194 China gutted Copenhagen. Its great political leap forward.

China gutted Copenhagen. Its great political leap forward.

(1) World's fastest train: "Chinese stole the technology"
(2) China's climate stonewall
(3) China 'hijacked' climate summit: British minister
(4) How China gutted Copenhagen and avoided the blame
(5) India confesses it helped derail Copenhagen deal
(6) Is China too big to negotiate?
(7) UN climate chief appeals for calm after Copenhagen bustup
(8) Obama Accord a good thing amid Copenhagen fiasco
(9) China shows West can't dictate to it. Its great political leap forward
(10) Barack Obama’s climate deal unravels at last moment
(11) Copenhagen climate summit ends in bitter disagreements
(12) No chair: Obama gate-crashes China-India-Brazil-South Africa meeting
(13) Blame China, not the US, for Copenhagen

(1) World's fastest train: "Chinese stole the technology"

From: ssalemi@earthlink.net Date: 29.12.2009 02:40 AM

Peter, the Chinese stole the technology from Siemens and ThyssenKrupp initially, but political expediency hushed all that up. This is described in the book "McMafia" by Misha Glenny, pps. 381-382.

Steven Salemi
Santa Fe NM

Comment (Peter M.):

I expect the Chinese played the Germans & Japanese off against each other, dangling the prospect of ongoing sales before them. But of course China will now be competing against both of them.

(2) China's climate stonewall

Lenore Taylor, National correspondent

The Australian, December 21, 2009
Source: AFP

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/chinas-climate-stonewall/story-e6frg6z6-1225812228240

Despite weeks of negotiation, there was never any discussion about specific emission reduction targets.

THERE were 45,000 people at the Copenhagen summit and more than 100 world leaders, but in the end it came down to an extraordinary personal showdown between the leaders of the world's two superpowers and biggest greenhouse gas emitting countries, China and the US.

The deal itself was anything but historic. But the implications of how the Chinese handled this negotiation well might be.

In a disastrous result for the world's environment and for 19 years of difficult and painstaking environmental diplomacy, China undoubtedly won.

Chinese chief negotiator Xie Zhenhua said China was leaving Copenhagen "happy", before walking out of the Bella conference centre late on Friday night with his clearly cheerful team.

In a statement, Xie, who is also vice-chairman with China's National Development and Reform Commission, said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was also happy with the agreement.

They are about the only people in the world who are happy about Copenhagen's failure, except perhaps those who are sceptical about the science of global warming and who therefore think global emission reduction efforts are not necessary in the first place.

US President Barack Obama left the Danish capital having been forced to muscle through a very weak political deal that achieved few of his key aims and wasn't binding anyway, in order to salvage the barest bones of a deal.

In a private press briefing for American journalists where he unilaterally announced the deal before heading home, he was blunt that it fell a long way short of what science says needs to be done and a long way short of expectations.

After arriving in Copenhagen late on Thursday, Obama went to a meeting of 25 key leaders - including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd - early on Friday morning to try to salvage an agreement.

The fact that the leaders were getting down to the word-by-word text negotiations usually conducted by officials showed just how desperate things had become. They had met the night before until 2am after the "gala" opening dinner with the Danish royal family and got nowhere. According to Rudd they were looking into the "abyss" of total failure.

Part of the problem was the complete refusal of the Chinese to engage in the talks.

The conference had been bogged down for almost two weeks by procedural blocking tactics by developing countries and China, which senior negotiators believe were almost entirely engineered by the Chinese.

Despite the fact that the "texts" that negotiators had worked on for more than two years were hopelessly far from agreed, China and the G77 block of developing nations resisted all attempts to bring politicians into the talks.

They skilfully exploited heavy-handed tactics by the Danish presidency to achieve a political agreement by describing it as a plot to "kill" the Kyoto Protocol, and were strongly supported by many of the environmental and aid activists at the conference, who in turn provided sound grabs to the assembled world media.

Initially these tactics were seen by negotiators as a strategy by China to force through a more favourable deal in the final days as negotiators grew more and more tired and desperate for a deal and more intent upon getting home for Christmas.

But when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who was already in Copenhagen, refused to attend the Friday morning talks and was represented by China's third-ranking official instead, negotiators realised they were dealing with something far more serious.

It was a snub to the US President that deeply angered US and European negotiators because it subverted the purpose of the meeting to crunch a leaders-level deal.

Making progress even harder was the insistence by the G77 group of developing nations that its hardline negotiators, including Sudanese ambassador Lumumba Di-Aping who has now twice likened developed countries' attitudes towards climate change to Nazism, should be in the room.

Accounts suggest Di-Aping and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not always see eye to eye. The real question is why they were even sitting at the same table.

When the meeting finally broke for the formal leaders' statements mid-morning things got even worse. In his speech, Obama repeated the demand that developing nations' emission reduction promises had to be verifiable, a demand China was fiercely resisting in the grounds that it was an assault on its sovereignty.

"Without any accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page," Obama said, reportedly offending the Chinese Premier so much that he returned to his hotel.

And Wen did not show again for another leaders-level meeting after the speeches, sending an even lower level official.

When the President and the Premier finally met bilaterally there was an altercation between officials over access for each state's media.

Finally, late in the day Obama and Clinton met the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa and clinched the "Copenhagen Accord". According to some reports, quoting unnamed US officials, that meeting only came about because the Americans barged in on a gathering of the developing nation leaders and insisted on taking part.

In any event, having refused to engage in political-level discussions for two weeks on the grounds that everything had to be done by consensus and with the democratic inclusion of all 192 parties to the talks, at the eleventh hour the Chinese did do a deal with just a handful of the most powerful nations in the world.

And that deal protected its own interests, setting back international efforts to put Chinese and Indian emission reduction targets into an international legally binding treaty and weakening demands for international verification.

