Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial (montage: The Guardian)

As a conference on climate change convenes in Copenhagen today, 56 newspapers from 47 countries in 20 languages are simultaneously publishing the same editorial. The eminent biologist, author, lecturer and non-believer, Professor Richard Dawkins has the background:

Today, 56 newspapers from 47 countries, in 20 languages, are simultaneously printing a shared editorial about climate change. Whatever you think about global warming and whether humans are responsible, I think we have to salute this remarkable feat of international cooperation. Here is an account, by a Guardian journalist, of the difficult process of getting the joint editorial together.

The list of participating newspapers can be found here

The initiative for this unprecedented and heroically difficult undertaking came from the Guardian. It is noticeable that the only other paper in the British Isles to join is the Irish Times. Even more noticeable is the almost total lack of support in the United States: only the Miami Herald and one Spanish language paper, El Nuevo Herald. Joiners in continental Europe include papers in Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Denmark, Norway, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Greece and Portugal. Joiners in Asia include papers in China, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Dubai, Lebanon, Qatar, Israel and Turkey. Nothing from Australia or New Zealand, apparently, and only five from Latin America

From The Guardian:

Copenhagen climate change conference: ‘Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation’

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west.

Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear.

Read the rest of the editorial at the link.