Obama of the United States and Xi of China have signed a bilateral climate agreement.

Much of the American and British media, and many Democrats in America, have hailed the deal as a key step forward. Many American Republicans have attacked it as going much too far. 

Anything the Republicans attack has to be good. Right? No. In fact it is an appalling deal. 

Let's look at the numbers.

Bob Crow died yesterday (11th March 2014), at the age of 52. Unexpectedly, of course. What everyone knows about Bob is that he was a fighter. He fought for his members, his class, and the railways. What not so many people have mentioned is that he fought for the planet too. In one way, it's simple - fighting for the railways is fighting against climate change and for the future of the planet. And railway jobs are climate jobs.

Yesterday, an emergency meeting was held at the Met Office to discuss the unusual weather patterns experienced here in the UK.  Examining the frozen winter of 2010/11, the wet summer of 2012 (the second wettest since records began) and this year’s bitter spring, scientists pointed to a number of factors thought to be responsible for our ‘weird weather’ – most of which (rapid arctic melt, disruption of the jet stream, warming oceans, more moisture in the atmosphere etc.) could be attributed to climate change. 

But despite scientific consensus and a growing body of empirical evidence affecting the every day lives of citizens of this country, there exists a continuing juxtaposition between the reality of the world facing climate change and the alternate reality inhabited by politics and the press. 

The failure to secure necessary green amendments to the Energy Bill in the House of Commons at the beginning of this month, Osborne’s proposed ‘Dash for Gas’, and rumours of renewed plans to expand Heathrow, demonstrate a ‘business as usual’ attitude held by a select group of political climate deniers apparently determined to pursue a path to growth at all costs.