Commitment lacking on global warming
Kevin Rafferty looks at the irony of holding climate talks in an energy-guzzling nation where the government's inaction on global warming is symptomatic of the apathy affecting leaders everywhere
Is it a savage irony or just a sick joke that the latest talks to try to reach an international agreement to curb the greenhouse gases that threaten our fragile planet have opened in Doha, the capital of Qatar - the worst polluter in the world in per capita emissions?
Delegates from 194 countries plus armies of experts from the United Nations and its agencies have started two weeks of creating a lot more hot air trying to find a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was stillborn because the US signed it but refused to ratify it.
The hope is that Doha will be a stepping stone to a new climate change treaty, which will be agreed by 2015 but will not come into force until 2020.
Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UN climate convention, has already prepared optimistic closing remarks for the Doha meeting. She told The New York Times: "I'm going to say: 'This is another firm step in the right direction, but the path is still a long road ahead.'"
If this is the best case, the world is in big trouble. Time is running out. Time has run out. All the scientific research points in the same direction - that the world is doomed to failure in its efforts to restrict the rise in the earth's temperatures to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The World Meteorological Organisation reported that greenhouse gases have reached a record 394 parts per million, way above the 280ppm of the pre-industrial era, and rising rapidly from the 389ppm levels of 2010.