Just how big a threat to the world is climate change? Listening in to a press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York on Monday, you'd have heard British billionaire businessman Richard Branson describing it as "a crisis that is bigger than World War I and II combined". Or New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg emphasising, "This is just as important as stopping nuclear proliferation. This is just as important as stopping terrorism."
The sociologist Ulrich Beck argues that huge global risks like climate change are so different from what we've experienced so far, it's more accurate to describe them as "unknown unknowns".
Whatever your favourite soundbite, there are signs that we're finally reaching the point where we no longer need international celebrities and politicians to scare us into realising how bad things could get.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon suggested on Monday that the battle of persuasion has been more or less won, and it's high time to get on with the job of responding. "If the year 2007 was the year when climate change rose to the top of the global agenda, 2008 is the time we must take concerted action," he told the opening of a two-day General Assembly debate on climate change.
At the meeting, the world body set itself the tasks of developing partnerships and coordinating its own strategy better. "The U.N. cannot address climate change alone. No one can," said General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim. "Inevitably, we need as many actors as possible to get involved and unite in order to address its effects."
He also appealed for the United Nations to streamline its many climate change programmes and target its resources where they will be most effective. A report published in late January offers some clues as to how that might happen.
The U.N. message for 2008 seems to be that, if the world is going to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, it's going to have to come up with a international battle plan behind which everyone can unite, and fairly sharpish.
Part of that is the daunting job of working out a new international agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But what else might it entail?
'WAR ROOM'
On Monday, Branson called for the creation of a global environmental "war room". By bringing together scientists, engineers, government agencies and civil society, it would identify the best ideas for tackling climate change and devise implementation plans in partnership with the United Nations and others.
"History has taught us that, in times of peril, when all seems lost, bringing together the greatest minds ... to work together, with one common goal - survival Â? is the most effective way to prevail," said the entrepreneur, who's also offering a $25 million prize for scientists to find a way to remove carbon dioxide from the environment.
While technological advances no doubt have a major part to play, there's growing recognition of the need for a new political approach to what Britain's international development secretary recently described as a "defining global social justice issue".
Last July, sociologist Beck argued in the Guardian "...if we want to survive, we have to include those who have been excluded. The politics of climate change is necessarily inclusive and global - it is cosmopolitics."
Global warming has bolstered the case for distributing the planet's resources responsibly and equitably (not to mention righting historical environmental wrongs). But it's an old aspiration.
The world has been talking about sustainable development for two or three decades now. Will climate change prove to be the one threat that's big enough to start making it happen?
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