Climate Weekly: Tooling up for Bangkok

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Bangkok panorama (Pic: Flickr/Tore Bustad)

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Whatever the political weather, the serious work of drawing up rules to implement the Paris climate deal grinds on.

This week, co-chairs of the process published their “tools” to make sense of a tangle of clashing proposals, ahead of talks in Bangkok next month.

New Zealand’s Jo Tyndall said negotiators will need to “crank up the pace” to meet the December deadline for finalising the rulebook.

Budget permitting, I’ll be covering the Bangkok session. If you want to have coffee or join me on a bike ride around the city, get in touch: [email protected].

Climate conversations

The excuses are wearing thin: Eastern Europe must tackle its climate impact – István Bart, Climate Strategy Institute 2050
Three ways the global business elite is underestimating clean energy – Emilie Prattico
New Chinese-led development banks are missing the point on climate – Robert Soutar, Dialogo China
My dad, who retires today, changed how we think about climate change – Mat Hope

Losing our cool

New York Times Magazine dedicated its entire issue to a climate story this week, entitled “Losing Earth: the decade we almost stopped climate change”.

It is an ambitious oral history of efforts to put climate science on the political agenda in Washington DC in the 1980s, somewhat oversold as the definitive answer to why we haven’t solved climate change yet.

Critics pounced on its framing, which blamed “human nature” rather than obstruction by the fossil fuel interests and Republican Party – despite evidence of the latter in the detail. I would add: the international context is something of an afterthought, saved for chapter 11 of 11 (yes, it’s long).

Veterans, get in touch: what did Nathaniel Rich get right and wrong about the early days of climate politics? What other stories can we tell about that time? Email [email protected] or tweet @climatemegan.

Number of the week

£875 million – the amount of UK climate finance channelled through western consultancies since 2011. Read Soila Apparicio’s investigation into why five big companies receive so much of the money meant for developing countries.

Join us!

We have a vacancy for an ambitious reporter to join our award-winning team. Get your applications in by Monday.

Halfway to Jesus

US country music artist Dulcie Taylor got in touch this week to share her latest music video.

“Please don’t be confused by the title of my song, Halfway to Jesus,” she said. “It came about from hearing people call the terrible storms we’re experiencing thousand year storms. When I first heard that I thought, “Good grief, that’s halfway to Jesus.””

Next week

Look out for a meeting to be held in Katowice, Poland, the site of this year’s UN climate talks, from 8-12 August. The trade union-hosted meeting will attempt to align government climate policy with workers demands for job protection.

Read more on: Climate politics