Powerful global leaders – including Obama – are still refusing to take proper action to prevent a 2C+ rise in temperatures
To observe the UN climate talks play out here in Bonn is to watch the governments of the world write the biography of my generation in advance. As the assembled delegates trawl over each line in the negotiating text that may eventually become the Copenhagen treaty this December, it's as if every single cultural and economic dispute in the earth's history, each grievance legitimate or otherwise, must be resolved before progress can be made. Stepping into the conference hall, that energetic sense of purpose and urgency which the climate movement outside instils in you, saps away. You find yourself faced with a room full of government negotiators arguing over trade rules, the complexities of different market mechanisms ... anything, it seems, other than the breakdown of our climate. It is frightening how detached this process has become from climate science, terrifying that what's on offer from the developed countries here is a recipe for a nightmarish 4C of global warming.
For years now, scientists have said – and most world leaders have acknowledged – that the imperative for a new global climate treaty is that it must keep the world below a 2C rise in temperatures. If warming of more than 2C isn't avoided, the UN estimates up to four billion people will become vulnerable to water shortages, agriculture will cease to be viable across whole swathes of the world, causing widespread famines, and the Amazon rainforest will collapse.
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