Tuesday, 56 papers around the world will publish a common editorial that addresses the "profound emergency" that all of humanity faces. Many will carry it on their front page.
Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation
Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.
The Guardian has a list of all papers carrying the editorial. Links are available to read it online for some. Note that there are pitifully few North American papers willing to publish this. My guess is that this graf might be one reason. Or, at least, a convenient excuse.
Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.
Not much of a diary, i know. And i'm not expecting much. But please do give it a read. Because, if you're in the US, don't expect to find it in your local paper.
Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature".