2005 was the year in which concerns about the stability of the climate regularly made the headlines; 2006 may be the year when demands to do something about it finally become irresistible.
The past 12 months have seen big changes in the political - as well as the actual - climate. Perhaps the Rubicon was crossed when David Cameron was seen with Zac Goldsmith, editor of The Ecologist, discussing the ins and outs of global warming. Once the party of big business and anti-regulation, the Tories seem set to outflank a struggling Labour on the issue.
What is so surprising is not just the shifting of the ideological landscape that this implies, but the fact that everyone agrees that it matters. Even as recently as the May general election, climate change barely made a headline. Now Cameron's re-invigorated Tories clearly see it as a vote-winner. Tony Blair, who did so much to put climate on the agenda, but then failed to deliver serious policies to address it, could lose out as a result.
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There are also indications that the US will not be able to evade legal culpability for its emissions for much longer. The Inuit indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic have taken a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, accusing the US of destroying their lifestyle and future through climate change - dramatic signs of which are already evident across the Arctic region. If the commission rules in favour of the Inuit, the US could find itself in the dock at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. However, both agencies work within the framework of the American Convention on Human Rights, which the US has taken the precaution of not ratifying.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article335860.ece