Climate Change

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The financial crisis and slumping economic activity are threatening Europe's ambitious plans to slash greenhouse gas emissions, with governments eager to avoid saddling companies with additional burdens.

LONDON, Oct 10 (OneWorld) - Failure to factor climate change into the Millennium Development Goals was a major mistake, Lord Nicholas Stern told a meeting in London this week.

WASHINGTON - If you can't stand global warming, get out of the tropics. While the most significant harm from climate change so far has been in the polar regions, tropical plants and animals may face an even greater threat, say scientists who studied conditions in Costa Rica.

A look at some of the positions of the presidential candidates on energy and global warming:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Global warming is driving tropical plant and animal species to higher altitudes, potentially leaving lowland rainforest with nothing to take their place, ecologists argue in this week's issue of Science.

NEW YORK - The financial turmoil rippling across the globe will set back efforts to fight climate change, drying up capital that could help poorer countries upgrade to clean energy technology, the U.N. climate chief said Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If the United States focused on curbing climate change as soon as a new president took office -- or sooner -- it could help pull the world from the financial brink, environmental policy experts told Reuters.

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - Environmental damage such as desertification or flooding caused by climate change could force millions of peoples from their homes in the next few decades, experts said on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (OneWorld) - The global financial, food, and fuel crises and the negative impacts of climate change pose a severe threat to the world's 37 million uprooted people, and will likely increase their numbers, warned the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Monday. 

BARCELONA (AFP) - An elusive consensus on the best way to reduce forest carbon emissions took shape Wednesday with the release of a joint statement by forestry companies, green organisations and indigenous peoples.

LONDON (Reuters) - Plummeting car sales, climate change, high oil prices and the threat of global recession. The answer? Free electric cars.

BARCELONA (AFP) - Half to three-quarters of major Antarctic penguin colonies could be damaged or wiped out if global temperatures are allowed to climb by more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), according to a report released Wednesday.

BARCELONA, Spain (AFP) - Indigenous leaders in five Amazonian nations, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia on Wednesday demanded a larger say on how best to manage tropical forests to fight climate change.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's raucous democracy, endemic poverty and soaring economic ambition make targetting greenhouse gas emissions cuts a hard sell, even as global pressure mounts on the government to do more on climate change.

WASHINGTON - With the presidential election less than a month away and the economy reeling, House Democratic leaders on Tuesday unveiled a proposal to reduce the gases blamed for global warming from power plants, transportation and factories by 80 percent come 2050.

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - A "deadly dozen" diseases ranging from avian flu to yellow fever are likely to spread more because of climate change, the Wildlife Conservation Society said on Tuesday.

BRUSSELS (AFP) - A European parliamentary committee on Tuesday broadly approved ambitious proposals to tackle climate change, refusing to bow to industry pressure to water down the measures.

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - Evidence is mounting day by day that mankind is to blame for climate change, and the financial crisis is a temporary setback in the hunt for solutions, the head of the U.N. Climate Panel said on Tuesday.

Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee released Tuesday their long-awaited draft legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - A committee of EU lawmakers approved an ambitious climate change plan Tuesday, resisting heavy pressure from lobbyists who sought to water down the bill because of the financial crisis.

WASHINGTON - An advocacy group ranks California, Connecticut and Oregon at the top of a list of states improving energy efficiency to respond to high prices, energy security and global warming.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Shanghai, China's most populous city and an aspiring global financial center, is also among the world's most vulnerable urban areas to a rise in sea levels as global warming melts polar ice.

PARIS (AFP) - Wall Street's sickness and its contagiousness for the world economy are bad news for the already faltering effort to craft a new pact to tackle climate change.

BRUSSELS (AFP) - Europe's plan of action to tackle climate change is being undermined by pressure from industry and may no longer achieve its original green goals, the environmental group WWF said Friday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Joe Biden and Sarah Palin agreed that climate change is real, but differed on whether human activity was its root cause in Thursday's U.S. vice presidential debate.

Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin on Friday played up her debate performance as polls showed voters judging her Democratic rival, Joe Biden, to be the winner of the only vice presidential face-off of the campaign.

ORLANDO, Fla. - Climate change threatens to kill off up to a third of the planet's species by the end of the century if urgent action isn't taken to restore fragile ecosystems, protect endangered animals and manage growth, scientists warned Wednesday as a wildlife summit opened.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said Tuesday that global warming is "real," but stressed that it "kind of doesn't matter" whether or not humans are to blame for climate change.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Australian scientists set sail later this week on a voyage that could lead to better data from the Southern Ocean, which plays a major role in acting as a brake on climate change.