Assessments of the prospects for reaching a new global climate deal at Copenhagen in December don't come grimmer than this:

History suggests that transformative moments in global policy making usually come only "in the moments after disaster," Philippe Sands, a leading expert in environmental law, told a crowd in London Thursday night at a forum exploring the prospects for Copenhagen.

That reality suggests that "large numbers of people dying is the only thing that will cause states to realise that things have to change" in terms of combating climate change, argued Sands, a founder of the London-based Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development.

In such an environment, a new climate deal might be agreed in three or four weeks, he said, just as Bretton Woods, a ground-breaking global treaty establishing the International Monetary Fund and other new international bodies, was quickly agreed near the end of World War II.

But with disasters that are clearly caused by climate change still lacking and world leaders insufficiently focused on the urgency of the problem, "political will, as I see it, doesn't yet exist" to reach a genuinely effective climate deal at Copenhagen, Sands warned.

The problem with that view, said Peter Bunyard, a climate author and head of the Living Planet Foundation, is that by the time climate disasters are evident, the chance to turn them around may be past.

"We don't really have the time" to put off a new climate treaty, argued Bunyard, an expert on water systems in the Amazon. "Things are hurtling on. Without knowing it we could get to critical tipping points."

So are the negotiations, and the climate, doomed?

PROGRESS ON CLIMATE CLEAR

Kishan Kumarsingh, a negotiator from Trinidad and Tobago, told the crowd that things aren't quite that bad as that. While delegates may struggle to reach an effective deal at Copenhagen and delays are possible, he argued, movement toward recognising climate change as a problem and finding solutions is clear.

Two years ago, he said, developing countries insisted they were unprepared to take any action to stem their greenhouse gas emissions. Today many - including some of the world's largest emitters - are preparing plans to do just that.

"I think we have taken huge steps," he said.

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