Canadian Cleantech Seminar Program,

Energy Efficiency Exporters Alliance sponsored by the EDC. Jeff Culp here promotes the progress of Net Zero Energy Housing project (NZEH) in Mexico.

Nova Scotia Clean Technologies:
1)Enabling Transformation to Low Carbon Economy
2)LED Roadway Lights
3)Tidal Power

Fiesta Americana Coral Beach Hotel ,Cancun,Coral Gallery B room Dec.8th,2010
(9:30am-11:30am)

COP16 | CMP6 :International Union of Architects (UIA)

COP16 CMP6 - Details - News
The leader of the International Union of Architects (UIA), Louise Cox, presented the "Notice of Cancun," after the demonstration in the town of Climate Change. Cox said it is necessary to work against climate change to keep our way of life and local heritage.

According to the document explains, the architectural design can’t be independent of its environment must be constructive and responsible to the environment.Buildings must have a strong foundation to nurture the welfare of its inhabitants, who are comfortable while sustainable and affordable for everyone.

The future vision of the architects needs to include an appreciation of the natural principles of environment, cultural heritage and use materials that are available in the region.

Through the "Notice of Cancun," the UIA want to disseminate and reinforce the strategy Architectural Design Manager launched during the COP15 in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009. The members of this NGO are committed to building a sustainable world through design and ensure that architects take a responsible attitude.

Tar Sands tailings poisons muskeg and nearby First Nations community

Tar Sands tailings poisons muskeg and nearby First Nations community | rabble.ca by Ben Powless with pictures.
The trip out to the tar sands tailings pond reminded me of other recent trips to places where indigenous people were trying to survive.

It recalled for me a trip out to the Russian Arctic earlier this year to visit a group of Saami (Indigenous) reindeer herders struggling to maintain their way of life, and also the work I did last year with a group of Amazonian peoples who were trying to stop oil companies and oil spills in the Peruvian jungles.

But in the end this was far worse, even compared with those two dire situations, and it was being promoted by the Canadian and Alberta governments.

We left on a pair of four wheelers in the afternoon, embracing the freezing temperatures and snow for about six hours to gather footage of what I was promised would be a shocking find. And it was -- when we finally arrived on the site of the Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. -- CNRL -- tailings pond (which, at about five-km long and one-km wide, was more of a lake), we saw tailings being released on the opposite shore, flowing out and covering the muskeg and bush underneath. I was accompanied by Mike Orr, a councillor in the community of Fort McKay and avid hunter and trapper, and his daughter.

Here we were, standing on traplines and hunting trails that remain in use by members of the Fort McKay First Nation, as the toxic waste covered many hectares with an oily ooze...

Beaches, bargaining and building blocks at the Cancun climate talks | Pembina Institute

Beaches, bargaining and building blocks at the Cancun climate talks | Pembina Institute by Clare Demers

Like a lot of climate colleagues from around the world, I'll be packing my flip-flops later this week for the UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico. Although I've never been much of a beach person, I'm hoping that the two-week conference can deliver some of the building blocks we need for a global effort to tackle climate change.

A year ago, we headed into a similar meeting in Copenhagen hoping to see countries agree to a binding deal. Those negotiations fell far short, and as a result, expectations are more modest this time: Cancun is widely understood as a potential stepping stone on the path to a full agreement a year from now, at the South Africa talks in 2011.....

Climate Change - Andrew Steer "The Silent Revolution"

Developing countries urgently need a global deal on climate change but they’re not waiting for it says Andrew Steer, the World Bank’s Special Envoy for Climate Change.

Speaking to reporters in advance of the UN climate conference in Cancun next week, Steer outlined how developing countries are taking action on climate change and how the World Bank Group is helping.

The World Bank is supporting climate change activities in some 130 countries, Steer said, and a “silent revolution” is going on in terms of developing countries taking action.

"We are struck month by month by how much innovation is going on. Over the last two years, 80 percent of Bank client countries have asked that climate change be one of the pillars we work with them on,” he said. “This is up from about 10 percent ten years ago.”