But it did not protect the interests of the developing countries who had been supporting the Chinese blocking tactics all through the conference, because it did not achieve deeper emission cuts from the main emitters that came anywhere close to what will be needed to contain rising world temperatures.

In fact it achieved a deal far weaker than the worst-case scenarios that might have been imagined when delegates arrived two weeks before.

Even the crucial timetable to achieve a legally binding treaty by 2010 was taken out at the insistence of the Chinese, who said they would otherwise reject the pact.

The powerful G77 block had already fractured during these talks, with developed nations including Australia putting in a lot of effort to convince countries that their best interests did not lie in continuing to be allied with China.

As they left, Copenhagen negotiators were wondering whether, having been abandoned so dramatically, China's allies will trust the superpower again. It appeared the fracturing of the G77 may have become a permanent fissure.

They were also questioning why China had taken the attitude that it did.

No one was asking China to do anything more than the energy-intensity based emission reduction targets that it had voluntarily announced a few weeks before the negotiations began.

And while there are political and cultural reasons for China to have particular sensitivities about questions of sovereignty, they have not prevented China from participating in verification regimes in other kinds of international agreements.

Nor was it apparently a tactic to secure greater concessions from the US, such as an improvement in its emissions reduction target of 17 per cent by 2020 based on 2005 levels, because these talks never got down to the details.

The endless debate about process, the endless argument about whether or not to talk about a deal, the endless rhetoric about the historical responsibility of the West, the rants about the evils of the capitalist system, meant there was no real top-level negotiation about what emission targets each country would take on.

This negotiation never really got to discover each nation's bottom line. Business representatives wandered somewhat aimlessly around the conference centre because there wasn't really a debate in which they could become engaged.

In the end, it probably came down to the fact that China won either way. If a deal collapsed, then they were off the hook of ever having to commit to legally binding targets, If the tactics succeeded in watering down a deal, then a legally binding target could still be shoved off for years.

There are good arguments for developed nations to take on tougher targets than the minimums they have on the table as part of a comprehensive global deal. But there are also very good reasons for them to demand that the world's largest emitter and other big developing-world emitters, such as India, be gradually drawn into the binding international mitigation system.

Unless the superpowers can find a way to bridge their differences, unless multilateral negotiations can find a way to get past the intractable north-south divide on this issue, solutions will continue to be elusive.

And that will have consequences for everyone. There are no real winners from the failure at Copenhagen.

Of course, among the protesters the US got the blame. As exhausted delegates finally left the Bella Centre they were confronted with a small band of demonstrators bearing posters of Obama with the slogan "climate shame" across his forehead.

But according to the negotiators who ploughed through these past two weeks of bitter negotiations in the bitterly cold Danish winter, China should also take a large share of the opprobrium. Climate is shaping as an issue that will test how China deals with the international responsibilities that sit alongside its emerging superpower status. In Copenhagen it failed that test.

(3) China 'hijacked' climate summit: British minister

(AFP) – Monday 21 December 2009

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hcP3fjt_Yg4amswt-ybkQwBHex7g

LONDON — China "hijacked" the Copenhagen summit by blocking a legally-binding treaty, Britain's climate change secretary Ed Miliband said Monday.

China vetoed attempts to give legal force to the accord reached at the United Nations climate summit in the Danish capital, Miliband wrote in The Guardian newspaper.

It also blocked an agreement on reductions in global emissions, he said.

"This was a chaotic process dogged by procedural games," Miliband wrote.

"The procedural wrangling was, in fact, a cover for points of serious, substantive disagreement.

"The vast majority of countries, developed and developing, believe that we will only construct a lasting accord that protects the planet if all countries' commitments or actions are legally binding.

"But some leading developing countries currently refuse to countenance this. That is why we did not secure an agreement that the political accord struck in Copenhagen should lead to a legally binding outcome.

"We did not get an agreement on 50 percent reductions in global emissions by 2050 or on 80 percent reductions by developed countries.

"Both were vetoed by China, despite the support of a coalition of developed and the vast majority of developing countries."

He added: "The last two weeks at times have presented a farcical picture to the public. We cannot again allow negotiations on real points of substance to be hijacked in this way."

The summit set a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but did not spell out the important global emissions targets for 2020 or 2050 that are the key to holding down temperatures.

It also promised 100 billion dollars for poor nations that risk bearing the brunt of the global warming fallout, but has not given a fixed payout plan.

Copyright © 2009 AFP.

(4) How China gutted Copenhagen and avoided the blame

Date: December 26 2009

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/how-china-gutted-copenhagen-and-avoided-the-blame-20091225-lf1q.html

Brutal power politics made sure the climate conference was crushed and the red dragon's future as an economic superpower was secure. Mark Lynas reports from the inside.

Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is that China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so Western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? I was in the room and saw it happen.

China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the West had failed the world's poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movement and environmental groups all took the bait.

The failure was "the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility", said Christian Aid. "Rich countries have bullied developing nations," fumed Friends of the Earth International.

All very predictable, but the opposite of the truth. I saw Obama fighting to salvage a deal, and the Chinese delegate saying no, over and over again. One columnist approvingly quoted the Sudanese delegate, Lumumba Stanislaus-Kaw Di-Aping, who denounced the Copenhagen Accord as "a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries".

But Sudan behaved at the talks as a puppet of China. It was a perfect stitch-up. China gutted the deal behind the scenes and then left its proxies to savage it in public.

Here is what actually went on late last Friday night as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi. The Danish Prime Minister was chairman of the meeting, and on his right sat Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations. Probably only about 50 or 60 people, including the heads of state, were in the room. I was attached to a delegation whose head of state was present for most of the time.

I was profoundly shocked. The Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world's most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his "superiors".

