WILD

Thinking About Wilderness

The following is a guest post by Michael Tobias, Executive Director of the Dancing Star Foundation. There was a time when people gave no thought to wilderness; when our connection to the natural world was a guaranteed issue of food, shelter and avoidance of pain. Given the 120,000 odd years of our position in the global coordination of species and the toll of our behavior, we have come a long ways, to be sure, from that innocent past, as we approach the staggering 7 billion number of individuals. Typically, such numeric prodigiousness would be construed as a biological success, but we ... Read More

Yale report shows Youth less concerned about global warming than their elders

On March 3rd, the Yale Project on Climate Change released a report entitled, "The Climate Change Generation?: Survey Analysis of the Perceptions and Beliefs of Young Americans." Below is an excerpt from the Executive Summary. I look forward to hearing your comments! American adults under the age of 35 have come of age in the decades since the “discovery” of man-made climate change as a major societal problem. The oldest of this cohort was twelve in 1988, when NASA climate scientist James Hansen testified at a Senate Energy Committee hearing that global temperature rise was underway and that human-produced greenhouse ... Read More

The Aftermath

Since the dismal conclusion of the Copenhagen talks, experts following the UN climate change negotiations have been trying to sort out whether the Copenhagen Accord was a step forward or not. Some have begun calling it the Copenhagen Discord. Some have taken a gentler view, saying that even if it is not the solution, at least it helps build consensus. Reading the tea leaves on the issue of forests and wilderness is similarly difficult. Read More

And then there were three

The Copenhagen Climate talks were supposed to be the place where the global community finally achieved broad consensus, providing at the very least a political way forward that everyone could rally behind. Conservationists hoped that this new consensus would include strong and unambiguous recognition of the role of nature and wilderness in climate change. I attended the Copenhagen Climate meeting with this message – in the form of the Message from Merida launched at WILD9, the World Wilderness Congress in Mexico one month earlier. The Message from Merida was signed by over 70 NGOs representing many of the largest conservation ... Read More

After Copenhagen – Suspended Animation

Fortunately, none of the 120 or so heads of state in Copenhagen pretended that the climate talks in Copenhagen (the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or “COP 15”) were a big success. Any attempt to greenwash these talks would have been a) insulting and b) a clear signal that the political will for a comprehensive, legally binding climate agreement had truly and completely evaporated. Read More

The Politicians Take the Stage in Copenhagen

One day remains in the UN’s climate talks in Copenhagen. Negotiators have been working around the clock in a desperate race against time to resolve outstanding issues and rise above the many controversies that have wracked these talks. From the secret Danish proposal, which to the dismay and anger of developing countries has continued to hover in the background of the negotiations, to the sometimes violent demonstrations outside the Bella center, to the eviction of NGOs from the negotiating process – a disgrace, all the more so in the country where the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation ... Read More

Extreme Ice Survey Presents at UN Climate Change Conference

James Balog, founder and director of the Extreme Ice Survey, is representing NASA and the U.S. State Department at the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 15. Over the course of the 12-day conference, he is speaking a total of six times—five times on behalf of NASA and once on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund—about the Extreme Ice Survey’s ongoing photographic documentation of stunningly rapid glacial retreat and the implications of these findings. Read More

Report from Copenhagen: Tuvalu & Wilderness

Delegates arrived at the climate negotiations in Copenhagen expecting talks to focus around a few key players. In particular, expectations were that China and the United States, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases around the world, would be in the spotlight. These two large and powerful countries, neither of which are currently bound by any emissions reductions commitments, and both of which must be part of a new agreement if we have any hope of avoiding dangerous climate change, were being watched very closely by all present. And then, Tuvalu stole the spotlight. Read More

Mensaje de Merida sends urgent message to reunite climate change with wilderness protection and biodiversity conservation

JUST ANNOUNCED - THE BIGGEST ANNOUNCEMENT OF WILD9! Today at WILD9 the Chairman and Executive Committee issued The Message from Merida, calling for the protection of critical land and sea wilderness areas to mitigate climate change and conserve biodiversity. The Message was launched with 18 founding signatories, and many individuals and organizations quickly responded with their support following the announcement. “Wilderness protection on land and sea is key to both of these missions and the UNFCCC and CBD must work in a coordinated and urgent manner to facilitate protecting wilderness around the world,” said WILD9 Chairman Exequiel Ezcurra. The Mensaje ... Read More

Making Forests Count

WILD's just signed on to Make Forests Count, adding our name to the growing list of global citizens who are asking their governments to include emissions caused by cutting forests and draining wetlands in the upcoming UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December.  You can sign too! Forest and wetland destruction account for 20% of the world’s carbon emissions. It’s time to take this threat more seriously and Make Forests Count in Copenhagen.  Read more about wilderness and climate change > Take action and make forests count in the global climate agreement! Read More