So now it's Mexico 2010

I think it was the President of Brazil who first came up with the comment that if it had been a bank the planet would have been saved by now. But it's not, and it hasn't been.

However much politicians and commentators claim that the "Copenhagen accord" promulgated by President Obama represents success of a kind, it is hard to see the much antipated conference as anything other than a failure. Those who think otherwise are overlooking the fact that the accord represents an agreement that is wholly unacceptable to the people who have long been suffering the consequences of irreversible climate change. Christian Aid's Nelson Muffuh said: "We hoped that sanity would prevail, but powerful nations didn't come to negotiate. They came to play hardball. Lives will be lost as a result." Barabara Stocking of Oxfam was equally succinct: "World leaders seem to have forgotten they were not negotiating numbers. They were negotiating lives."

So now we have to regroup and look forward once more, this time to Mexico in 2010. Campaigners are likely to be calling on the EU and other developed countries, especially the United States, to reconvene talks at the earliest opportunity, to strengthen what is currently on the table and transform it into a legally binding treaty.

Is it asking too much of a public that is already showing signs of climate change fatigue to engage in still more campaigning on the issue? The voices of the deniers have been strengthened by the failure in Copenhagen. If you doubt that, take a look at the comments posted in response to articles in the national press, many expressing jubilation that, as they see it, the debate is now closed.

For UK voters, though, the General Election in 2010 offers an unparalleled opportunity to let politicians know that we care about climate change and the people it is killing. We should not forget that political will is an infinitely renewable resource, and next year is an ideal time to put that message across to parliamentary candidates of all parties.

I suspect that in a couple of weeks' time, a significant number of people will be making some "green" resolutions: to use the car less, turn down the thermostat and so on. And all power to them for doing so. But to be truly effective, those resolutions must also contain something about political lobbying and something about spreading the word as to what even a two degree rise in average global temperatures really means for the developing world.

We must continue to challenge people in the churches who continue to dispute the science as an excuse for doing nothing. And to challenge our churches, nationally and internationally, to move away from statements of pious hope (such as that by the World Council of Churches to the final plenary session in Copenhagen last Friday), and instead to speak prophetically to governments and decision-makers, to remind them that climate change is a matter of numbers of lives rather than numbers on a budget sheet.

Next year will be demanding, in every sense. Are we ready for it?