John Kerry, US secretary of state, has issued a plea for action on global warming, calling it as big a threat as terrorism and “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction”.
Speaking in Jakarta after the US and China announced fresh strides on jointly tackling climate change before a global summit next year, Mr Kerry hit out at “a tiny minority of shoddy scientists” and “extreme ideologues” trying to hijack the debate.
His comments come amid a spate of extreme weather events around the world, from heavy weekend snowfalls that killed a dozen people in Japan, to relentless US snow and ice storms; the hottest January on record in parts of Brazil and severe winter flooding in Britain.