Paris climate talks: a new hope?

I can still remember clearly the bitter disappointment I felt back in early 2001, when newly installed President George Bush Jr refused to sign up to the Kyoto climate change protocols. Of course he refused because he knew there was no way he would be able to get the changes through Congress, but I just saw it as a very bad omen for the future. But that was then and this is now.

Today it seems likely the US, and even more importantly, China, are on the verge of signing up to making significant reductions in the emissions that are strangling our planet, the only one, as far as I am aware, that we've got. Sure there are still climate change deniers, but I put them in the same category as people who deny the world is more than 6000 years old despite the overwhelming weight of evidence that it is far, far older.

There are still major problems to be overcome, though by far the most important is that capitalism, the world's favourite economic system, is not compatible with care for the environment. The fact is that the more we produce, the more we pollute. Every time you buy blueberries from Argentina, or even munch into a burger, you are expanding your carbon footprint and contributing to climate change. Our lives have to get simpler and our demands less if the Earth is to have any chance of being the Paradise it could be.

I heard some meteorologist on the radio the other day saying "Every time you think, ' this is strange; I've never seen weather like this before', you're right". Once in 500 year weather events like the storms we saw in 2009 and 2014 have been repeated- just this month. Icecaps especially in the Arctic are disappearing faster than at any time in the last million years, and all the evidence suggests that the pace of change is accelerating. The world's nations have to come together right now to minimise these changes- otherwise we're screwed.