Here:

Al Gore has sought to inject fresh momentum into the Copenhagen build-up, saying he is certain Barack Obama will attend and predicting a rise in civil disobedience against fossil-fuel polluters unless drastic action is taken over global warming.

Amid increasing incidents of climate protesters disrupting the operations of fossil-fuel industries and airports in Britain and elsewhere, Gore suggests the scale of the emergency means non-violent lawbreaking is justified. "Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play," he says. "And I expect that it will increase, no question about it."

It seems clear to me that if our system can't succeed in even giving a relatively minor tweak like single payer a hearing, that it's irretrievably broken. How, then, will our rulers deal with climate change?

Simple, really. They'll seize the high ground, let the waves rise over the rest of us, and hope for the best. Certainly that's been their standard operating procedure for everything else.