The Guardian view on Paris, terror and climate change: shaping the future | Editorial

It is hard for France's capital to look beyond the terror attack, but the decisions taken at the UN climate change conference may in the end matter more

While Europe is on high alert against another murderous terrorist attack, it will be hard for Paris to look beyond the next 24 hours. But soon delegates start arriving in the French capital for preliminary meetings ahead of COP21, the United Nations climate change summit which will be launched on 30 November with all the grandeur attendant on a gathering of global leaders. There is a certain symmetry to the two events that goes beyond the nightmare task facing France's overstretched security forces. As the UK foreign secretary Philip Hammond pointed out in an important speech in the US only days before the Paris attacks last Friday: "Unchecked climate change " could have catastrophic consequences - a rise in global temperatures " leading in turn to rising sea levels and huge movements of people fuelling conflict and instability."

There are reasons to be optimistic about a useful outcome from these negotiations, not least the determination of President Barack Obama's team to deliver a deal with some kind of legal force. But any deal will mark the start rather than the end of the process.

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