Joss Garman: Copenhagen - Historic failure that will live in infamy - Commentators, Opinion - The Independent

The most progressive US president in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speaker-phone from a beach in Hawaii.
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Then a Chinese premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Barack Obama's speech that he refuses to meet – sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager's house party instead of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere.
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Instead, as details of the agreement emerged last night, we received reports of Japanese opposition MPs popping champagne corks as they savoured the possible collapse of their new government's carbon targets.

It's not just that we didn't get to where we needed to be, we've actually ceded huge amounts of ground. There is nothing in this deal – nothing – that would persuade an energy utility that the era of dirty coal is over. And the implications for humanity of that simple fact are profound.

I know we Greens are partial to hyperbole. We use language as a bludgeon to direct attention to the crisis we are facing, and you will hear much more of it in the coming days and weeks. But, really, it is no exaggeration to describe the outcome of Copenhagen as a historic failure that will live in infamy.

The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Copenhagen as UN Politics, Not Climate Change Substance

It is perhaps difficult for the environmental climate change community to understand that, from the UN’s standpoint as a historical player (a standpoint that the UN itself is unable to articulate, however) climate change is not the defining issue and never was. The defining issue is the UN itself. Climate change policy is simply the latest, and particularly aggressive, vehicle that the international community hopes will drive forward toward UN global governance. If the history of UN causes, values, and agendas is any indication, climate change will be tossed aside if, and when, it too proves a bridge too far for global governance.

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