Yeb Saño choked up while speaking at the international climate conference in Warsaw in the wake of Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), which is estimated to have killed more than 10,000 people: “I speak for the countless people who will no longer be able to speak for themselves after perishing from the storm.”

Only a year ago, Saño pleaded with his fellow delegates at the Doha climate conference to be accountable not to the governments that sent them, but the 7 billion people at risk of natural disasters caused or made worse by climate change.