This is money they could be using for other things but countries are choosing to use it for adaptation, to acquire clean technology, Steer continued.

Asked about what he thinks constitutes success in Cancun, he said progress can be made on two levels—a set of formal decisions on key topics like finance, forests, transfer of technology, mitigation and monitoring and a series of new initiatives on a range of issues that represent real progress.

Describing what he calls such “complementary” initiatives, Steer said there is enormous potential with agriculture.

Action on soil carbon is an opportunity to transform agriculture from climate change problem

Businesses Join Together to Drive Global Climate Protection at COP16 – Press Releases on CSRwire.com

Businesses Join Together to Drive Global Climate Protection at COP16 – Press Releases on CSRwire.com

The World Climate Summit is hosting a business and finance conference accelerating solutions to climate change on December 4-5, in Cancun, Mexico. This new, open and collaborative summit is the beginning of a 10-year framework that will support business, finance, and government leaders with designing and implementing solutions locally and globally, setting the world on a clean and prosperous path by 2020.

Media Contacts
Lisa Manley, The Coca-Cola Company, lmanley@na.ko.com +1 404 676-2683
Tom Williams, Duke Energy, Thomas.Williams2@duke-energy.com +1 980-373-4743
Eric Kosmider, The Dow Chemical Co., EPKosmider@dow.com +1 989-638-8745

A fair climate deal for the Pacific now

A fair climate deal for the Pacific now
Oxfam's Wave of Change united people from around New Zealand to tell decision makers to Protect our Pacific. Climate change costs lives. It's already having a devastating impact on poor communities in developing countries, particularly in the Pacific. Last year world leaders failed to agree to a fair and strong climate deal in Copenhagen. In November of this year they are gathering again, this time in Cancun. The problem has not gone away and neither has public concern that industrialised countries should be doing much more to help vulnerable communities on the front lines of climate change. For more information, visit: www.oxfam.org.nz/climatechange

Agriculture and Rural Development Day 2010: Dec.4th,Sat.

Agriculture and Rural Development Day 2010
Agriculture is where climate change, food security, and development intersect!
Agriculture and Rural Development Day 2010, held in parallel to COP16, will bring agriculture sector adaptation and mitigation strategies to the forefront of the global climate treaty negotiations. It will demonstrate clearly that agriculture is where climate change, food security, and development intersect. It informs the climate change negotiations and advocates for a COP decision on a “work program for agriculture” — and at the same time looking beyond the negotiations.

Agriculture and Rural Development Day 2010 will show how agricultural development can contribute to low emission futures, while adapting to climate change and enhancing supporting sustainable food security. The ensuing messages together with those of Forest Day 4 will be presented jointly at an official COP side event.

Last year’s Agriculture and Rural Development Day had increased the focus on the link between agriculture, food security and climate change, as well as forestry. This year we will build on that success by identifying policies and practical solutions to reduce agriculture-related greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen global food security and rural development.

Planned 2010 themes
•Agricultural intensification as an REDD strategy
•Agricultural mitigation and carbon sequestration
•Adaptation for food security and development outcomes
•Capturing carbon finance, including through forestry, for agricultural development
•What scientific, technological, and methodological aspects need to be considered to advance agriculture’s contribution to mitigation and adaptation?

Large investors at climate talks .

Large investors urge progress at climate talks | Reuters

(Reuters) - Stronger domestic and international policy is needed to help unlock investment in low-carbon technology in the absence of a global climate deal, investors with over $15 trillion of assets said on Tuesday.

A United Nations summit in Cancun, Mexico, starts in just two weeks' time to negotiate a new global climate deal but expectations have sunk to a modest package that includes a fund to manage aid to poor nations, new ways to share clean technology and to protect tropical forests.

Around 260 investors, including Dutch pension fund ATP, HSBC and Deutsche Bank Asset Management, called for Cancun to deliver $30 billion of climate aid promised last year, in a statement released by the U.N. Environment Programme Finance Initiative.

