Mr. John McCarthy:

As a starting point, the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban in December 2011 reached agreement to which all countries signed up. That agreement was that a new global treaty would be agreed by the end of 2015, to kick in from 2020. It was agreed that all countries would subscribe to that new global treaty. The end of 2015 is two and a half years away. There will be three annual climate change conferences each December until then. The next conference will be in Warsaw. The last one, at which the agreement is supposed to be reached, will be in Paris, so there will be a strong European interest in that process. We have all heard the recent statements from President Obama and from Secretary of State, Mr. John Kerry, which recognise the importance of global action on climate change. It was interesting, in the response to Hurricane Sandy, the extent to which there was a very immediate link made, in the political system in the United States, between what was a very unique and different weather event and climate change issues.

There are encouraging signs there but it is a long two-and-a-half-year road that has to be travelled from now to Paris at the end of 2015. Interestingly, at the last UN Climate Change Conference in Doha in December 2012, the UN Secretary General indicated that in order to provide further impetus towards reaching that agreement at the end of 2015, he would be convening a special session at the UN in the autumn of next year for heads of state and government, in order to get buy-in and leadership at the highest political level among all UN member states. There is a way to go but, equally, there is a lot going on. Ultimately, the signs are encouraging but if we come back here in December 2015, I may be eating my words, or otherwise.