As for those who are stressed by the possibility that negotiators will reach a last-minute agreement containing bona fide emission caps that will beggar industrialized nations for the benefit of developing ones, we also say stop worrying. While delegates might sign away the moon amid the giddy glitter of Copenhagen, the realities of domestic politics they face when they return home — recession, unemployment, budget deficits — mean their pledges will quickly fade to nothingness.
Prospects of a deal have looked bleak all week. First, developing nations scoffed at a European Union offer of a $11-billion fund to help them tackle climate change over the next three years. Lumumba Stanislaus Dia-Ping of Sudan, who has become a sort of de facto leader of developing and underdeveloped nations at the conference, said the EU offer was the equivalent of “providing no finance whatsoever.”
...The irony is that, amid all this chaos, the environmental ends of the Earth summit have been largely abandoned. Instead, both sides seem focused on negotiating what amounts essentially to a straight-out inter-regional transfer of wealth. Read more.
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