To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China's representative who insisted that industrialised country targets - previously agreed as an 80 per cent cut by 2050 - be taken out of the deal. "Why can't we even mention our own targets?" demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Kevin Rudd was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil's representative, too, pointed out the illogicality of China's position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why - because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord's lack of ambition.

China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2 degrees, was replaced by woolly language suggesting emissions peak "as soon as possible". The long-term target - of global 50 per cent cuts by 2050 - was also excised. No one else, except, perhaps, India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this. Had the Chinese been absent, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks.

So how did China pull off this coup? First, it was in an extremely strong negotiating position. China didn't need a deal. As the foreign minister of a developing country said to me: "The Athenians had nothing to offer to the Spartans." On the other hand, Western leaders in particular - but also presidents Lula da Silva of Brazil, Jacob Zuma of South Africa, Felipe Calderon of Mexico and many others - were desperate for a positive outcome. Obama needed a strong deal perhaps more than anyone. The US had confirmed a $US100 billion ($114 billion) offer to developing countries to help them adapt, put serious cuts on the table for the first time (17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020) and was obviously prepared to up its offer.

Above all, Obama needed to be able to show to the US Senate that he could deliver China in any global climate regulation framework, so conservative senators could not argue that US carbon cuts would further advantage Chinese industry. With midterm elections looming, Obama and his staff knew Copenhagen probably would be their only chance to go to climate change talks with a strong mandate.

This further strengthened China's negotiating hand, as did the complete lack of civil society political pressure on China or India. It's an iron rule that campaign groups never blame developing countries for failure.

The Indians, in particular, are past masters at co-opting the language of equity ("equal rights to the atmosphere") in the service of planetary suicide - and leftish commentators are hoist with their own petard.

With the deal gutted, the heads of state session concluded with a final battle as the Chinese delegate insisted on removing the 1.5 degrees target so beloved of the small island states and low-lying nations who have most to lose from rising seas. President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, supported by Brown, fought valiantly to save this crucial number. "How can you ask my country to go extinct?" demanded Nasheed. The Chinese delegate feigned great offence - and the number stayed, but surrounded by language that makes it all but meaningless. The deed was done.

So what is China's game? Why did China, in the words of a British analyst who spent hours in heads-of-state meetings, "not only reject targets for itself, but also refuse to allow any other country to take on binding targets"? The analyst's answer: China wants to weaken climate regulation now "in order to avoid the risk that it might be called on to be more ambitious in a few years' time".

This does not mean China is not serious about global warming. It is strong in the wind and solar industries. But the country's growth, and growing global political and economic dominance, is based largely on cheap coal. China knows it is becoming an uncontested superpower; indeed, its newfound muscular confidence was on striking display in Copenhagen. Its coal-based economy doubles every decade, and its power increases commensurately. Its leadership will not alter this magic formula unless it absolutely must.

Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal; it illustrated a profound shift in geopolitics. This is fast becoming China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower's freedom of action. I'm more despondent than I have felt in a long time. After all the hope and all the hype, the mobilisation of thousands, a wave of optimism crashed against the rock of global power politics, fell back and drained away.

(5) India confesses it helped derail Copenhagen deal

TOM ARUP ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT

December 25, 2009

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/india-confesses-it-helped-derail-copenhagen-deal-20091223-ldf1.html

INDIA has lauded the lack of carbon cuts in the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, boosting claims by rich countries that developing nations derailed the deal.

On his return from Copenhagen, the Indian Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, told Parliament his mandate had been to protect India's right to fast economic growth, and listed killing off binding targets to reducing emissions as a key victory for his country.

"We can be satisfied that we were able to get our way on this issue [targets]," Mr Ramesh said. Later he told a news conference that a bloc of key emerging economies - Brazil, South Africa, India and China - had worked to protect the rights of the developing world.

India is one of the world's top five greenhouse gas polluters, but one of the smallest emitters per person. The Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, was reluctant to be drawn by the Indian Minister's comments, but admitted Australia had wanted more from the Copenhagen summit ...

with AAP, Guardian News & Media

(6) Is China too big to negotiate?

Rowan Callick, Asia-Pacific editor    The Australian    December 24, 2009  12:00AM   

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/is-china-too-big-to-negotiate/story-e6frg6zo-1225813288687

MANY of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's fellow leaders at Copenhagen last weekend were convinced that he was behaving like an impressively deadpan shopper at Beijing's Silk Market.

The classic play for the experienced shopper in China is to bargain down as far as you can, then walk away, shaking your head in sorrow that you cannot afford the seller's exorbitant price.

Then if the stallkeeper remains confident of still being able to chalk up a profitable sale, they will send an acolyte to summon you back for a further round.

But Wen was never going to return once he left the room at the climate change conference, regardless of the loud appeals from Europeans and many developing countries for China to sign up to a different deal.

What Wen took going in to the conference was not an offer or a negotiating position. It was a commitment, which had taken a long time inside Beijing's complex, faction-ridden governing machinery to nut out. ...

Beijing, whose priorities are invariably domestic, does not tolerate ceding ground to multilateral pressure. Germany has finally moved on from the effect of the Versailles peace treaty after World War I, but Beijing has never forgotten that the great powers gathered there handed over the German ports in China to the Japanese rather than returning them to Chinese control.

It's not so hard, really, to work out what Chinese leaders mean in their statements. They mean what they say.

Beijing insists that China's prospect of catching up with its Japanese and South Korean neighbours' living standards is not negotiable, even over global warming. Its Global Times editorialised: "The majority cannot sacrifice their life to build a greener world for the few."

The global financial crisis that laid the Western world low has reinforced Chinese leaders' sense that they are at the centre of international affairs and do not need to play Western negotiating games. Engineers and other technological experts have recently dominated public life in China. Wen himself is a geologist. Bridges are properly built or they collapse. You don't negotiate their feasibility.

