Bird’s Eye: “Cancun”, the Guardian informed us this week, meant “nest of venomous serpents” in the original language. How appropriate. As the Observer reports that a billion people may lose their homes through climate change, the West is indifferent, and (as at Copenhagen) China and the US (and Canada) work to block any real change. We start with an excellent Guardian overview of what’s not happening.

* Cancún climate change conference: Week one roundup The Guardian

Plan: To hold emissions to a maximum temperature rise of 2C.

The prize: To prevent runaway global warming.

Progress: Little. But many rich countries only interested in implementing unambitious Copenhagen accord.

Setbacks: Pledges made so far by countries only cover 60% of what science says is needed to hold temperatures to 2C increase.

Outlook: Bleak. Hard to see how big emitters like the US will compromise to greater cuts.

Comment: Wendel Trio, Greenpeace climate director: “This is a meeting of emitters anonymous. They haven’t even taken the first steps to admit there is a problem.”

* Climate change: who cares? Al Jazeera English

As delegates from 193 nations are meeting in Mexico for the Cancun climate summit, the issue of climate change seems to be suffering from a complete lack of momentum.

A recent survey by GlobeScan, an international research consultancy, shows a sharp fall in the level of public concern worldwide about the issue.

The 26-country poll asked more than 13,000 people to rate the seriousness of a range of environmental problems including climate change. Results revealed that the proportion of those who rated climate change as a “very serious” problem fell from 61 per cent last year to 53 per cent this year, after many years of increasing concern.

Other findings from the poll show that the proportion of people across tracking countries who believe that “the dangers of climate change are exaggerated,” has increased from 42 per cent in 2008 to 48 per cent this year.

* There Won’t Be A Bailout For The Earth Johann Hari The Independent

Yet the world’s governments are gathering in Cancun with no momentum and very little pressure from their own populations to stop the ecological vandalism. The Copenhagen conference last year collapsed after the most powerful people in the world turned up to flush their own scientists’ advice down a very clean Danish toilet. These leaders are sometimes described as “doing nothing about global warming.” No doubt that form of words will fill the reporting from Cancun too. But it’s false. They’re not “doing nothing” – they are allowing their countries’ emissions of climate-trashing gases to massively increase. That’s not failure to act. It’s deciding to act in an incredibly destructive way.

The collapse of Copenhagen has not shocked people into action; it has numbed them into passivity. Last year, we were talking – in theory, at least – about the legally binding cap on the world’s carbon emissions, because the world’s scientists say this is the only thing that can preserve the climate that has created and sustained human civilization. What are we talking about this year? What’s on the table at Cancun, other than sand?

Almost nothing. They will talk about how to help the world’s poor “adapt” to the fact we are drying out much of their land and drowning the rest.