Commodity Corner

Getting down to business at U.N. climate talks a hard task

A U.N. concession to delegates at this week’s climate talks in Bonn to take off jackets and ties due to recent high temperatures may be going to some participants’ heads.

Breaking the back of negotiations for a new climate pact after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 is proving hard work even though the talks’ chair hopes to have a new negotiating text on the table by the end of the week.

Developing nations are still blaming the rich for global warming and the issue of who will contribute most to climate financing is still a matter for debate.

A year-end meeting in Cancun looms closer and the pressure is on to get the job done. Yet, the acronyms being bandied around — LULUCF, CDM, AAU, AWG-KP, AWG-LCA, REDD, to name a few — are enough to make your head swim.

Even a Chinese negotiator on Tuesday admitted he did not understand a complicated forestry and land use presentation the previous day by the European Union.

Talks kicked off on Monday with a three-hour session during which countries spent an inordinate amount of time thanking the chair and congratulating the new U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres on her post.

Delegates didn’t manage to finish the day’s business by the evening and had to continue into Tuesday, despite calls from the chair of the talks to keep to a very tight schedule.

Now in the movies: The gentle giant

German utility RWE – Europe’s fifth-largest power company and the continent’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxcide – has resorted to a new way to counter what it sees as a fundamental misunderstanding about power companies.

Its animated movie – to be shown on TV and in cinemas – is meant to show what the company is really about – and overcome the public’s distaste for an industry whose dominance has allowed it to mete out ever higher power prices.

RWE portrays itself as a colossus with trees growing on his shoulders. He dives into the sea to install tidal-power plants and repairs power lines with gentle force.

from MacroScope:

Gold to go

Automatic teller machines (ATMs) -- 500 of them -- dispensing pieces of gold will be available around Germany, Switzerland and Austria by the end of this year.

That at least is the plan of German precious metals online trading company TG-Gold-Super-Markt.de. The ATMs, to be located at airports, railway stations and shopping malls, are intended to accustom ordinary people to the idea of investing in a physical asset such as gold, the thinking goes.   Thomas Geissler, the company's chief executive, said the gold ATMs might even improve relations between the sexes.   "I have yet to meet a woman who does not like a gift of gold. It's better than flowers. Flowers are more expensive. They wilt and you (as a man) don't get as many points at home as if you bring gold," he said.   A prototype ATM on display for a one-day marketing test at the main railway station in Frankfurt, Germany's financial capital, did indeed reward your correspondent with a 1-gramme (0.0353 ounce) piece of gold.   It cost the equivalent of $42.25 -- a 30 percent premium over the spot market price.