Rastafaraus Dreadhead's Community

The European Commission, Member States and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat have successfully completed all the testing required for connecting to the UN's international carbon credit registry. The EU's Community Independent Transaction Log (CITL) and Member State registries will be connected to the UN's International Transaction Log (ITL) before December 2008 at the latest. The link will mean carbon credits issued under the Clean Development Mechanism can be transferred to the registries of EU Member States.

According to the Chinese Technology Minister Wan Gang, the Beijing Olympic Games will result in the release of some 1.18 million tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere, "in part because so many athletes and spectators were traveling long distances". However, we need not worry about this, because the Chinese authorities assure us that the Olympics will be "basically" carbon neutral.
 

Trading in the right to emit greenhouse gases is emerging as one of the foundations of climate-change policy. Trading is widely recognised to be a way to reduce emissions cheaply, because it permits flexibility in where and how firms make their reductions. The EU has been at the forefront, with the establishment of an Emissions Trading Scheme or ETS. Now Australia and the north-eastern states of the United States have signalled their keenness to introduce carbon trading, and even to connect their schemes to Europe?s scheme. In fact, worldwide trading in carbon has already in effect begun, because firms in industrialised countries can buy emission reductions in developing countries, for example through what is known as the Clean Development Mechanism, one of the successes of the Kyoto Protocol. To illustrate how quickly these markets are developing, pension funds are now signing deals to finance clean household cooking stoves in China.

JOHANNESBURG, 4 July (IRIN) - Experts under the leadership of former UK prime minister Tony Blair have prepared a report described as a "useful balm applied at the right moment to tense muscles" in an attempt to crack a global deal on climate change in international talks ahead of the upcoming G8 summit in Japan, according to a global warming policy analyst.