Succcess at Copenhagen

Ah well, all good things must come to an end, and the circus at Copenhagen too draws to a close with a grand declaration of success by none other than the illustrious Mr Obama.

He said "The US, China, Brasil, India and South Africa have agreed to set a mitigation target to limit warming to no more than 2 deg C and, importantly, to take action to meet this objective".

Well well well! What can anyone say to that? It just makes me fall on my knees in dazed awe at the brilliance of the achievement. Here is a group of politicians who have used scotch tape to cover the worlds wounds and made it all go away! Amazing.

Jokes apart, if you knit together the various vignettes - Australia fudging its emission figures to make them look good, the Dutch working behind the scenes to work out an alternate treaty to protect the interests of the developed world, the very crude $100 billion offer from the US with so many strings attached that it looked like the wooly mammoth, the insistence in wanting to do away with the Kyoto Protocol, all paint one simple picture. And that picture is as follows:

The world is now polarised into two - the developed part and the developing part.

The developed part is willing and able to move to a lower carbon footprint. But it does NOT want the developing world hanging around its neck.

It is also quite blase about the fact that its gross excesses in the past have created this problem. "Ok - so I raped the earth. So what? That was in the past, and you have no power over me to make me repent for it. But I promise to screw your happiness if you attempt to do what I did."

The developing part is uselessly and stupidly still shouting "Rape! Help, Please come and help us"

Grow up.

No one helps anyone else in today's dog eat dog world. People and countries just help themselves.

So to my mind this summit at Copenhagen has been a great success. Really - I mean it.

It has completely cleared the air.

The developing countries have been asking for assistance - money and technology from the developed countries in order to battle climate change, as a partial atonement for the creation of this mess.

The developed world has completely refused.

So at least that bit of the debate is settled.

Now the only reality is as that the world is still getting hotter, and each individual in each country has to do their bit to help cool it down.

The developing world needs to understand that only efficiency, innovation, reduced corruption and determination are going to see them through.

If they do not make progress in reducing their emissions, the developed world can and will impose sanctions and trade barriers on it to force it to do so.

If the developed world does not make similar progress, there is very little that can be done about it as the weak cannot force the strong. Simple law of nature.

So my advice to the developing world is to stop whimpering about the the injustice of it all and get down to work.

It is very unjust.

However, it is the only reality there is.