• United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development - Rio+20
• Richard Branson's Carbon War Room
• Bill Clinton/Michael Bloomberg's C40 Cities Initiative

May 14 2912: Figueras family member to head Carbon War Room. Say the name Figueres in Costa Rica and it's bound to get a reaction. José "Don Pepe" Figueres led the 1948 revolution, was president three times, nationalised the banks and gave women and black people the vote. His daughter Christiana is the UN's climate chief trying to steer almost 200 countries through the most complex international negotiations ever attempted; and her brother José María was one of Latin America's youngest ever presidents at the age of 39. Now José María – who coined the phrase "there's no planet B" when head of the World Economic Forum – has joined his sister in the fight for a global energy revolution by taking over as head of the cklimate change business thinktank Carbon War Room,  which aims to get business to cut gigatonnes of carbon by sharing best practice information. link

On June 20th 2012 (revised date), the UNCSD (United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development) will take place in Rio de Janeiro. Also referred to as the Rio+20 or the Earth Summit 2012 due to the initial conference held in Rio in 1992, the objectives of the Summit are: to secure renewed political commitment to sustainable development;  to assess progress towards internationally agreed goals on sustainable development; to address new and emerging challenges. The Summit will also focus on two specific themes: a green economy in the context of poverty eradication and sustainable development, and an institutional framework for sustainable development.  (A commentary from the Guardian newspaper contrasts the possibilities and the anticipated downsides.)

April 20 2012: Guardians for the future: safeguarding the world from environmental crisis. The Rio+20 summit in June this year will discuss "an ombudsperson or high commissioner for future generations to promote sustainable development". However, a number of countries are currently trying to remove this concept from the draft. Why would any nation be against such a win-win proposal? Their main concern seems to be about proliferation of bureaucracy and a drain on existing limited resources. However, the opposite is likely to be the case, since an ombudsperson would actually bring more coherence to policy making. Current, narrowly defined policy-making approaches often lead to unintended negative consequences and unnecessary costs in redressing these. Integrated thinking and long-term time horizons can help avoid these, often even in the short term. link

January 2012: Bypassing Kyoto policy failures. This summer's sustainable development conference in Brazil, known as Rio+20, is emerging as an overt attempt by U.N. officials to shift away from the divisive politics of climate change to a broader debate on the green economy and how to bring it to developing nations. On the heels of arguably little movement on an international climate pact during U.N.-sponsored talks in South Africa, Mexico and Denmark, officials here now say they view Rio+20 as a way to get past intractable policy fights between developed and developing nations over greenhouse gas emissions cuts, to focus on core issues like trade and technology. link

The Carbon War Room - web site
The rate at which our carbon-industrial complex is consuming and destroying natural resources and increasing global CO₂e emissions is threatening our future. Under business-as-usual, rising CO₂e emissions from energy, industry, and land use will lead to catastrophic climate change with negative consequences for all of humankind. Climate change threatens to disrupt agriculture, intensify storms, incur droughts, and raise sea levels, among other effects. Large-scale environmental change will result in loss of wealth and life. A number of early effects, including saltwater intrusion due to sea level rise and shifts in snowmelt patterns, are already being felt. link
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Richard Branson  -  founder  
Sir Richard Branson is a successful international entrepreneur and is Founder and Chairman of the Virgin Group. Virgin is one of the world’s most recognized brands and has expanded into everything from air and ground travel to telecommunications, health, space travel and renewable energy through more than 200 companies’ in 29 countries worldwide

The Carbon War Room harnesses the power of entrepreneurs to implement market-driven solutions to climate change. The world needs entrepreneurial leadership to create a post-carbon economy. The War Room’s unique approach focuses on bringing together successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, policy experts, researchers, and thought leaders to focus on market-driven solutions. Our approach is to identify the barriers that are preventing market-based scale up of climate change solutions and thereby perpetuating the status quo. In addition to technology and policy gaps, these barriers include principal-agent problems, information gaps, and lack of common standards or metrics.

December 2010: Branson's nonprofit Carbon War Room this week announced the creation of ShippingEfficiency.org, a site that ranks approximately 60,000 container ships, tankers, bulk carriers, cargo ships, cruise ships, and ferries with efficiency ratings. The site uses the United Nations' IMO methodology for Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) to rank vessels. It's a system that compares vessels against other ships of the same type and size, so a ferry won't be compared to a tanker. link

Clinton, Bloomberg Fight Climate Change.
Bill Clinton’s network and influence with Michael Bloomberg’s billions of dollars provide a combination for dealing with climate change, the two men hope. The former president and New York mayor recently merged their climate-change initiatives. link  [The 40 cities are made up of 20 cities from developed nations and 20 cities from developing nations.]

In October 2005, representatives of 18 leading world cities met in London to discuss joining forces to tackle global warming and climate change. The representatives saw the need for action and cooperation on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pledged to work together towards achieving that goal. At the end of the conference, a communiqué was signed which recognised the need for cities to take action and to cooperate on reducing climate emissions. The cities also promised a number of action points, including most notably the creation of procurement policies and alliances to accelerate the uptake of climate-friendly technologies and influence the market place. In August 2006, the initiative was further strengthened when former President Clinton and the former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone announced a partnership between the Clinton Climate Initiative and the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group (since then renamed "C40"). This new partnership pledged to reduce carbon emissions and increase energy efficiency in large cities across the world.  link    

June 2 2011: World Bank throws weight behind green mega-cities push. The World Bank and the C40 are to join forces to accelerate climate-related investments in many of the world's largest cities. New York City mayor and C40 chairman Michael Bloomberg said that the partnership would make it easier for city authorities to access finance for low carbon and climate adaptation initiatives from the World Bank and other lenders. link

May 31 2011: Cities slash emissions as UN climate envoys bicker.  "While national governments continue their excruciatingly frustrating dialog on climate change, we in the cities are acting,” said Portland (OR) Mayor Sam Adams. “It’s sheer common sense. Becoming more efficient with your city’s energy needs means you’re also more economically secure.” Cities from Johannesburg to Los Angeles are changing street lights, insulating buildings and promoting bicycling to slash carbon emissions as envoys at United Nations talks bicker about binding greenhouse-gas goals. link   

c40cities.org
The C40 cities 
San Francisco and Seattle top the 10 climate-ready cities in the U.S. link

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Dec. 1 2011: Over 340 corporate global leaders back 2°C challenge Communiqué.  The Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change has confirmed that over 340 companies from 38 countries have now signed up to its latest Communiqué calling on the world's governments to take ambitious action to limit average global temperature increases to below 2°C. The 2 degree challenge communiqué will be formally launched at the Durban Summit next week in a move designed to step up pressure on diplomats as they attempt to broker a new global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions. link