Mao Zedong said: "The revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery."

Nor is the revolution a multilateral agreement.

(7) UN climate chief appeals for calm after Copenhagen bustup

(AFP) –December 23, 2009

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hhbem82Ej9-q6rsJ2_ftK11xj7Pw

PARIS — The UN's pointman on climate change pleaded for calm on Wednesday after angry spats erupted over the outcome of the much-trumpeted world climate summit in Copenhagen.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), warned "all this finger-pointing and recrimination" could cloud negotiations next year for sealing a post-2012 pact on tackling global warming.

"We need to work together constructively, whereas countries are in the media blaming each other for what happened, the same countries that are going to have to be back at the negotiating table next year with an open willingness to work together," he told AFP in a phone interview from London.

"It's bad for the atmosphere, it's bad for the relationship among people that ultimately have a common goal to move this forward."

De Boer did not name names but chose to give the interview after Britain and China swapped verbal blows as to who was to blame for the Copenhagen outcome, while Brazil took aim at the United States.

Sweden, current president of the European Union, said the summit was a "disaster" and declared both China and the United States, the world's number one and two polluters, responsible for the disappointing result.

In frenzied backroom haggling on Friday, leaders of some two dozen countries put together a "Copenhagen Accord" that strived to save the gruelling 12-day UN marathon from collapse.

It was then put to a full meeting of the 194-nation UNFCCC, where it ran into a firestorm early Saturday from a group of Latin American countries and from the spokesman for the G77 group gathering 130 poor nations.

In the end, the conference chairman gavelled the accord through, saying the meeting "takes note" of the document -- a procedural move that enabled its provisions to become operational.

The deal set the aim of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but did not set a year by which carbon emissions should peak, nor did it spell out the aim for 2020, the important mid-term target year.

The accord, for the first time, did encompass emissions-curbing pledges by rich and poor nations, although none of these promises are binding.

A total of 30 billion dollars was pledged from 2010-2012 to help poor countries in the firing line of climate change, and rich nations sketched a target of providing 100 billion dollars annually by 2020.

Green activists and campaign groups slammed the deal for falling far below what scientists are claiming is needed to spear the threat from climate change.

Some singled it out as a backroom deal by the big players that usurped the consensus-driven UN approach.

De Boer urged all parties not to inflate or pull down the importance of the Copenhagen Accord.

"We shouldn't pretend it is anything more or anything less than what it is -- an agreement, a sense of direction that can help us in further negotiations."

He acknowledged, though, that what happened in Copenhagen "was a very extraordinary event."

"The fact of the matter is a small group of countries put this accord together, there wasn't enough time to get buy-in from the larger meeting and have it adopted in any kind of formal sense, and that's the reality."

The lesson from Copenhagen, said De Boer, was that it might be useful for a principal group of countries to propose a deal, but time was needed to have it debated and endorsed in a process "that is inclusive, representative and transparent."

He expected the UNFCCC's bureau -- a group of top officials dealing with operational matters -- to meet early next year to see whether more meetings would be needed in 2010.

At present, the programme is to a high-level meeting in Bonn in mid-year, followed by talks in Mexico City in December 2010 where the hugely complex pact would be sealed.

Copyright © 2009 AFP.

(8) Obama Accord a good thing amid Copenhagen fiasco

ROSS GARNAUT

December 23, 2009

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/obama-accord-a-good-thing-amid-copenhagen-fiasco-20091221-l9yj.html

The United Nations meeting on climate change at Copenhagen was a fiasco. The several months of intense discussion among leading economies that culminated in the Obama Accord in Copenhagen last weekend was not.

These several months just passed have changed the context of international co-operation on climate change. It is worth taking some time to understand the change and its implications of what might be made to happen next.

First, the fiasco. It was clear from the beginning the Copenhagen meeting was never going to deliver a more ambitious objective than reasonable prospects of holding warming to 2 degrees; it has been clear for at least several months it was not going to deliver binding targets from the major countries.

The public distress at the disappointment of such unattainable expectations was all part of the colour of 40,000 people, and leaders and camp followers of hundreds of NGOs, congregating in one place at one time.

Copenhagen was not predestined to be such a fiasco. No one quite predicted the long diversion led by Tuvalu. No one quite predicted the extent of noise from the one-man band from Sudan with international vocal accompaniment. The diversion and noise probably ensured there will never again be such a meeting, attended by heads of government of most of the serious countries. That is no bad thing for climate change mitigation.

There is now general support among governments on an objective of holding carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to concentrations that provide reasonable prospects of holding temperature increase within 2 degrees of pre-industrial levels. In the currency used in the Garnaut Climate Change Review, that equates to 450ppm of carbon dioxide equivalent.

If that really were a global goal, Australia's proportionate part in achieving the outcome would require reductions on 2000 emissions of 25 per cent by 2020 and 90 per cent by 2050. That's new. Only two years ago, the Stern Review said that 550ppm was the most ambitious target achievable.

The major developing countries have indicated they will adopt measures to reduce emissions levels substantially below business as usual, from now, or in China's case from 2005. In the crucial case of China, leaders have said the emissions intensity of output would be reduced by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020. What is more, China is already making rapid progress towards that goal. That's new.

The Garnaut Climate Change Review introduced into the international discourse the then radical proposition that China would have to reduce emissions by 10 per cent below business as usual by 2020 for the world to have any chance of reaching the 450ppm objective. Attaining China's stated objective would reduce its emissions by much more than required by that arithmetic.

India, Indonesia, South Africa and Brazil have also said that they will take substantial steps in mitigation. So have Singapore and South Korea - other countries that had not been expected to contribute substantially to global mitigation under the Kyoto Protocol and its follow-up in Bali.

