The lack of a meaningful agreement means that emissions will continue to increase and according to one source, if current proposals were fully implemented, the average global temperature would overshoot the 2°C goal and increase by approximately 3.9°C (7.0°F) by 2100 (ClimateInteractive.org).

 As a partner to the TcKTcKTcK campaign (www.tcktcktck.org) and the GO (www.globalobservatory.net), TCW was invited to participate in some of the side events at Copenhagen. I was moved especially by the stories from people in countries where climate change is already affecting their lives. And as one woman put it, ‘even though all this money has been committed to help countries adapt, it will take years to trickle down, and I must go home next week and deal with it now, every day.’

Even as I write this I am impatient to move on from Copenhagen and the problems. It is important to understand the very serious implications of climate change and we do need intelligent strategies for responding to its threats but what we really need is action, more of it and much more quickly.

At our climate 350 day on October 24th in support of the international 350 campaign we promoted the need to act, whatever the result from Copenhagen. And so this year we will be accelerating our activities both in the UK and in India. In the UK we will be working on a number of projects to help reduce our carbon emissions here and to raise awareness of the need to work with developing countries. In India we will be working with our partner NGO SCAD (www.scad.org.in) to continue to roll out the much needed community support programme across more villages. In addition we will support SCAD to include climate change adaptation and mitigation through the deployment of small scale renewable energy schemes. We will be spending more time with SCAD this year, training their staff and students, capacity building, exploring and raising awareness of what can be done in the villages to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.