Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel delivers remarks to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill, Washington DC, USA, 03 Nov 2009. Photograph: Rainer Jensen/EPA

International negotiators lost one of the key elements to a successful deal on global warming today after Democratic leaders in the US Congress ruled out passing a climate change law before 2010. In the latest obstacle on the road to the UN summit in Copenhagen next month, Senate leaders ordered a five-week pause to review the costs of the legislation.

Time is running out to save civilisation from climate change. Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

For those concerned about global warming, all eyes are on December’s UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. The stakes could not be higher. Almost every new report shows that the climate is changing even faster than the most dire projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their 2007 report.

Yet from my vantage point, internationally negotiated climate agreements are fast becoming obsolete for two reasons. First, since no government wants to concede too much compared with other governments, the negotiated goals for cutting carbon emissions will almost certainly be minimalist, not remotely approaching the bold cuts that are needed.

An elephant grazes at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in the Amboseli national park, southern Kenya. Photograph: Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters

The famous Snows of Kilimanjaro that cap Africa’s highest mountain are melting so fast they could be gone within two decades, according to a study of the mountain’s ice fields that used data going back nearly a century.

Scientists believe global warming rather than local weather changes is chiefly to blame for the rapid loss of ice from the Tanzanian peak.

African countries have said they are prepared to provoke a major UN crisis if the US and other rich countries do not start to urgently commit themselves to deeper and faster greenhouse gas emission cuts.

In a dramatic day in Barcelona, UN officials were forced to step in after 55 African countries, in an unprecedented show of unity, called for a suspension of all further negotiations on the Kyoto protocol until substantial progress was made by rich countries on emission cuts.

Earlier, the UN chair had been forced to abandon two working groups after the Africa group refused to take part.