Global climate deal at least a year away, negotiators say

Negotiators
say they have abandoned hope of signing a legally binding emissions
treaty in Copenhagen and are planning only for a meeting of world
leaders

We only have months, not years, to save civilisation from climate change

International agreements take too long, we need a swift mobilisation not seen since the second world war (Lester Brown)

For those concerned about global warming, all eyes are on
December's UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. The stakes could
not be higher. Almost every new report shows that the climate is
changing even faster than the most dire projections of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their 2007 report.


Yet from my vantage point, internationally negotiated climate
agreements are fast becoming obsolete for two reasons. First, since no
government wants to concede too much compared with other governments,
the negotiated goals for cutting carbon emissions will almost certainly
be minimalist, not remotely approaching the bold cuts that are needed.


And second, since it takes years to negotiate and ratify these
agreements, we may simply run out of time. This is not to say that we
should not participate in the negotiations and work hard to get the
best possible result. But we should not rely on these agreements to
save civilisation.