The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, is to call the world's heads of government to New York in September to "galvanise political will" about what he describes as "the defining issue of our time". And there are plans for another G20 summit to discuss the issue in the autumn.
One of the main stumbling blocks is how much rich countries will undertake to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases in the short to medium term.
The summits are part of an extraordinarily intense series of meetings over the next six months
There is general agreement that they should be reduced by a drastic 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050
setting more immediate targets is proving much harder.
Ten days ago, China flung down the gauntlet by calling on rich countries to cut emissions by 40 per cent by 2020.
The only advanced economy to come near that is the European Union, which has promised unilaterally to reduce them by 20 per cent by then
would amount to a cut of only a few per cent from 1990 levels.
clipped from: www.independent.co.uk