That the new decade began with Jakarta underwater and much of Australia on fire is perhaps the clearest possible sign that climate change action cannot wait another 10 years.

The end of the last decade and the start of this one has seen the dire warnings from scientists - for a long time so easy to dismiss as alarmist by sceptics - manifest themselves in very real ways. Historic typhoons battered Japan this past year and fires of an unprecedented scale burned across the Amazon, Indonesia and the Arctic.