Will this country ever be prepared for snow?

I'm typing this Bob Cratchit-style in fingerless gloves due to being betrayed by the office boiler which has sadistically chosen one of the coldest days of the year to blow a gasket, leaving us huddled round one of those plug-in heaters that is more noisy than warm. Old Bertha's not alone as other boilers across the land seem to be engaged in a vicious conspiracy to expire when we're at our coldest, school heaters seem to be in the vanguard, failing as rapidly as England's World Cup bid (much to the delight of 700,000 children across the land).

The unpredictability of the weather is in stark contrast to the crushing inevitability of its impact on us - alongside boiler failure we'll always suffer the Ground Hog Day-style recurrence of airport closures, mega motorway tailbacks and landing heavily on our coccyxes (our leftover tail) while negotiating an icy pavement, all down to the entirely predictable lack of grit, a situation which dominated the headlines during the last ice age way back in February 2010. How depressing that the new government has dropped the snowball as hopelessly as the last. The current Transport Secretary Phil Hammond has ordered a review into the gritting scenario but it does seem like once the slush finally melts away so does any recollection that there was even an issue.

While the grit's hitting the fan in the UK, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has released data confirming that 2010 was one of the hottest years globally on record. Record temperatures were measured in 17 regions including Russia, China, Pakistan and North Africa. This year will also be in the top three of the warmest years since 1850 and could possibly top the all-time charts, depending on what happens this month. The warmest 10 years in the UK have all been since 1996.

The WMO data was released late this week during the Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico, where world leaders are trying to cobble together a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty designed to limit carbon emissions and control climate change. A total of 84 countries, including Japan, signed the treaty in 1997 agreeing to limit fossil fuel emissions. Those limits expire in December 2012 and Japan has indicated it doesn't want to be a part of the new agreement, which is bad news for us humans as it is the world's fourth largest polluter behind China, the USA and Russia.

The previous attempt in Copenhagen last year failed miserably. The industrial nations have been busily lowering expectations this time, preparing the world for more inaction on the climate which will only serve to increase the incidents of extreme, unpredictable weather, like Pakistan's floods, Russia's heatwave and the unprecedented snow melt in Bolivia. Like gritting, the short-term cost savings and even shorter memories of past failures seem to dominate political efforts to sort out one of the biggest threats to humanity.

Barack 'Hope' Obama was blamed for arriving at Copenhagen without any real intention of hammering out an agreement which would lead to a reduction of carbon emissions. What about our own agent of change, David Cameron? Remember during the Conservative leadership election and in the early days as leader of the opposition you could not stop the man talking about the environment to the point when Guardian-reading Greenpeace members were thinking: "When is this guy going to stop going on about the environment?" He used to cycle to work (Jeeves was driving his suit and briefcase in the gas guzzler a few metres behind but the thought was there) and they even changed the Tory logo to a tree. What's changed? The government doesn't even mention the environment now, much less pretend to do anything about it.

The boiler will always give out at the worst moment and the council will always forget that grit was ever an issue the moment March starts. Planning, preparedness and leadership are required to the pattern and remember that despite economic woes, climate change is a problem which is threatening us all. If Cancun fails to deliver a replacement for Kyoto, the prediction is for increasingly unpredictable weather in the UK and around the world.