To get a sense of how we're doing, let's take a look at Norway. On the face of it, Norway is doing much more than most countries to tackle climate change. It already gets almost all its electricity and nearly 60 per of all the other energy it consumes from renewable sources, and aims to increase this proportion to 67 per cent by 2020. In 2007, Norway announced plans go carbon neutral by as early as 2030.

Sounds impressive, doesn't it? But Norway is one of the biggest oil and gas exporters in the world. Besides exploiting its own reserves, the government also owns 67 per cent of the energy company Statoil, which is investing in Canadian tar sands, among other projects.