World leaders fiddle while rainforests burn, ice caps retreat

There's an internet meme doing the rounds at the moment depicting a sign hanging in a bookshop window that succinctly captures the global zeitgeist: "Please note: The Post-apocalyptical Fiction section has been moved to Current Affairs".

As the world swelters through one of the hottest recorded summers in human history and the polar caps melt at ever-increasing rates and glaciers simply disappear from the face of the Earth, another looming climate catastrophe made the headlines recently.

Dramatic footage of fires raging in Brazil's Amazon rainforests stunned the world, as vast plumes of smoke billowing into the skies plunged the city of Sao Paulo into virtual darkness one afternoon - more than 2,500 kilometers away from their source in Rondonia state. More shocking still, as news of the catastrophe spread - ironically like wildfire - it soon became clear that the fires did not occur naturally but were sparked by human hands.