"Among the investors' key priorities is delivery of promised fast-start climate financing, consistent with pledges at last year's U.N. climate negotiations in Copenhagen," a UNEP Finance Initiative statement said

Ecopolity » Will the G20 help Cancun to succeed?

Ecopolity » Will the G20 help Cancun to succeed?

“Fossil Fuel Subsidies: We reaffirm our commitment to rationalize and phase-out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption, with timing based on national circumstances, while providing targeted support for the poorest. We direct our Finance and Energy Ministers to report back on the progress made in implementing country-specific strategies and in achieving the goals to which we agreed in Pittsburgh and Toronto at the 2011 Summit in France.” From The Seoul Summit Document: Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth

“Medium term” and “timing based on national circumstances” give any country a legitimate exit option based on the subjective interpretation of “medium” and “circumstances”. Chance of achievement near zero.

Here’s what they said about climate change and the low carbon economy:

“Climate Change and Green Growth: Addressing the threat of global

Reuters AlertNet - India: Cancun will test climate talks' credibility

Reuters AlertNet - India: Cancun will test climate talks' credibility

By Matthias Williams

NEW DELHI, Nov 10 (Reuters) - U.N. climate talks in Cancun will be the last chance for nations to agree on thorny issues such as technology transfers and will test the dialogue's credibility, India's environment minister said on Wednesday.

Nations must reach a consensus on sharing green technology between rich and developing countries and resist the temptation to cling to old positions "like a mantra", Jairam Ramesh told a news conference after a two-day climate meeting in New Delhi.

Nations were so divided on intellectual property rights (IPR) for costly technology that some saw it as an essential ingredient of a deal, while others refused to talk about it, he said.

"We have to find a middle path because these two extreme positions have held back an agreement for too long, and frankly we are running out of time," Ramesh said.

"Cancun is the last chance. The credibility of the entire climate change negotiating system is at stake. If you do not get a set of operational and meaningful decisions at Cancun, everybody is going to get sick and tired of us."

Prospects for the Nov. 29-Dec. 10 climate change talks in the Mexican resort of Cancun have dimmed in recent months because of near-deadlock in the 194-nation negotiations over how to share the burden in cutting greenhouse gas emissions

Monbiot.com » A Ghost Agreement-Biodiversity in Japan

Monbiot.com » A Ghost Agreement

A Ghost Agreement
Posted November 1, 2010 Everyone agrees that the new declaration on biodiversity is a triumph. Just one snag: it doesn’t appear to exist.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 2nd November 2010

“Countries join forces to save life on Earth”, the front page of the Independent told us. “Historic”, “a landmark”, a “much-needed morale booster”, the other papers chorused(1,2,3). The declaration agreed at the summit in Japan last week to protect the world’s wild species and wild places was proclaimed by almost everyone a great success. There’s only one problem: none of the journalists who made these claims has seen it.

I checked with as many of them as I could reach by phone: all they had read was a press release, which, though three pages long, is almost content-free(4). The reporters can’t be blamed for this: though it was approved on Friday, the declaration has still not been published. I’ve now pursued people on three continents to try to obtain it, without success. Having secured the headlines it wanted, the entire senior staff of the Convention on Biological Diversity has gone to ground: my calls and emails remain unanswered(5). The British government, which lavishly

Climate Change Expanding Dead Zones in Great Lakes, Other Waters | OnEarth Magazine

Climate Change Expanding Dead Zones in Great Lakes, Other Waters | OnEarth Magazine
Nitrogen and phosphorous-laden sediments flowing into Lake Erie from inland sources are a primary cause of oxygen-starved dead zones. This animation shows sediment plumes in Lake Erie during March 2010.

Areas of low oxygen are 30 times more prevalent in the nation’s waterways now than they were in 1960, according to a recent federal report. And climate change means they will continue to worsen.

