Our climate change team are in Bonn at the moment. They're with negotiators from all around the world for the latest round of talks aimed at securing a new global deal on climate change before we go to Copenhagen later this year.
The stakes couldn't be higher. The deal will need to help avert the threat of a humanitarian and environmental disaster that will come with runaway climate change.
In a 'virtual postcard' from Bonn, Ruth Davis, our head of climate change, shared the following with me. It shows quite clearly that we all have a role to play when it comes to tackling climate change, and our political leaders are no exception.
"Just at the time when we need it most, it seems the ambition of many Governments is draining away. All I can see in the negotiating rooms are countries defending vested interests, at the cost of the common good. The chasm between the ambition of the wealthy and the needs of the poor and the voiceless – which includes a lot of the wildlife on earth – is so cavernous that I get dizzy if I look into it for too long."
But as Ruth pointed out to me, there is really only one alternative to getting dizzy – and that's to get busy.
"Every day, the conference centre fills up with more symbols and sounds of public discontent. There's a tattered old toy polar bear, who has been here for months with a notice round his neck asking for change, not spare change. He's been joined by a small group of animated trees, presumably refugees from a logging concession. And in the main corridor leading to the negotiating rooms, there's a display of messages from children asking their Governments to negotiate them a future.
What we can't see, but we can feel, is the sense of a gathering storm – a storm of anger, created by the gap between words and deeds; and the gap between ordinary people, and the politicians and officials who claim to represent them on the world stage."
Ruth told me about how the Japanese Government stepped into this storm earlier today. A fierce debate has been raging in Japan about what kind of an emissions reduction target they should put on the table for these talks. A recent and highly authoritative analysis of global emission reduction needs published in Nature showed that large industrialised nations like Japan will need to reduce their emissions, on average, by around 40% from 1990 levels in the next decade, to avoid dangerous climate change.
"The Japanese Government examined a range of different options," she told me, "ranging from a relatively respectable 25 percent cut, to a frankly disgraceful suggestion of no cut at all. Almost two thirds of the Japanese public were willing to go for the biggest cuts, because they know the urgency of the climate crisis.
But in response to this mandate from their people, the Japanese delegation announced just an 8 percent reduction target. They announced it to other delegates, and to the media, in a room from which NGOs like us were excluded. We can only presume it's because some rich countries did not wish to have the shocked response of civil society groups beamed immediately around the world.
There is only one rational response to today's announcement, if you care about the natural world, and that's outrage. Back in the UK, we know that our Government, including the Prime Minister, has been working tirelessly to persuade the Japanese Government to go further. We also know, that UK officials here in Bonn are as downcast as we are. But sometimes private diplomatic efforts, important and welcome though they are, are not enough."
We can only watch and wait for the outcomes of the UN talks. But we need to hear that our Government hasn't given up on a global deal that actually matches the scale of the climate crisis. We need to hear them say that nothing but deal that limits climate change to two-degrees is good enough - and that an 8 percent reduction target is simply not good enough for a two-degree deal. Perhaps it's a tall order, to ask our Government to be the ones to bridge the gulf between real climate needs, and actual climate ambition – and even harder to ask them to be honest about the size of that gulf to an anxious population.
But, as Ruth concluded, "These are desperate times, and in desperate times, we look for heroes. Certainly, we need them right now in Bonn."