They bailed out the banks in days. But even deciding to bail out the planet is taking decades. Nicholas Stern estimated that capping climate change would cost around 1% of global GDP, while sitting back and letting it hit us would cost between 5 and 20%. One per cent of GDP is, at the moment, $630bn. By March 2009, Bloomberg has revealed, the US Federal Reserve had committed $7.77 trillion to the banks. That is just one government's contribution: yet it amounts to 12 times the annual global climate change bill. Add the bailouts in other countries, and it rises several more times.
This support was issued on demand: as soon as the banks said they wanted help, they got it. On just one day the Federal Reserve made $1.2tr available – more
than the world has committed to tackling climate change in 20 years. (...)
No legislator, as far as I know, has yet been able to explain why making $7.7tr available to the banks is affordable, while investing far smaller sums in new
technologies and energy saving is not. (...)

The article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/dec/16/durban-banks-climate-change?intcmp=122