It took two weeks of talks in Copenhagen, after two years of preliminary talks and in the end, to much fanfare we got….
A big, fat nothing.
Here is how The New York Times describes the so-called Copenhagen Accord:
The plan does not firmly commit the industrialized nations or the developing nations to firm targets for midterm or long-term greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The accord is nonetheless significant in that it codifies the commitments of individual nations to act on their own to tackle global warming.
The accord provides a system for monitoring and reporting progress toward those national pollution-reduction goals, a compromise on an issue over which China bargained hard. It calls for hundreds of billions of dollars to flow from wealthy nations to those countries most vulnerable to a changing climate. And it sets a goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2050, implying deep cuts in climate-altering emissions over the next four decades.
But it was an equivocal agreement that was, to many, a disappointing conclusion to a two-year process that had the goal of producing a comprehensive and enforceable action plan for addressing dangerous changes to the global climate. The messy compromise mirrored the chaotic nature of the conference, which virtually all participants said had been badly organized and run.
The accord sets no goal for concluding a binding international treaty, which leaves the implementation of its provisions uncertain. It is likely to undergo many months, perhaps years, of additional negotiations before it emerges in any internationally enforceable form.
Goal-setting is nice, but we have moved well beyond the time when we can just set some goals and hope for the best. We still use too much oil, still burn too much carbon and we have done nothing to protect the poor, low-lying nations who will bear the brunt of the bad stuff — and there remain few if any incentives to keep developing nations from doing what we did to build our economies.
Why should China and India make serious efforts to address the issue, when we have shown an unwillingness to do the same?
The cautious optimism proffered by some environmental groups is really nothing more than face-saving given that, in reality, we are in no better of a position on climate change than we were before these talks began.
Hank Kalet 
Lucky for us that \”climate change\”, \”global warming\”, and \”global kooling\” are all just \”barbara streisand\” to get socialism ramped up. More \”global gooferment\”, wealth transfer, and guilt the rich to transfer wealth from the have's to the gooferments of the have not's. Note that you can pour money on the \”poor\” until the cows come home and ALL of it will go into some petty dictators' or bureaucrats' pockets. But lucky for us, humans are like the flies on the cows butt. We can no more impact climate with our minuscule actions then we can make poverty go away.Argh!
Copenhagen has failed. The UN has failed to address the most important crisis in human history. This is now the time for sanctions, boycotts and embargoes. A new alliance is needed. An alliance of hope and peace and justice must be built to oppose the axis of pollution, extinction and self destruction.http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/12/beyond-copenhagen.html
There was no scientific consensus for global cooling back in the 1970s. It was just 1 or 2 scientists and an article in Time that suggested global cooling.Today, there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that there is global warming and that it is caused by human activity. Most of the countries on earth are spewing all kinds of crud and pollution into the air 24/7, all month, all year for years and it's been going on for more than a century. Even one volcanic eruption can have an effect on the weather for months.When the overwhelming majority of scientists and scientific groups say that there is human caused global warming, then I will have to accede to their studies.Poverty is not inevitable. The Scandinavian countries have virtually wiped out poverty in their respective countries. More than a hundred years ago, there was poverty in these countries. I am not surprised that a right winger would believe that poverty is eternal and ever present, so let's not try to do anything about it. It's the Scrooge approach, to wit: Hey, there will always be the poor, so let's just throw them a few crumbs in the way of charity but not alter the social injustice with good social programs. Or right wingers swift boat all the poor as being lazy drug addled bums when in reality, most of the poor are hard working people struggling to get by. Right wingers hate the poor, the elderly and the disabled, especially in this country. They hate the programs that help these unfortunate people because they (the right wingers) think they are so special that they will never need these programs. What happens to libertarian when he becomes disabled and can no longer work? Has he saved up enough money and assets to get by for the rest of his life? Unless he is a billionaire, he will need those social programs which he so mocks.