Disheartened by the state of climate policy? Consider the long view on capacity building

It is easy to get pessimistic, if not outright depressed, in this business. After all, humanity keeps beating on the atmosphere with a sharp stick hoping that the climate will keep taking it with a smile. Meanwhile witnesses to this abuse expectantly turn to governments to intervene only to find a political horizon devoid of ambition for real change. Indeed, governments around the world seem overstretched already as they impotently struggle to calm markets and restart engines of economic development in the face of financial turmoil, the impacts of which continue to seep into and saturate the global economy. Drowned out by policy debates on economic woes and fiscal policy, climate change, it seems, rarely even makes the agenda anymore.

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