Top: Aerial photograph of the Khumbu Glacier and the Everest Himalayan range. Bottom: Glacially eroded mountains in Jotunheimen in Norway. Photograph: David Lundbek Egholm (bottom) and Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau that feed the river systems of almost half the world’s people are melting faster because of the effects of clouds of soot from diesel fumes and wood fires, according to scientists in India and China.

Carbon-dioxide emissions are turning the waters of the Arctic Ocean into acid at an unprecedented rate, scientists have discovered. Research carried out in the archipelago of Svalbard has shown in many regions around the north pole seawater is likely to reach corrosive levels within 10 years. The water will then start to dissolve the shells of mussels and other shellfish and cause major disruption to the food chain. By the end of the century, the entire Arctic Ocean will be corrosively acidic.

The Copenhagen conference on climate change will most likely fail. And two parties will bear the principal responsibility for its failure: the United States and India. No one should be surprised by President Hu Jintao’s pledge to significantly reduce his country’s CO2 emissions. Beijing’s dictatorship is keen to assuage international anxieties. But Washington and New Delhi cannot indulge international opinion at the expense of alienating their domestic constituencies.