Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has threatened Australia will not be part of the next round of the Kyoto Protocol unless it is part of a wider agreement covering major polluters.

Addressing the global climate change talks in Durban, Mr Combet said a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol may only cover 15 per cent of global emissions.

"A more comprehensive agreement is fundamental for environmental effectiveness," Mr Combet told the conference.

"Australia's position remains unchanged - we will be part of a second commitment period only if it is a part of a wider agreement covering all major emitters."

The Kyoto agreement, which sets lower emission targets for participating countries, appears in trouble, with both the United States and China refusing to pledge support.

China wants to be considered a developing country with lower obligations, and the US wants all countries to be treated equally.

The Kyoto agreement runs out at the end of next year, but so far there has been deadlock on whether to renew, as favoured by China and India, or to draw up a new treaty, as favoured by Russia, Canada and Japan.

The climate change conference in Copenhagen in 2009 reached a stalemate over Kyoto, with many predicting a similar outcome for the current talks in Durban.

Mr Combet's speech has prompted the Greens to call on the Government for an explanation of its position on extending the Kyoto Protocol.

Senator Bob Brown says Australia should be committed to the second round.

"We should be putting maximum pressure onto the big players like China, the US, Russia and India to do the same, but there's no clear evidence that Australia is supporting a new outcome which is going to aim at tougher targets in reducing greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-08/combet-threatens-climate-change-kyoto-withdrawal/3720086

In 2011, as in 2010, America was in a technical recovery but continued to suffer from disastrously high unemployment. And through most of 2011, as in 2010, almost all the conversation in Washington was about something else: the allegedly urgent issue of reducing the budget deficit.

This misplaced focus said a lot about our political culture, in particular about how disconnected Congress is from the suffering of ordinary Americans. But it also revealed something else: when people in D.C. talk about deficits and debt, by and large they have no idea what they’re talking about — and the people who talk the most understand the least.

Perhaps most obviously, the economic “experts” on whom much of Congress relies have been repeatedly, utterly wrong about the short-run effects of budget deficits. People who get their economic analysis from the likes of the Heritage Foundation have been waiting ever since President Obama took office for budget deficits to send interest rates soaring. Any day now!

And while they’ve been waiting, those rates have dropped to historical lows. You might think that this would make politicians question their choice of experts — that is, you might think that if you didn’t know anything about our postmodern, fact-free politics.

But Washington isn’t just confused about the short run; it’s also confused about the long run. For while debt can be a problem, the way our politicians and pundits think about debt is all wrong, and exaggerates the problem’s size.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html?pagewanted=print

At the rate things are going, the Earth in the coming decades could cease to be a “safe operating space” for human beings. That is the conclusion of a new paper published Thursday in the journal Science by 18 researchers trying to gauge the breaking points in the natural world.

The paper contends that we have already crossed four “planetary boundaries.” They include the extinction rate; deforestation; the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorous (used on land as fertilizer) into the ocean.

“What the science has shown is that human activities — economic growth, technology, consumption – are destabilizing the global environment,” said Will Steffen, who holds appointments at the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Center and is the lead author of the paper.

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/scientists-human-activity-has-pushed-earth-beyond-four-of-nine-planetary-boundaries/2015/01/15/f52b61b6-9b5e-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html

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