THE United Nations Climate Change Conference in South Africa ends today and Im not holding my breath for any amazing development to be announced. Not with the worlds finances in such a mess.

Rampant recession in the West provides a ready excuse not to implement or abide by previous agreements and there have been plenty. The Kyoto Protocol, the Bali Action Plan and the Cancun Agreement. There seems no chance that environmentalists will get the chance to lead us into a bright new world of green potential.

Which is a bit of a shock. I mean, the UN says global warming is much worse than we thought. Which cant be good, when they originally said it would destroy the planet.

With this in mind, I decided to look long term for salvation. Not for me, you understand, Im far too old to worry, but for my grandchildren and their offspring. And I found streaks of hope where no man has gone before. In outer space.

Scientists this week identified a planet that orbits a star similar to our own sun, which has a comfortable temperature of 22 degrees Centigrade (71 F), is believed to consist of land and water and is about two and a half times bigger than Earth. It could, they say, support life, so now we have somewhere to head for if we continue with our present rates of pollution and our planet gets too hot to stay.

Its been designated Kepler 22-b, which is hardly an inspiring name, but Im sure if we ever decide to emigrate en masse and make it our home, we can call it New Earth.

It was found by a telescope aboard the Kepler spacecraft which was launched in 2009 to orbit the sun and gaze outwards and map the universe. So far it has spotted 2,326 new planets, with 139 of them being declared potentially habitable.

So we have options.

Unfortunately, New Earth (as I shall henceforth call it), which is our best bet, is 600 light years away. This, according to my shaky mathematics, is 3,540 million miles. Which is a bit further than emigrating to Australia and, using present spaceship technology, would take 22 million years to get there if we set off on Monday.

Not to worry. Scientists are always making breakthroughs and, as global warming gets worse, desperation will focus minds wonderfully. Before you know it, we could have a WARP drive from Star Trek to boldly go.

And there is no need to panic if we dont. I said I had discovered streaks of hope. In the plural.

The second was the news that Voyager 1, the space probe launched in 1977, is poised to leave our solar system and enter the interstellar space of the Milky Way looking for intelligent life.

It carries a gold disc sadly, not one of Sir Cliff Richards but a: Twelve inch gold plated copper disc containing sounds and images to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. NASA says it is a kind of time capsule. Or a menu.

Because it also gives directions on how little green men and the crews of flying saucers, UFOs and Intergalactic Space Fleets can find us down here on Earth.

Turn left at the sun. Were the blue planet that refuses to turn green. Oh yes, and dont mind the explosions you might see from outer space. Theyre just local wars.

The disc includes music, with a heavy bias towards the classical, although it does have Chuck Berry singing Johnny B Goode. Mind you, I still think it was a grave omission not to have Sir Cliff. I mean, if he can placate and entertain a rain-drenched crowd on Centre Court just think how Bachelor Boy might sooth a savage and alien brow.

There are greetings in 55 languages from Akkadian, which no one has spoken for 6,000 years, to Wu, a Chinese dialect. How useful these will be if prospective visitors from the Planet Og have learned English from television repeats of I Love Lucy, is hard to say.

But the point is that we while we may be disappointed (although not surprised) at the lack of action at the South African conference, we have options. We have a place to go, if we ever discover the motive power to get there, and we have sent out an open invitation to any life-form in space to come and visit and maybe take us to New Earth. If they dont enslave or eat us first.

Of course, the likelihood of any of those possibilities happening is about the same as getting world governments to accept a workable agreement for climate control which might just result in a green planet. A New Earth, in fact.