There is wide support among developed countries for substantial transfers to developing countries for climate change mitigation and adaptation - seen in earlier UN negotiations as preconditions for an ambitious global agreement. This is new - and the commitment to commence the transfers before 2013 newer still.

Some of the change is badly aligned with the hopes of a supporter of strong mitigation. None of these developing and newly industrialised countries have made internationally binding commitments. Nor has the US - still not bound by ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. And US commitment is far weaker than would be required if the world's largest economy were to contribute its proportionate part to an ambitious global effort.

The commitments from the US and the big developing economies are not in forms that would trigger commitments from the most ambitious ends of the ranges specified by the European Union, Australia and other developed countries. And yet it is the most ambitious ends of the ranges that would be Europe's and Australia's proportionate commitment to an ambitious global mitigation effort.

The non-binding character of the commitments from the US and the major developing countries does not provide a firm basis for environmentally and economically efficient trade in emissions entitlements, which can substantially reduce the costs of mitigation - and therefore influence what is eventually judged to be attainable in the way of ambitious mitigation.

The Obama Accord leaves lots of questions. What are the prospects for turning domestic commitments into binding international commitments in the major developing countries? What are the prospects for the US Government being able to deliver into law its general commitments - let alone more ambitious but for the time being unattainable goals? Are there alternative ways of giving countries enough assurance that others will be pulling their weight, to bring forward offers from the most ambitious ends of the spectrums that countries are prepared to contemplate? Are there means of achieving gains from international trade in entitlements without binding commitments to targets?

The international context of co-operation on climate change mitigation has been changed by the Obama Accord. It will take some time to work through the implications. The implications are not all bad for mitigation. Some are very good.

Let us react carefully and in a measured way to the fiasco at Copenhagen, so we make the best use of the opportunities in the new context.

Ross Garnaut is the vice chancellor's fellow and professorial research fellow in economics at the University of Melbourne.


(9) China shows West can't dictate to it. Its great political leap forward

The time for waiting is over: China has taken its great political leap forward

Date: December 22 2009

Jonathan Pearlman NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT

http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-time-for-waiting-is-over-china-has-taken-its-great-political-leap-forward-20091221-la21.html

DENG XIAOPING set forth a so-called 24-Character Plan for securing China's place in the world. "Hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership," the then Chinese leader espoused early last decade.

But this year will be remembered, say analysts, as the year China abandoned its diplomatic quietism and Beijing displayed a clout on the international stage to match its global economic weight; the year Deng's maxims were renounced.

The lesson for Australia and the United States, as China's audacious diplomatic manoeuvring at Copenhagen demonstrated, is that they will increasingly have to accept a world in which China is willing - and able - to assert interests at odds with those of the West.

"Until now it has been possible to say that China's economy has been growing but its political power has been lagging behind," says Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University and a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute.

"Not any more - 2009 has been the year in which China's growing political power has become an inescapable fact of international politics … The idea that we can dictate to China its position on issues is an anachronistic fancy. Copenhagen has been a demonstration of that."

A dramatic show of China's willingness to exercise global leadership occurred during the financial crisis, says Professor White, when its role was largely welcomed and encouraged by the West.

But Copenhagen has demonstrated - to Western eyes - a less agreeable side to Chinese assertiveness.

Across the developed world, China's brazen stonewalling of efforts to reach a legally binding treaty on climate change was greeted by a stunned, angry and almost visceral response.

Australian officials, led by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, were understood to be irate.

The US President, Barack Obama, was reportedly stood up by Wen Jiabao and barged in on a meeting that the Chinese Premier was holding with other leaders.

The British climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, showed even less restraint, accusing China of "hijacking" the summit.

"The last two weeks at times have presented a farcical picture to the public," he wrote in The Guardian. "This was a chaotic process dogged by procedural games … We cannot again allow negotiations on real points of substance to be hijacked in this way."

Malcolm Cook, the Lowy Institute's program director for East Asia, says that for the first time the world is experiencing the emergence of global powers - China and India - that are also developing nations.

The results, especially for middle-power states such as Australia, can be unpredictable and frustrating.

In the past, large powers were relatively rich, like-minded states, says Cook. "That is not the case any more … This was clearly a case of the big boys getting into a room together to cut a deal. That is a big change for Australia. The world is moving towards less of a role for middle powers, even though the results have major implications for us."

The economies of Australia - whose largest trading partner is China - and the US, which on some estimates owes more than $US1 trillion ($1.12 trillion) to China in public debt, are highly dependent on the continuation of Chinese growth.

But Western leaders have sometimes been reluctant to accept - at least publicly - the political consequences.

"The way China became central to the management of the financial crisis showed the sheer political weight it now has internationally," says White.

"The response to the global financial crisis was seen as the positive side, but now Copenhagen is being seen as the negative side."

White says Rudd, as a strategist and Mandarin-speaking former diplomat, understands that China "won't necessarily play by our rules", but that as a politician he has been unwilling to publicly acknowledge that Australia will for the first time in its history no longer be allied to the most powerful player in the region.

"This should be Rudd's moment," White says. "Australia needs leadership in explaining the brute fact of China's power.

"I don't think Rudd has been doing a very good job of this. He worries about being too close to China. He has been unable to explain what living with a powerful China will be like … Just because China is more willing to use its power does not mean it is threatening.

"China is deeply committed to order. China values order very highly- in some ways as highly as the US."

(10) Barack Obama’s climate deal unravels at last moment

Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor  

December 20, 2009

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6962879.ece

The United Nations climate change conference ended in recrimination yesterday without reaching a clear deal on emissions targets.

After a stormy session in Copenhagen, in which a vociferous anti-American minority brought the talks close to collapse, most countries agreed simply to "take note" of a watered-down agreement brokered by President Barack Obama and supported by Britain.

This accord — which had been drawn up in discussions with China and 30 or so other countries on Friday — sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum of 2C above pre-industrial times.

