Author: Ann Henderson-Sellers, Macquarie University

On February 18th 2010, Yvo de Boer announced his July departure from his position as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Mr de Boer has been the leader of the UNFCCC Secretariat since 2006, managing the organisational underpinnings of the efforts to bring together the world’s nations to forge an agreement to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

That his position was one of great stress was painfully demonstrated, in December 2007, when he left the final session of the 13th Conference of the Parties to UNFCCC (COP 13) in Bali in tears, following negative comments about the Secretariat’s handling of arrangements.   Read more…

Author: Ann Henderson-Sellers, Macquarie University

Today climate change is no longer about ‘if’ but about ‘how bad’. There is no way that the large and unexpected jumps frequently being experienced could be occurring in an unchanging climate. For example, in Australia over the past 24 months we have seen: 15 consecutive days above 35˚C in Adelaide in 2008, seven days more than the previous heatwave record; the terrible Bushfire Black Saturday set a new Melbourne temperature record of 46.4˚C, more than 3 degrees hotter than any previous February record; and the 7 hottest August days ever recorded at Windorah in western Queensland all occurred this year, 2009.

The Copenhagen COP (the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, number 15) meeting is supposed to finalise an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol to avert ‘dangerous’ climatic change. Read more…