mr president i have absolutely no interest in football but occasionally i have seen pictures of a game and i have looked at the manager and thought of the commissioner
two-one down and despite her best efforts her team faces relegation then a goal is scored
i do not know who scores it maybe the goalkeeper on the opposite side walks into the net carrying his own ball but one way or another it is a draw a vital point is secured and relegation is avoided
it is not a triumph but it is not a defeat and the manager lives to fight another day
i am told that at cancún a great cheer went up when there was a resolution to the negotiations
i can understand the relief of delegates there of it not being a defeat but it was hardly a triumph
where is the mention of curbing the rise in temperatures by twenty fifteen
where is the ambition to cut co emissions by fifty by twenty fifty
where are the post-kyoto commitments
fudged and dodged and kicked into the long grass
but criticism is easy what is being attempted has never been done before
it requires the governments of the world to join together in collective action that of course is why the critics on the nationalist right hate it so much
every government in the world accepts the science and accepts that we are not doing enough to stop world temperatures rising by two degrees centigrade
even china this time recognised that there are limits to national sovereignty and accepted that there should be international verification of its emissions because we are in this together one race one species on a single planet
there are some very difficult questions to be answered as we go forward
how do we move from here to make a post-kyoto binding agreement that places requirements not just upon developed countries but also upon developing countries
how do we secure the funding
really how do we get the money that we promised for adaptation and forest protection
how do we persuade our own governments to raise our twenty twenty ambitions from twenty to thirty cuts in co
but maybe we have an answer to that
with china well on its way to reducing its carbon intensity by forty-five it is in our economic interest to make sure that we take these measures or we are going to be left behind economically
maybe now thanks to our not being defeated at cancún we have the momentum the sense that we are going forward again to make the changes that are necessary