Above this temperature, scientists say, the world would start to experience dangerous changes, including floods, droughts and rising seas.

Critics pointed out, however, that the agreement failed to say how this limit on rising temperatures would be achieved. It pushed into the future decisions on core problems such as emissions cuts, and did not specify where a proposed $100 billion (£62 billion) in annual aid for developing nations would come from.

Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN climate change secretariat, called it "basically a letter of intent ... the ingredients of an architecture that can respond to the long-term challenge of climate change".

Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International, dismissed it as "a triumph of spin over substance. It recognises the need to keep warming below 2C but does not commit to do so. It kicks back the big decisions on emissions cuts and fudges the issue of climate cash".

The deal was denounced when put early yesterday to a plenary session of the conference after Obama and other heads of state had flown home.

Delegates from Sudan, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia — who form an anti-American front — led the attack.

A Sudanese delegate, Lumumba Di-Aping, caused uproar when he compared the plan with the Holocaust. It was, he said, "a solution based on the same very values, in our opinion, that piled 6m people into furnaces in Europe".

"The reference to the Holocaust is ... absolutely despicable," said Anders Turesson, Sweden’s chief negotiator.

(11) Copenhagen climate summit ends in bitter disagreements
By Patrick Martin

19 December 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/cope-d19.shtml

The United Nations-sponsored global climate summit in Copenhagen staggered toward a finish Friday night, with representatives of the major world powers hoping to salvage a brief statement of principles, without a single binding commitment, before bringing the two-week conference to an end.

US President Barack Obama told a midnight press conference that a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough" had been reached in last-minute talks between the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa, but he announced he was leaving before final agreement on a text, citing a winter storm bearing down on Washington, DC.

Obama admitted that there was a "fundamental deadlock in perspectives" between the major industrialized countries such as the US, Japan and Western Europe, and the poorer countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. But he claimed that the conference "will help us begin to meet our responsibilities to leave our children and grandchildren a cleaner planet."

The agreement between the US, China, Brazil, India and South Africa is limited to lip service to the goal of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. It reportedly drops any reference to a 2010 deadline for a legally binding climate accord, which had been the centerpiece of earlier drafts, in favor of a pledge to continue discussions when the conference reconvenes in Mexico City next year, and to make progress by 2016.

While a draft communiqué reportedly proposes several numerical goals, such as an 80 percent reduction in emissions by 2050, compared to a baseline of 1990, these are merely aspirational, with no actual targets for specific countries or groups of countries, and no concrete mechanisms for either verification or enforcement. The target of limiting the rise in world temperatures to 2 degrees Centigrade has been widely condemned by environmental activists and scientists, because it means the effective desertification of much of Africa. Even this "limit" is expressed only as a wish, an acknowledgement of the scientific consensus, and not translated into specific policies to achieve that goal.

While claiming progress, Obama emphasized, in a bow to his right-wing critics at home, that the United States "will not be legally bound by anything that took place here today." And he admitted that whatever resolution was ultimately adopted by the conference delegates would not be a sufficient response to the crisis of global warming.

Extraordinarily, not a single European country or the European Union itself was represented in the private talks, although Denmark, the host country, is an EU member, and EU officials played a prominent role in the public functions of the conference. Given the enormous role of the EU countries in world economic activity, and the emission of greenhouse gases, their exclusion demonstrates that the agreement Obama hailed is virtually meaningless.

The Copenhagen conference had already begun to break up before the closed-door five-party meeting concluded. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev had already left to return home, and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama was on his way to the airport.

The hectic meetings and maneuvers of the conference’s final day demonstrated two incontrovertible facts of 21st century world politics: the intensifying struggle among all the world’s capitalist states, whose conflicting economic interests make any unified response to the threat of global warming impossible; and the declining power of American imperialism in particular, which was unable to impose its will at Copenhagen.

It was not for lack of trying. After Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dangled a $100 billion bribe in front of the poor countries, seeking to woo them away from their alliance with China, India, Brazil and other rapidly developing powers, Obama followed up on Friday morning with a speech that showed the "bad cop" side of American bullying.

He spoke for barely ten minutes, in a hectoring tone and evincing obvious frustration with China, India and many of the 130 poor countries united in the so-called G-77, who were insisting that the industrialized countries take full responsibility for the pollution crisis by agreeing to binding emissions cuts at home and providing financial aid for the conversion of Third World industries to more energy-efficient technology.

One press account described him as adopting "the tone of an impatient professor whose students had blown a term paper deadline." The British newspaper Guardian wrote: "A visibly angry Obama told world leaders that it was past time for them to come to an agreement… But Obama did not offer any new pledges of action—either in increased emissions cuts or clarity on America’s contributions to a climate fund for poor countries."

Obama’s speech angered many of the delegates, who gave it a decidedly cool reception.

Both before and after Obama’s speech, the conference featured an exchange of snubs and hostile comments between the US and China. Soon after he arrived aboard Air Force One, according to the New York Times, "Obama went into an unscheduled meeting with a high-level group of leaders representing some 20 countries and organizations. Wen Jiabao, the prime minister of China, elected not to attend that meeting, instead sending the vice foreign minister, He Yafei, a snub that left both American and European officials seething."

Chinese officials were outraged in turn over the tone and content of Obama’s speech. Telling the conference that the time had come to "act" and not just "talk," he essentially laid down the US position, including the controversial demand that China and other countries agree to the monitoring of their carbon reduction commitments, and demanded that the conference adopt it.

He ridiculed the opposition of China—although he did not name the country—to any form of international verification of its compliance with emission-reduction goals. China regards such US proposals as tantamount to demanding a reduction in the country’s rate of economic growth, which Beijing regards as a threat to domestic stability.

