Saturday, December 19, 2009

Climate summit: A flop

The Copenhagen global warming summit was a flop. And I couldn't be happier about it. There was no agreement on limiting carbon emissions...just a lot of "understandings."

The Times of London has more:

President Obama forged a non-binding agreement with his counterparts in China, India, Brazil and South Africa but it was unclear whether all 192 countries would accept the compromise text.

Mr Obama said that a "fundamental deadlock in perspectives" had overshadowed the negotiations. He described the deal as "meaningful" but admitted that it would not be enough to prevent global warming. "We have much further to go," he said.

Despite two years of negotiations, the key sticking points — emissions cuts, monitoring of emissions and the legal nature of the deal — all re-emerged in the final hours.

The agreement merely repeated an aspiration to keep the global temperature increase to 2C without explaining how that would be achieved. The final text also failed to mention any deadline for turning it into a binding treaty.

Hoo-ray.

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