Europe plays tricks with exporting its polluting industry and agriculture while massively clear cutting forests in the U.S. for wood pellets, and having a sham price on carbon. China is still building new coal power plants in Pakistan and elsewhere. Australia and Canada are working very hard to increase coal and tar sands exports. Norway is eager to drill the Arctic, while the U.S. is happy to let the UK’s Shell get started. Germany loves its brown coal.

It looks like all talk and no action to me. Scientists have said that we have already crossed the tipping points for 20 feet of sea level rise and the extinction of coral. The 2C goal is already unreachable in the opinion of the large majority of climate scientists, because governments are just not taking this seriously. If the permafrost and clathrates melt significantly, we could easily see 4C-5C warming by 2100. The last 10 days have been the warmest 10-day period in recorded global history, probably thanks to an El Nino finally kicking in.

Maybe science can save us. Certainly, politicians have a very miserable and immoral record of repeated failures. I thought it cute that the UK’s former energy secretary is now the European chief of the campaign to chop down American forests to burn in European power plants even though the whole scheme is both costly and more dirty than coal.