They are among those that have contributed least to climate change, yet they are its main victims.

Every year of massive and frequent disastrous climate events like Yolanda and Pablo reminds them of the injustice of the situation.

It is increasingly clear that every year now counts if the world is to avoid a rise in global mean temperature beyond 2 degrees Celsius, the accepted benchmark beyond which the global climate is expected to go really haywire.Д¬ountries like the Philippines and many other island-states are in the frontlines of climate change. To climate scientists, this leaves a dangerous gap of seven years where no mandatory moves of emissions reduction can be expected from the US and many other carbon-intensive countries. What the governments of these countries seem to be saying is that the carbon-intensive industrial development plans they are pursuing are not up for negotiation.ДЄccording to the Durban Platform agreed upon in 2011, governments are supposed to submit carbon emissions reduction plans by 2015, which will then be implemented beginning in 2020. And as China goes, so will Brazil, India, and a host of the other more industrially advanced developing countries that are the most influential voices in the вЂњGroup of 77 and ChinaвЂќ coalition. It is also unlikely that the China, now the worldвЂ™s biggest carbon emitter, will agree to mandatory limits on its greenhouse gas emissions, armed with the rationale that it is those that have contributed most to the cumulative volume of greenhouse gases like the US that must be subjected to mandatory emissions cuts.

Though 70 per cent of Americans now believe in climate change, Obama does not have the courage to challenge the fanatical вЂњclimate skepticsвЂќ that fill the ranks of the Tea Party and the US business establishment on this front. It did not, and, while trumpeting that he was directing federal agencies to take steps to force power plants to cut carbon emissions and encourage movement towards clean energy sources, Obama will not send a delegation that will change the US policy of non-adherence to the Kyoto Protocol, which Washington signed but never ratified. For a time earlier this year, it appeared that Hurricane Sandy would bring climate change to the forefront of US President Barrack ObamaвЂ™s agenda. It is doubtful, however, that the governments assembling in Warsaw will rise to the occasion.

Is it coincidence, ask some people who are not exactly religious, that both Pablo and Yolanda arrived at around time of the global climate negotiations? Pablo smashed into Mindanao during the last stages of the Conference of Parties 18 (COP 18) in Doha last year. The message that Nature was sending via YolandaвЂ“which packed winds stronger than super storm Sandy, which hit New Jersey and New York last October, and Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005вЂ“was especially meant for the governments of the world that are assembling in Warsaw for the annual global climate change negotiations (COP 19) scheduled to begin Monday, November 11. That it was climate change that was creating super typhoons that were taking weird directions was a message that Nature was sending not just to Filipinos but to the whole world, whose attention was transfixed on the televised digital images of a massive angry cyclone bearing down, then sweeping across the central Philippines on its way to the Asian mainland.

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