The impression I get is that the world still hasn’t been saved.  Day Four of the conference has just come to an end, and suddenly two weeks does not seem like a very long time to build a global deal on climate change.

I’ve just been chatting with a UK Youth Delegate, who’s not feeling very up-beat about the way the negotiations are going.  The negotiations aren’t looking that up-beat either; in fact, they completely ground to a halt yesterday.

Stopped.

Nothing.

…

The reason why the talks stalled yesterday is that Tuvalu, a small Pacific island state that is seriously threatened by sea level rise, made a proposal.  Half of the countries present wanted to discuss Tuvalu’s proposal, and half did not - they couldn’t get agreement on whether to discuss the proposal, so stopped talking to each other.  This sparked off a big protest outside the main meeting hall, of campaigners supporting Tuvalu.

Tuvalu’s proposal? It wants countries to sign up to making sure that the world’s temperature does not increase by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than its temperature 250 years ago (that was when we (especially Brits) started burning lots of fossil fuels and emitting big amounts of carbon).  This is asking for a lot more than is being discussed at the moment.  For example, the European Union has committed itself to preventing a 2 degrees temperature rise.

2 degrees C doesn’t sound like much - but remember these are average global temperatures we’re talking about.  The world has already warmed up by about 0.8 degrees C since the Industrial Revolution, and we are already seeing the impacts of that - melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and changes in the ranges of certain plant and animals as their homes get too hot for them.  If we keep heating up, there are all kinds of feedback mechanisms that come into play, which mean the planet heats up even more.  There’s a really good description of how this science works, and what it means for humankind, in Leo Murray’s short and very arty animation.

The talks did get going again, stuttering and spluttering along like the old Vauxhall Astra we used to take on family holidays, forcing it up steep Alpine roads.  The road to Copenhagen has been very steep, and it seems to be stretching out past Copenhagen, well into next year.

What is needed, I feel, is a global day of action.  Where people in thousands of locations across the planet join together to remind negotiators that they are negotiating survival.  [Checks diary] - oh, fab!  There’s one on Saturday!  Find out what’s happening near you on the tcktcktck website (I’ll be at Old Palace Square in Westminster, London, for a candlelit vigil followed by a glow-in-the-dark “flashdance” a bit like this organised by the UK Youth Climate Coalition).  And if there’s not one near you, there’s still time to set one up.  Even my home village in Derbyshire has organised one, despite the fact that most of the inhabitants have four legs and woolly fleeces.