Going, going....

Today's Guardian reports how worldwide CO2 emissions rose by 3.1% a year between 2000-2004 - a pace of progress that outstrips even the latest worst-case scenario predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. By comparison, the 1990s - which already marked some of the hottest years on record, averaged 1.1% annual increases.

Action now, now, now. You can begin with a simple online response, courtesy of the World Development Movement, to respond to the ongoing consultation for a Climate Change Bill and to press your elected representatives for an ambitious piece of legislation. Of course, there is no substitute for a personally drafted response to the consultation itself, which has a response deadline of 12 June.

Here is what is the killer statistic, for me - that the developed world has been responsible for a staggering 77% of CO2 emissions since the start of the industrial revolution. It is the effects of the last hundred years which we are feeling today. We hear about India and China all the time, often in the guise of excuses for tough domestic action, but there can be no denying that by and large, the historical responsibility for anthropogenic climate change lies here, in the developed world. This is the historical responsibility for our paradoxical encountering of increased flooding and increased drought that already perils the lives of hundreds of millions and is only going to worsen.