Is the world in a better place now than it was before the United Nations climate change conference in Warsaw last week?
Not really. Delegates from more than 190 countries were to lay the groundwork for an international agreement in 2015, with an eye to achieving the agreed goal of capping the rise in average surface temperatures at 2 degrees Celsius.
But even Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has conceded that the small step forward made in Warsaw "does not put us on track for a 2-degree world."
As former president Mary Robinson, leading economist Nicholas Stern and climate change activist Kelly Rigg jointly wrote in The Guardian last Thursday, "we are now at a tipping point that threatens to flip the world into a full-blown climate emergency. As the poorest and most vulnerable people endure the increasingly damaging impacts of a warming world, tired excuses and calls to delay action are no longer acceptable. Economics aside, this is a moral and ethical challenge of the highest order. If ministers leave the UN climate talks in Warsaw … without a clearly defined roadmap to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon world economy, our window of opportunity will become smaller yet again".
The UN's 19th annual climate change conference opened in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan devastating the Philippines. While nobody can say that this was caused by climate change, it was exactly the type of extreme weather event that scientists say will become more frequent as the world warms.
The country’s climate envoy, Naderev “Yeb” Sano, made an impassioned plea for urgent action at the opening session and then embarked on a fast until there was “meaningful progress” at the talks. At the closing plenary last Saturday night, he had to put a brave face on what had been achieved.
On the central issue of what countries are prepared to do to cut record greenhouse gas emissions, there was no tangible progress. The traditional war of words between rich and poor led to “commitments” in the draft text being watered down to “contributions”. That alone was most dispiriting.
While some progress was made in acknowledging the concept of “loss and damage” as a result of global warming, there was no indication of how or when climate aid for developing countries would be ramped up to the promised $100 billion per year after 2020.
These issues and more will have to be teased out at a ministerial gathering in Bonn next June, a UN "summit" in New York in September and the 20th climate conference in Lima in December 2014 if there is to be any hope of reaching a deal in Paris by the end of 2015.
Time is running out.