When Wen Jiabao took the podium to deliver a speech on behalf of the Chinese delegation, he denounced the industrialized countries for failing to live up to the promises made at the 1997 Kyoto conference, whose official protocol was drafted by the Clinton administration but never submitted to Congress for ratification. "It is important to honor the commitments already made and take real action," he said, in a speech characterized as "defiant" in press accounts.

A final incident reportedly took place Friday evening, when Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders were in a private meeting and Obama barged in, declaring that he didn’t want them negotiating in secret. The South African representative also joined these talks, which led to the agreement on a draft "accord" to be submitted to the whole conference for ratification.

Environmental groups condemned Obama’s speech. Global warming activist Bill McKibben of 350.org called it a "take it or leave it" ultimatum. Friends of the Earth issued a statement saying, "Obama has deeply disappointed not only those listening to his speech at the UN talks, he has disappointed the whole world."

A spokesman for the World Development Movement said, "He showed no awareness of the inequality and injustice of climate change. If America has really made its choice, it is a choice that condemns hundreds of millions of people to climate change disaster."

In a column in the Guardian Friday, environmentalist George Monbiot made an apt comparison in describing the mercenary approach of the representatives of the major industrialized powers. Referring to the late 19th century colonial carve-up of Africa, he wrote: "This is a scramble for the atmosphere comparable in style and intent to the scramble for Africa. At no point has the injustice at the heart of multilateralism been addressed or even acknowledged: the interests of states and the interests of the world’s people are not the same. Often they are diametrically opposed. In this case, most rich and rapidly developing states have sought through these talks to seize as great a chunk of the atmosphere for themselves as they can—to grab bigger rights to pollute than their competitors."

It is profoundly true that "the interests of states and the interests of the world’s people" are opposed. The nation-state system cannot, however, be separated from capitalism, which developed alongside and is wedded to the nation-state system.

The danger of irreparable environmental damage to the earth and its people can be combated only through a struggle to put an end to both capitalism and the nation-system, and establish a democratic and scientifically planned—that is, socialist—world economy.

(12) No chair: Obama gate-crashes China-India-Brazil-South Africa meeting

Obama raced clock, confusion, for climate deal

By CHARLES BABINGTON and JENNIFER LOVEN (AP)

NYT December 19, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/19/us/politics/AP-US-Climate-Obama.html

WASHINGTON — It was almost unthinkable. The president of the United States walked into a meeting of fellow world leaders and there wasn't a chair for him, a sure sign he was not expected, maybe not even wanted.

Barack Obama didn't pause, however. "I'm going to sit by my friend Lula," he said, moving toward Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Aides quickly procured a chair, and Obama spent the next 80 minutes helping craft new requirements for disclosing efforts to fight global warming by the five nations represented in the room. Along with India, South Africa and Brazil, the key member was China, which recently surpassed the U.S. as the world's top emitter of heat-trapping gasses.

At the table this time for China was Premier Wen Jiabao, not an underling as before. Obama was bent on striking a deal before flying home to snowbound Washington.

He would later hail the achievement as a breakthrough. But even Obama said there was much more to do, and climate authorities called Copenhagen's results a modest step in the global bid to curb heat-trapping gasses that threaten to melt glaciers and flood coastlines.

Obama's 15-hour, seat-of-the-pants dash through Copenhagen was marked by determination, confusion and semi-comedy. Constrained by partisan politics at home, and quarrels between rich and poor nations abroad, he was determined to come home with a victory, no matter how imperfect.

Experts and activists may debate its significance for years. Some, like Jeremy Symons, who watched the talks for the National Wildlife Federation, said it was "high drama and true grit on the part of the president that delivered the deal."

Others were far less kind. The Copenhagen agreements are "merely the repackaging of old and toothless promises," said Asher Miller, executive director of the Post Carbon Institute.

Even though a weary, bleary-eyed Obama had added six hours to his planned nine-hour visit, he was back in Washington by the time delegates at the 193-nation summit approved the U.S.-brokered compromises on Saturday. The agreements will give billions of dollars in climate aid to poor nations but do not require the world's major polluters to make deeper cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions.

This account of Obama's hectic day is based on dozens of interviews and statements by key players from numerous countries. ___

Obama was thrown off schedule almost from the moment he landed Friday morning in Copenhagen, where the summit's final-day talks seemed to be collapsing.

Instead of attending a scheduled meeting with Denmark's prime minister, he plunged into an emergency session of about 20 nations, big and small, wealthy and poor. Right away there was a troubling sign.

China was the only nation to send a second-tier official: vice foreign minister He Yafei instead of Premier Wen, who was in the building. The snub baffled and annoyed delegates.

For months, Obama had been pressing China to put into writing its promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Obama seemed unusually animated when he alluded indirectly to China in a short, late-morning speech to the full conference.

"I don't know how you have an international agreement where we all are not sharing information and ensuring that we are meeting our commitments," he said. "That doesn't make sense."

Things then appeared to turn for the better, as Obama and Wen met privately, as scheduled, for 55 minutes. A U.S. official said they took a step forward as they discussed emissions targets, financing and transparency.

The two leaders directed aides to work on mutual language, and Obama's team proposed specific wording meant to solidify China's promise to be more forthcoming about its anti-pollution efforts.

A short time later, however, the U.S. team was more baffled and irked than before. At a follow-up session of the morning's big meeting, the Chinese sent an even lower-ranking envoy in Wen's place.

An irritated Obama told his staff, "I don't want to mess around with this anymore, I want to just talk with Premier Wen," according to a senior administration official who spoke on background to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues. ___

By now night had fallen, and it was clear Obama would be late getting home. He kept an appointment to discuss arms control with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Meanwhile he asked aides to try to set up a final one-on-one meeting with Wen, and a separate meeting with leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa, hoping these fast-growing nations which had been loosely aligned with China on many of the key issues might influence the Chinese.

