If the oceans rose by two metres, the Maldives would be inundated. Photograph: Chad Ehlers/Getty Images

If you live in the Maldives, “1.5 to stay alive” is more than just a catchy slogan. The reality is that temperature rises above 1.5C will destroy this island nation from all sides: rising sea levels will swamp the tiny atolls, warmer water will kill its beautiful coral reefs, and an acidic ocean will literally dissolve the islands one by one.

Ten years ago, protesters gathered in a port city; politicians arrived for intense backroom negotiations; the city’s hotels were booked out by representatives of thousands of NGOs from all over the world. In 1999 Seattle, like Copenhagen this week, was a big international meeting attempting to exert some governance over globalisation. There’s a fitting symmetry that these two meetings bookend this decade. For while the Seattle protests were deliberately misrepresented and widely misunderstood at the time, their agenda has proved unanswerable. Copenhagen is belatedly grappling with just one aspect of Seattle’s unfinished business.

For those for whom Seattle is a hazy memory, let’s recap. The World Trade Organisation had become the bete noire of a heterogeneous global coalition bizarrely labelled as the anti-globalisation movement. The WTO meeting to hammer out an international trade agreement became the touchstone for riots, and a draconian police response of teargas and truncheons. Seattle made it on to the front page of every newspaper. Some Starbucks windows were smashed; the protesters were ridiculed for their taste in lattes, Naomi Klein’s No Logo and their trendy crusades against brands such as Nike. For a decade Seattle has been dismissed as illogical, self-indulgent posture politics that, not surprisingly, went nowhere.