another  world summit on climate change, another set of desperate hopes and promises ... and another feeling that we re heading for a fall. The 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP17) opens in Durban, South africa, tomorrow. Ministers and officials from 200 countries, including Stewart Stevenson, Scotland s Climate Change Minister, will gather to try to hammer out progress on cutting the pollution that is wrecking the climate.  However, prospects for the summit are bleak. No-one expects any major breakthroughs, and no-one believes that a legally-binding agreement   promised for Copenhagen two years ago and again for Cancun last year   will be reached.  In fact, the latest intelligence suggests all the major industrialised nations have given up on making such an agreement until 2016, and even then it wouldn t come into force until 2020. For the poorer countries struggling to survive the droughts, floods and storms already being triggered by climate change, that is much too late.  Perhaps that is why the former president of Costa Rica, Jos? Mar?a Figueres, has called for an extension of the worldwide Occupy Durban movement provoked by the South african banking crisis.  I have called on all vulnerable countries to occupy Durban,  he said.  We need an expression of solidarity by the delegations of those countries that are most affected by climate change, who go from one meeting to the next without getting responses on the issues that need to be dealt with.  The delay in reaching agreement has been condemned by the United Nations, and many of the developing countries vulnerable to climate change.  It has been described as  reckless and irresponsible  by the alliance of Small Island States, which represents those most at risk from rising sea levels.  The biggest problem is that President Barack Obama s US administration will not contemplate binding limits on pollution because of fierce opposition from Congress. and critics are wary of challenging Obama too forcefully in case it helps a Republican become the next president.  If the US won t back legal limits, neither will Russia, Japan, China or India, leaving only Europe in favour of them   and it is lukewarm and divided.  So delegates are likely to leave Durban in two weeks without replacing the emissions reductions promised in the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire at the end of this year.  Progress on an agreement giving poor countries access to a promised $100 billion green fund to help them cope with the ravages of climate change also stalled last month. The US and Saudi arabia withdrew support at the last minute, provoking ire from developing countries.  as an analysis for WWF, put it:  If the negotiations continue on the same path they have been on this year, COP17 is doomed to fail.  The deepening global financial crisis, coupled with looming threats o