Climate change inches up the political agenda as world leaders meet in New York

A succession of world leaders - more than 100 in total - are talking about climate change in New York today. They aren't there to make any agreements or set targets to reduce their countries’ carbon emissions or work out concrete proposals for how to prevent the world slipping into dangerous levels of climate change.

Cynics might dismiss the whole thing as a stunt, sprinkled with the glamour of Barack Obama and a few Hollywood celebrities, but nothing more. They’d be wrong.

United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has pulled off a major coup in getting so many heads of state into the same room, especially given the prevalence of international economic, military and social crises. Even if these leaders just spend their allotted four minutes boringly listing their countries’ apparent greatness (and we can argue about the quality of their climate action and who is or is not serious about reducing emissions) the fact they are all there is a good thing, a sign that climate is somewhere on their agendas.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon kicked off the speeches by laying out the challenges ahead and calling climate change the “defining issue of our age, of our present. Our response will define our future. To ride this storm we need all hands on deck. That is why we are here today. We need a clear vision. The human, environmental and financial cost of climate change is fast becoming unbearable. We have never faced such a challenge, nor such an opportunity.”

Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who is a UN special envoy, spoke to the audience of politicians and diginitaries about how solving “this crisis is not a question of politics, it is a question of our own survival. This is the most urgent of times and the most urgent of messages. I pretend for a living but you do not. The people who heard their voices made on Sunday [at the climate marches in New York, London and several other cities] and the momentum will not stop, but now it is your turn.”

Read: Hundreds of thousands join global climate protests

One by one, world leaders came to the stage to discuss their plans to cut emissions or donate to a fund to help poorer countries deal with the impacts of rising seas or increased desertification, all results of a warming world. (The speeches generally ran over time and many of them were followed by desperate pleas from the conference chair to keep to their allotted four minutes).

David Cameron stepped onto stage at around 5:30pm (UK time) and, judging by the luke-warm response on social media, did not make much of an impact. He re-iterated lots of rhetoric about his being the “greenest government ever” and how the UK was playing its part to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.

He did not, to the disappointment of many, make any new announcements for action on climate, however. It is a far cry from the UK’s lead in climate action and legislation several years ago, culminating with the passing of the Climate Change Act of 2008, one of the first pieces of legislation in the area in the world.

Barack Obama spoke soon afterwards and highlighted the need for emerging economies to start taking account for their own emissions. Nobody could stand on the sidelines of this issue, he said, with emerging economies no longer being able to claim that the sole responsibility to deal with climate change lay with industrialised countries such as the United States.

Obama said he had met with Chinese vice premier Zhang Gaoli earlier in the day and discussed with him the need to act on climate together. “We have a special responsibility to lead,” he said. “That’s what big nations have to do. I call on all nations to join us.”

Climate was changing faster than anyone’s efforts to address it, he said. “The alarm bells keep ringing as our citizens keeping marching. We cannot pretend we don’t hear them, we must answer their call. We cannot condemn our children and their children to a future that is beyond their capacity to repair. Not when we have the means [...] to begin repairing it right now.”

Obama also acknowledged the political resistance to action: “But let me be honest, none of this is without controversy. In each of our countries there are interests that will be resistant to action. But we have to lead, that is what the United Nations and this general Assembly is about.”

The latest scientific data shows that we are on course to emit 40bn tonnes of carbon dioxide by the end of 2014, up 2.5% from last year.

The world has already warmed by 1C since the industrial revolution and scientists argue that we need to limit the warming to 2C by the end of this century. After that, the climate enters a phase of catastrophic and irreversible effects - rising sea levels, more droughts and increasing instances of extreme weather.

The words in New York today won’t make any immediate difference to these climate threats. The rousing (and not so rousing) speeches today are important for another reason, though.

The New York meeting is outside the usual UN climate negotiation process, in which countries meet every December to thrash out deals and targets for climate-related policy. There have been issues with this long, tortuous process where all parties have to agree unanimously in order to pass an agreement, leading to political fighting and fractious negotiating. The lack of a deal in Copenhagen in 2009 was a shock to the many politicians and activists who had been optimistic that, since climate was high on the political agenda at the time, countries would work out a way to cut carbon emissions later in the century and avoid dangerous levels of climate change. That didn't happen because the first sight that any heads of state had had of the potential Copenhagen agreement was when they turned up to negotiate, in the second week of that conference. Unsurprisingly, they did not come to a deal in the short time available.

Ban Ki-moon called today’s meeting in New York as a way to prevent the same mistake happening again and get those heads of state engaged in the negotiating process as early as possible.

The next major climate conference will take place in Paris in December 2015 and Ban Ki-moon wants to get countries thinking well in advance so that next year’s meeting has a chance of starting with a strong draft agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. And this time, it shouldn't be such a surprise to world leaders when they gather again in Paris.

Countries have until March next year to formally submit their climate action plans to the UN in advance of the Paris meeting. In New York today, we got a flavour of what’s on their agendas, the specific points at which the negotiating and arguing will begin.

It will still take a lot of meetings, back-channeling and secret deals before the climate problem is solved, but Ban Ki-moon should be applauded for attracting so much public attention and getting the conversation started at the highest levels so early.