Why doesn´t the world respond to the climate challenge as quick as it did to the financial crisis?

The last weeks have been focused on solving the financial crisis of the world. The activities on the stock markets and from governments of the world have been more than high! Iceland seems to have lost more or less half of their bank assets in a week! Now everybody can support the will to save and secure the financial system. Why is the sluggish way of dealing with climate change? The crisis of climate change is as urgent as the financial crisis!
Maybe people think of climate change as a green issue that we can deal with when the financial problems are solved. But the economics of climate change is already sorted out by Sir Nic Stern! And he also underlined the urgency to act.

I quote from the last ECEN (European Christian Environmental Network) working group on climate change

1) The need of political leadership to avoid the tipping points.

Climate change is not only about individual lifestyles. We need global agreements with targets that bring the emission of green house gases down.

We strongly support the action the European Union is taking to tackle climate change and, as a European network, urge the European Union to take brave leadership in the coming process under UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) with the next two COP’s (Conference of the Parties) in Poznan and Copenhagen in focus.

The seriousness of the situation and the message from the scientific community says that big cuts of emission are now necessary.

In reality this means that we would like to see EU/European countries work for;

· a 30 – 40 % cut of emissions for industrial countries to 2020 without use of flexible mechanisms, i.e. buying credits from developing countries

· binding commitments to use a minimum of 30% of the revenues from emissions auctioning to support developing countries to adopt robust adaptation and mitigation programmes.

· 80 -90 % cuts of emissions to 2050

· a fair and effective global climate treaty to be decided at COP 15 in Copenhagen

If the world can act in a week to save the financial systems then it is possible to act to save the climate in a much faster way then what we can see now!