THE French scientist smiled enigmatically. “It doesn’t matter what the politicians promise. Even if we stop emissions growing today, the world will still warm by 2 °C, a lot more in some places. It is too late to prevent that.” The human race, in other words, has already failed in its task, agreed by 180 nations at the Earth Summit back in 1992, to prevent “dangerous climate change”.
Philippe Ciais, the incoming chairmain of the Global Carbon Project, a network of scientists that monitors how humans are influencing the natural carbon cycle, was speaking at the UN climate conference in…
