Our leaders had a final chance to halt climate breakdown. They failed each and every one of us | George Monbiot

It's a miracle that any one of us is alive today. Those with the power to grant that miracle to future generations chose not to

The chances of any one person being born were calculated by the life coach Dr Ali Binazir. He multiplied the probability of your parents meeting, mating and conceiving by the chances of a particular sperm and egg fusing; of all your human and hominid ancestors reaching reproductive age; and of all them successfully reproducing. He arrived at a figure of one in 10 to the power of 2,640,000. In other words, a 10 followed by 2.6m zeros. It's an unimaginable, miraculous number. Yet here we are.

The chances of being alive right now, as a member of one of the first generations to know the path it is on, and one of the last that can change it, must add several more zeros to this crazy number. The chances of being the president or prime minister of your nation at this critical moment ... well you get the idea.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist