Two views of what happened up north.
David Aaronovitch sees some reasons to be cheerful:
After Copenhagen the wise business model is green. Who is going to prefer to put their money into dirty technology, when the global search is on for the green kind? After Copenhagen, no one can say that they didn’t know there was a debate about climate change, even if they then choose to ignore it. After Copenhagen no one half-sensible can come out with the glib explanation that it’s all the fault of the Yanks (Barack Obama is the best president to do global business with that some of us are likely to see for a while), or that we don’t understand the Chinese, or that the problem is the timidity of the politicians, or that we are somehow absolved. After Copenhagen, we know better where we stand.
"No one half-sensible", huh? Here's George Monbiot:
The immediate reason for the failure of the talks can be summarised in two words: Barack Obama.
Um. I think China may have had something to do with it. And, as Aaronovitch point out, the sheer impossibility of the task that the participants had set themselves (how do you get 110 countries to agree on anything?).
Monbiot has an unfortunate knee-jerk tendency to blame the Yanks. But the first half of his column - in which he deigns to (re-)explain the problem - is very good, and an encouraging sign that climate change activists are beginning to recognise it's not enough to shout DUH! at the great unwashed whenever they wonder what the big to-do is about.
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