An excellent, 30,000 word New Yorker investigation into climate change earlier this year concluded that it was curious that a technologically advanced civilisation should decide to destroy itself.
Tomorrow the Guardian is publishing a 36-page supplement explaining and examining the issue described by the prime minister, Tony Blair, as the world's most important long-term problem.
Climate change will be one of the main items on the agenda at next week's G8 meeting of world leaders in Gleneagles in Scotland and many will be watching what moves the Bush administration makes on the issue. The US has been attacked over its apparent scepticism that climate change is a grave threat and its refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty on reducing emissions of carbon dioxode.
In an interview in today's Financial Times, the environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, claims that Britain's chairmanship of the G8 has already been a success because of increased awareness of climate change in the business world.
She is today making a presentation at an insurance industry conference in which she will suggest that businesses that take action now to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide will be in a prime position to profit from the regulation of greenhouse gases.
But rather less upbeat today was former Labour cabinet minister Stephen Byers, and US Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, who are co-chairs of the International Climate Change Taskforce.
They both warned that sufficient progress will not have been made if the G8 fails to recognise the urgency of the problem and the need for immediate action.
"People throughout the world know that something strange is happening to the weather and they are worried. They know that our climate is changing and that they are witnessing the often devastating effects of global warming. We are running out of time," Mr Byers said.
The taskforce was co-founded by a group of think tanks including the Institute of Public Policy Research in London, the Centre for American Progress in Washington, and the Australia Institute in Canberra.
It is calling on the G8 to deliver on four key aims:
Reach agreement on the science that climate change is human induced, requires urgent action to address it and that global carbon dioxide emissions need to peak and decline in time to prevent global average temperatures from rising by more than two degrees above the pre industrial level. Reach agreement to drive the large scale deployment of existing technologies to reduce carbon pollution in G8 countries by adopting mandatory cap and trade schemes for greenhouse gas emissions, providing a path for the US to join a post 2012 global framework on climate change [this is when the Kyoto protocol elapses].
Honour existing commitments and provide new resources to help developing countries adapt to climate impacts and develop clean, low carbon energy economies, including by using energy efficient and renewable technologies.
Form a G8 climate group with major developing countries to pursue agreements on deploying low carbon technologies that will lead to large emissions reductions.
