers face a battle when they meet next week to start talks on a new climate change treaty, European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said on Monday.The meeting of Environment Ministers from 189 nations in Montreal, Canada from November 28 to December 9 is supposed to agree to start talks on taking forward the Kyoto climate change protocol, the first phase of which expires in 2012.But Australia has dismissed the idea and the United States -- the...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has delayed until the first quarter of next year proposals for more cuts in carbon dioxide emissions from industry to meet its Kyoto and domestic goals on curbing pollution, the government said on Monday.UK industry is covered by the European Union's emissions trading scheme, the centrepiece of the bloc's efforts to meet its Kyoto goal of reducing greenhouse gas pollution which is widely blamed for causing global warming.The UK had planned to publish the proposals...

By Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentHARSTAD, Norway -- Life is harsh on the freezing tundra of the Arctic Circle where Anna Prakhova lives. But it can be much harder when snows do not fall.In recent years, snows have failed to fall as normal across large parts of the barren land dotted with low birch and pines."We are experiencing the reality of climate change," Prakhova, who leads a group representing indigenous people in Russia and the Nordic nations, said on a snow-free...

By Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentOSLO -- Rich nations' emissions of gases blamed for global warming risk rebounding in coming years after falling overall since 1990 amid the collapse of Soviet-era industries, United Nations data showed on Thursday.Compared to 1990, the greenhouse gas emissions of 40 developed nations including former Communist states were down 5.9 percent by 2003, slightly exceeding a goal of a cut of 5.2 percent by 2008-12 set by the U.N.'s Kyoto...

By Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentOSLO (Reuters) - Rich nations' emissions of gases blamed for global warming risk rebounding in coming years after falling overall since 1990 amid the collapse of Soviet-era industries, United Nations data showed on Thursday.Compared to 1990, the greenhouse gas emissions of 40 developed nations including former Communist states were down 5.9 percent by 2003, slightly exceeding a goal of a cut of 5.2 percent by 2008-12 set by the U.N.'s Kyoto...

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Rich nations' emissions of gases blamed for global warming risk rebounding in coming years after falling overall since 1990 amid the collapse of Soviet-era industries, United Nations data showed on Thursday. Compared to 1990, the greenhouse gas emissions of 40 developed nations including former Communist states were down 5.9 percent by 2003, slightly exceeding a goal of a cut of 5.2 percent by 2008-12 set by the U.N.'s Kyoto...

By Sugita Katyal NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is unlikely to agree to any emission caps in the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol because of its expanding energy-hungry economy, but analysts say developed nations will continue to pile pressure on the nation. Asia's third-largest economy and home to about a sixth of humanity has some of the most polluted cities in the world, many of them continually shrouded in eye-stinging smog of noxious fumes from cars and industry. Its growing energy...

By Chris Baltimore WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration will use a United Nations climate change meeting in Canada to tout a voluntary plan to store heat-trapping gases underground, an Energy Department official said on Wednesday. Environmental groups said the administration will try to derail any attempt at the Montreal meeting to set mandatory targets to extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012, when its first phase ends. Kyoto requires developed nations to cut emissions of...