DECC minister Chris Huhne has compared world leaders who obstruct a worldwide deal to tackle climate change to politicians who tried to appease Adolf Hitler before World War Two.
Does this make climate change a threat akin to the Nazis, who plunged the universe into war?
The Energy and Climate Change Minister was at Chatham House, endeavouring to shoot new urgency into climate change negotiations.
Huhne evoked the retention of Winston Churchill and the struggle against Nazi Germany.
"This is our Munich moment," he said, in a citation to the 1938 Munich Agreement that gave Hitler part of the former Czechoslovakia in a doomed effort to carry him to abandon further territorial ambitions. He quoted Churchill - who was both a Free and Conservative MP, kind of a Coalition in one - who "once said that 'an appeaser is someone that feeds a crocodile, hoping that it will eat him last'."
But only as a crocodile will eat anyone if it's hungry enough, so climate change affects everyone - but it is the pitiful who endure to have the most.
Many developing nations try to run the Kyoto principles, but richer countries - Japan, Russia and Canada - want a different kind of agreement.
Poor countries say rich nations have emitted most of the greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution and so must reach them more help before they can be expected to mark up to making cuts themselves.
But Huhne said "We cannot look for every nation to become equal, because that would mean waiting for an eternity. At some point, we must make a business and say: this starts now. This starts here."
He said that it was vital that governments redouble their efforts to get a replacement to the United Nations Kyoto Protocol, which controls greenhouse gas emissions only in developed countries and expires at the end of 2012.
However, he feels that it is now unlikely that a discovery will be made at the primary annual conference beginning late November in Durban, South Africa because of a damaging rhythm" into which "the yearly oscillation of UNFCCC meetings is in peril of slipping".
"Although the scientific evidence continues to grow, climate exchange is getting less political attention now than it did two days ago. There is a vacuum, and the forces of low ambition are looking to take it," he said. "Giving in to the forces of low ambition would be an act of climate appeasement.
In an effort to carry his audience he quoted the Connection of British Insurers who said, in 2009, "our judgment of climate change convinces us that the terror is really and is with us now" and he referenced the letter written to the European Union by more than 70 European companies, including Ikea and Coca Cola, asked them to aim for more ambitious carbon cuts.
"This is the close Parliament with a risk to avert catastrophic climate change," he said. It will end in 2015. If we get not achieved a worldwide deal by then, we will fight to peak emissions by 2020. It will be more expensive, more divisive, and more difficult."
He said that the political tactics must include using soft diplomacy to change the government and build coalitions" and "explaining the event for action.on economic and security grounds", and using targeted financial and practical support to aid underdeveloped countries build cleaner, more climate resilient economies."
He said temperatures must be kept within 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) of pre-industrial levels to annul the worst effects of climate change. They possess already risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius and yet if all emissions were stopped today, they would climb by a further 0.5 of a degree, he said.
"Sticking to our 2 degree limit means global emissions must peak by 2020 at the latest," Huhne said.
"From 2013, there will be new political leaders in the world's major economies. We desire to get put the world recession behind us. The stars may be more closely aligned in favor of a binding legal deal," he said.
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