Peter Gorrie, former environment reporter, suggests that climate realists don't want a habitable planet

"Angela Merkel said jobs come first, then climate," said Peter Lindlahr, who heads the City of Hamburg's climate-change effort. "This is the wrong way."

Merkel's new stance helped to produce the uninspiring result at the United Nations climate-change conference in Poznan, Poland, that ended soon after Europe reached its disappointing deal.

It has led to nervous hope that U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will grab the climate-change torch from Europe's failing hands. But, as I've written before, Obama's stated greenhouse-gas target is much weaker than Europe's and, especially in the financial crisis, he faces stiff opposition in Congress to any measure that would increase energy prices or cap American emissions.

It seems more and more likely that the torch will be left lying on the ground.

That will be good news for the Canadian government – whose performance at Poznan was rated on par with the always-obstructionist Saudi Arabia – but not for anyone who wants a habitable planet.

On our largest source of electricity, complete insanity from Obama's Energy Secretary pick

[Chu] Let me go to the supply side of the energy problem. Now, we have lots of fossil fuel. That's really both good and bad news. We won't run out of energy, but there's enough carbon in the ground to really cook us.

Coal is my worst nightmare.