Budget 2018-19

  New draft retains call for reduced fossil fuel subsidies; poor nations seek funds to tackle climate change UN climate talks ended with a deal that for the first time targeted fossil fuels as the key driver of global warming, even as coal-reliant countries, led by India, lobbed last-minute objections. While the agreement won applause for keeping alive the hope of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, many of the nearly 200 national delegations wished they’d come away with more. The negotiators at the  COP26 summit  here recognised India’s intervention for the world to “phase down” rather than “phase out” fossil fuels. After a huddle between the envoys from India, China, the United States and European Union, the clause was hurriedly amended to ask countries to “phase down” their coal use. “It is so decided,” said Alok Sharma, the president of COP26, as he declared the new pact with a stroke of his gavel after marathon talks which began earlier this month and conc...

  UK’s Johnson warns of ‘doomsday’ as climate summit begins / British Prime Minister Boris Johnson opened the  global climate summit  on Monday, saying the world is strapped to a “doomsday device”. Johnson likened an ever-warming Earth’s position to that of fictional secret agent James Bond — strapped to a bomb that will destroy the planet and trying to work out how to defuse it. “We are in roughly the same position my fellow global leaders as James Bond today except that the tragedy is this is not a movie… the doomsday device is real… it’s ‘one minute to midnight’ to prevent climate catastrophe.” The threat is climate change triggered by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, and he pointed out that it all started in Glasgow with James Watt’s steam engine powered by coal. He was kicking off the world leaders’ summit portion of a UN climate conference, which is aimed at getting agreement to curb carbon emissions fast enough to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius...