Martin Wolf writes an insightful piece here in the FT. If you can’t access it just register as its free.

He points to ingrained problems which are holding back progress:

- The free rider problem.

- Richer countries are responsible yet want poor countries to stop developing.

- The reality that the poorer countries will be worst hit by any further warming.

On top of that we still have disagreements of whether warming is taking place to the degree alluded to in the forecasting models. Scrutiny of forecasting processes and data management is throwing up some issues. Who can we trust? We know politicians always have their own agenda and a huge amount of political capital has been invested in the whole process.

Richer countries may feel that their best course of action is to simply adapt via new environmental technologies, building and planning. Developing countries (China and India) may feel that they didn’t cause this and so can carry on growing at a furious pace.

Poor countries simply have to bear it.

As Wolf notes we may need a real wake up call to make anything actually happen. He muses on the potential of a 2o degree increase as having the desired effect. We saw this scenario play out in the “The Day After Tomorrow” where the world gets a big wake up call but pulls through in the end.

For now though it seems like we will just stumble along from one conference to the next increasing emissions but having little real impact.