The multi-agency report [PDF, 2.7 MB], released in September, states that the low-oxygen condition known as hypoxia has been detected in half of the more than 600 national waterways analyzed by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Hypoxia is often caused by increased nutrients such as phosphorous and nitrogen. These common components of fertilizer often enter lakes and streams with runoff from farms and lawns. Nitrogen released into the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion can also settle onto the water’s surface.

“What we do affects the amount of nutrients that wash off the land and are ultimately carried by rivers to the coast,” said report co-author Herb Buxton, coordinator of the Geological Survey’s program on toxic substances hydrology. “Runoff is the conveyer belt for moving nutrients from the landscape to our coastal systems.”

Cdn. Meet in Seoul,Korea G-20 25/10/10 8:30am

Toronto, Seoul and Beyond: The G20 Seoul Pre-Summit Conference

Monday, October 25, 9:00 AM - 8:30 PM

Co-sponsored by Korean Capital Markets Institute, Chosun Ilbo, G20 Research Group, Asian Institute

Registration: g20@utoronto.ca

Grand Hyatt Hotel, Seoul, Korea

WWF: Canadians' footprints among world’s heaviest

WWF - WWF: Canadians' footprints among world’s heaviest But did not the WWF loose its credibility when it sold out to the corporate world?? Why are the Liberals hitching their wagon to the WWF?? Of all people...no offense- but why??

Canadians are among the worst offenders contributing to a continued decline in global biodiversity and an increase in the global ecological footprint, according to WWF's 2010 Living Planet Report, released today

Guy Saint-Jacques | adoptanegotiator.org

Catching up with Guy Saint-Jacques | adoptanegotiator.org

Guy Saint-Jacques replaces Micheal Martin (now in Privy Council) as chief negotiator??

Webcast: South Centre

UNFCCC Webcast: On demand

South Centre ,Based in Europe- where they still drink bottled water. A Press Briefing from here in Tianjin, China to Cancun, Mexico.

What I do not understand is that the Filipinos in Winnipeg North use paper plates,bottled water, drive gas guzzling SUV- with no awareness of the harm they are doing to our country's environment.
Is Kevin Lamoreux representing Liberal values?? NO- and wearing RED does not mean anything!

Again if I go to Cancun- I will be relegated to the social masses , with no power!

Tianjin Climate Change Talks-Tuesday 5.10.2010

LEGAL MATTERS: In the morning, Co-Chair Daniel Ortega opened the legal matters contact group with a discussion on the organization of work, explaining that the group would meet six times to address entry into force, other issues, including proposed amendments to the Kyoto Protocol, and issues referred to the group by other contact groups.

CHINA noted that discussions beyond the amendment of Article 3.9 (Annex I parties’ further commitments) are outside the mandate of the AWG-KP. With SAUDI ARABIA, BRAZIL, INDIA, BOLIVIA, Ghana, for the AFRICAN GROUP, EGYPT and SUDAN, she stressed that substantive discussions on other proposals to amend the Kyoto Protocol, contained in the Chair’s text, would be unacceptable and urged focusing the limited negotiating time on discussions under the numbers contact group. Several parties noted that the COP/MOP is the appropriate venue for discussing the proposed amendments.

AUSTRALIA emphasized the need to discuss the other proposed amendments in the Chair’s text. TUVALU, supported by the Federated States of Micronesia, for AOSIS, stressed that consequential amendments, which arise from the amendment of Annex B, must be considered to ensure legal consistency with the Kyoto Protocol. SWITZERLAND emphasized that “rigid interpretations” of the AWG-KP mandate would not help move discussions forward.

Co-Chair Ortega said he would take parties’ views back to the AWG-KP Chair, adding that parties should have raised these concerns in plenary. China emphasized that the negotiations are a party-driven process. AUSTRALIA stressed that as a party that will “actually be taking on an Annex I commitment,” he had “trouble understanding” why parties would prevent discussions that would help with making those commitments, underlining that those parties were blocking progress on a second commitment period.

Co-Chair Ortega said he would report back to the group on possible ways to move forward.