The heat rises inexorably yet the world dithers and looks away. None of the excitement that surrounded the opening stages of the climate summit at Copenhagen last year looks like materialising this November at Cancún in Mexico.

Developing and developed countries continue to trade blame over what went wrong at the last summit. There are few signs of sleeves being rolled up in serious preparation for the kind of binding agreements that might, at this near-midnight hour, contain average global rises in temperatures to around 2C – the maximum manageable. The lack of fervour is deeply worrying. When so little was achieved at Copenhagen under the expectant eyes of millions, what hope for Cancún if the surrounding mood is already one of apathy?

This week, the climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, travels to Berlin to try and forge a common European approach on what might be achieved at the summit before it opens. We must hope he succeeds in his goal, which is to persuade the European Union to unite round a new, ambitious pledge; to raise levels of cuts in CO2 emissions by 2020 from the 20 per cent already agreed to 30 per cent. An EU agreement of this sort would not, on its own, prevent the world from drifting towards what the overwhelming majority of scientists agree is a looming catastrophe. We need a global deal for that, including China and India. But it would inject some much-needed adrenaline into a movement that has lost much of its former momentum and optimism.

The failure to agree on binding commitments at Copenhagen was a moment of deep disappointment for the environmental movement. The faint but plausible hope that the world might unite against a common threat faded rapidly. Tragically, in Denmark, the poorer south proved unable to divest itself of a suspicion that climate change was an idée fixe of the rich north, and that Western calls for emissions cuts were an artfully packaged suggestion that they should remain undeveloped for eternity.

The result was not the binding agreements that almost all experts believed essential but looser pledges to meet voluntarily undertaken targets. And as we report today, those voluntary cuts, even if executed to the letter, which looks unlikely, are not enough. To slow the rise in warming to within 2C, the various voluntary targets would collectively need to stack up to an overall cut in global emissions of at least 25 per cent – preferably much more. Instead, analysis of the pledges shows they would cut global emissions by between only 11 and 19 per cent.

(The Independent)

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