Attending the last day of the United Nations conference on a new climate treaty to replace the 15 year old Kyoto Protocol, I was struck by by the picture of human history and its development being shrunk into a single room at the Hotel Maritim in Bonn, Germany.
Here were 190 nations sitting together to face a common cause - the prospect of planet Earth, home to 6 billion people, becoming much less hospitable.
Each nation brings its own issues of developmental success and accompanying responsibility for emitting pollutants to the table; many nations have yet to enjoy development and the prosperity and opportunity it brings.
Compressed into a single room were the whole panoply of dreams and wishes for human success. And the greater hurdles that many millions - indeed more than a billion of the world's poorest people - face ifthe worst of the projected scenarios for global warming come to pass.
It is a situation which we, World Vision, as a global development agency, must act on.
The poorest people who do not have access to food, to clean water, security and shelter, will be much worse off unless we are prepared to do what must be done to limit human-induced global warming. And to prepare communities for the changes already underway.
In the past week alone, there have been reports from the United States and British governments highlighting the impacts of climate change on their own populations. Yet we know that the already arid regions of Africa, Eurasia and even Australia will be hit hard. Marginal land may be uninhabitable, new deserts emerge.
Back in the room in Bonn, the progress of debating the draft treaty text line by line and self-interest by self-interest seemed a slow sort of madness.
Yet unless everyone is at the table, and all get a chance to have their positions heard, we cannot hope to work together for the good of the whole of humanity, and for our shared home, the Earth.
The administrative sobriety was broken in the final session. Japan had just a few days earlier tabled a weak target for cutting emissions that amounted to 8 per cent by 2020 from 1990 levels, a level the UN secretary for climate change Yvo de Boer said left him speechless.
The final session was on the overall aims for a new climate change treaty, and first invited by chairman Michael Zammit Cutajar to the microphone was Jamaica.
But the sheepish voice which came over was that of the Japanese delegate, who admitted he had pushed the button of the wrong nation, the Caribbean country seated next to him. Amid the welcome laughter, Michael urged him to speak anyway, "Go on, maan!" he intoned in his best West Indian.
When ultimately it was the turn of the island nations, it was fellow West Indian countries Antigua and Barbados who spoke for those threatened most by poor economies and the possibility of rising seas levels.
"All AOSIS countries (association of small island states) will be challenged to survive," was the message, a stark reminder of the need for wealthy nations - developed countries like Australia - to play our part in solving this looming crisis.
