In a memorable scene in Al Gore’s film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, the former US vice-president lampoons a cartoon of a pair of scales that weighs the Earth against a stack of gold bars. Gore’s point is that any attempt to compare the merits of the two is ludicrous given their relative importance in the grand scheme of things.
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Negotiations in Durban over greenhouse-gas emissions should not try to revive Kyoto.