Confusion reigned. Chinese officials said Wen was at his hotel and his staff was at the airport. The same was said of top Indian officials, but nothing was clear.

South African President Jacob Zuma agreed to meet with Obama, then canceled when he heard the Indian leader was away, and Brazil would attend only if India did.

The Chinese said Wen could meet with Obama at 6:15 p.m., then changed it to 7 p.m. Obama used the time to talk strategy with the leaders of France, Germany and Great Britain.

Meanwhile, a four-nation negotiating team known as BASIC gathered. The modified acronym reflected its members: Brazil, South Africa, India and China.

Obama was unaware, however, thinking he was going to meet alone with Wen. After some confusion about who had access to the room, White House aides told the president that Wen was inside with the leaders of the three other countries, apparently working on strategy.

"Good," Obama said as he walked through the door. "Mr. Premier, are you ready to see me?" he called out. "Are you ready?" Inside he found startled leaders and no chair to sit in.

U.S. officials denied that Obama crashed the party, saying he simply showed up for his 7 p.m. meeting with Wen and found the others there.

Whatever the meeting's original purpose, Obama used it to help strike a five-nation agreement on ways to verify each other's reductions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, a good U.S. ending to their talks with the Chinese. ___

Other agreements that came from Copenhagen were a mixed bag, with some environmentalists keenly disappointed, and probably no nation entirely pleased.

Rich countries vowed to provide $30 billion in emergency climate aid to poor nations in the next three years, and set a goal of eventually channeling $100 billion a year to them by 2020.

The summit's final document said carbon emissions should be reduced enough to keep the increase in average global temperatures below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) since preindustrial times. But average temperatures already have risen 0.7 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) since then.

The nations most vulnerable to climate change, including low-lying islands, say the 2 degree C figure is already too high.

It was just after 1 a.m. EST Saturday when Air Force One landed outside Washington on the flight from Copenhagen. With a steady snow falling, Obama headed for the White House. It would be 3 1/2 more hours before the 193 nations, with a few objections, would agree to the deal brokered by the American president. A short time later the conference adjourned.

Later Saturday, Obama put the best face possible on the results.

"This breakthrough lays the foundation for international action in the years to come," he said from the White House Diplomatic Reception Room.

But he got no plaudits in the Chinese press.

The English-language China Daily newspaper called Obama's Copenhagen speech "grandstanding," and said it left non-governmental organizations at the summit disappointed.

Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein, Michael Casey and Charles Hutzler in Copenhagen; H. Josef Hebert in Washington; and Cara Ana in Beijing contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

(13) Blame China, not the US, for Copenhagen
MARK LYNAS

Sydney Morning Herald December 28, 2009

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/blame-china-not-the-us-for-copenhagen-20091227-lga3.html

If this is how China intends to use its power, then we are in trouble.

COPENHAGEN was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated US President Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful ''deal'' so Western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. I was in the room and saw it happen.

China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the West had failed the world's poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait. The failure was ''the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility'', said Christian Aid. ''Rich countries have bullied developing nations,'' fumed Friends of the Earth.

All very predictable, but the opposite of the truth. Even The Guardian's George Monbiot (The Age 23/12) made the mistake of singly blaming Obama. But I saw Obama fighting desperately to salvage a deal, and the Chinese delegate saying ''no'', over and over again.

Here's what actually went on as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between Gordon Brown and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. Probably only about 50 or 60 people were in the room. I was attached to a delegation whose head of state was also present for most of the time.

What I saw was profoundly shocking. Chinese Premier Wen Jinbao did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official to sit opposite Obama. The snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times, the world's most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his ''superiors''.

To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China's representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80 per cent cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. ''Why can't we even mention our own targets?'' demanded a furious German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Kevin Rudd was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the accord's lack of ambition.

China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year

in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2 degrees, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak ''as soon as possible''. The long-term target, of global 50 per cent cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exception of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that would have had champagne corks popping in every corner of the world.

China was in an extremely strong negotiating position. It didn't need a deal. Western leaders, in particular, and also presidents Lula of Brazil, Zuma of South Africa, Calderon of Mexico and others, were desperate for a positive outcome. Obama needed a strong deal perhaps more than anyone. The US had confirmed the offer of $100 billion to developing countries for adaptation, put serious cuts on the table for the first time (17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020), and was prepared to up its offer.

Above all, Obama needed to be able to demonstrate to the Senate that he could deliver China in any global climate regulation framework, so conservative senators could not argue that US carbon cuts would further advantage Chinese industry. With mid-term elections looming, Obama knew that this would be probably the only opportunity to go to climate change talks with a strong mandate.

This further strengthened China's hand, as did the lack of civil society political pressure on either China or India. Campaign groups never blame developing countries for failure. The Indians, in particular, have become past masters at co-opting the language of equity (''equal rights to the atmosphere'') in the service of planetary suicide - and leftish campaigners and commentators are hoist with their own petard.

With the deal gutted, the heads of state session concluded with a final battle as the Chinese delegate insisted on removing the 1.5-degree target so beloved of the small island states and low-lying nations that have most to lose from rising seas. Maldives President Mohammed Nasheed, supported by British Prime Minister Brown, fought valiantly to save this crucial number. ''How can you ask my country to go extinct?'' Nasheed demanded. The Chinese delegate feigned great offence - and the number stayed, but surrounded by language that makes it all but meaningless. The deed was done.

Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal: it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower's freedom of action.

I left Copenhagen more despondent than I have felt in a long time. After all the hope and all the hype, the mobilisation of thousands, a wave of optimism crashed against the rock of global power politics, fell back, and drained away.

GUARDIAN

Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees: Our future on a hotter planet, is a British environmentalist who attended the summit as adviser to the Maldives President.

Source: The Age