Rather than produce a solution to the world’s rapid slide to climatic disaster, the Copenhagen conference crafted a new high table of the powerful lead by the United States and closely followed by China, India, Brazil and South Africa (the so-called BASIC states). On the other hand, it left the European Community without mooring, and the climate change meet did little to contain the anger and despair of Africa and the small island states that are bearing the brunt of a global temperature rise nearing 3.9 C above pre-industrial levels (according to an MIT estimate).
 
Who is to blame? America mostly, then China, followed by the EC and Denmark (that played filthy as the host nation), and in the rear India, although the Manmohan Singh government may preen at getting a place at the high table. President Barack Obama was a gruesome let down, not from the position of his nearly year-long presidential record, which has been uniformly poor, but as election candidate, when he stood for Change, and won the backing of the sterling environment Nobel laureate and former US vice-president, Al Gore.

There was worldwide condemnation when the previous George W.Bush administration walked out of the Kyoto Treaty that bound the US and other industrial nations to emission controls. Obama was expected to return to it in affirmation of the principle of the US leading by example, and had he been firm, the EC would have agreed. This would have satisfied China and Africa and India whose PM had made revival of Kyoto a benchmark of Copenhagen’s success and workability. Then binding emission cuts by China and the other BASIC states, funds and technology transfers to ease mitigation effects, and international verification measures, would have naturally and less controversially followed. But Obama has become such a prisoner of his presidency (falling popularity and ratings, looming defeat in Afghanistan, an unrevived economy, an embattled healthcare bill, and so on) that he could not strike out of its cares, and give the world a new bold carbon control roadmap.  

China, which is seeking Middle Kingdom imperium, and won’t stand for any emission-controlled diminishment of growth (aided by mercantilism and currency manipulation), has already got the upper hand of the Obama administration in bilateral relations, and was determined not to succumb to US pressure on verification of mitigation measures, calling it an intrusion of its sovereignty. If Obama had boldly returned the US to Kyoto, China would have been under enormous pressure to give in on verification, not like now, where its commitment is unenforceable. For all the protocol smiles post-Copenhagen, the reality is dirty and grim. Far less than Copenhagen being a stepping stone to meaningful emission control by the time of the next meet in Mexico City a year later, the situation, to this writer’s mind, will worsen. China will become a more flagrant emitter. US industry, especially in the Mid West, almost in consequence, and because Obama has little to no handle on the issue, will grow viciously more competitive. And the choices in Mexico City will turn starker still. It is either to turn back from this madness, or write the obituary of the world.   

How much is India to blame? Essentially, it had four interests to meet and safeguard. No compromise on its own growth, which has come about rather miraculously more than fifty years after Independence. No compromise on its alliance with other developing and poor nations, especially its terribly distressed island neighbour, Maldives, that is stealthily sinking into the Indian Ocean. A marriage of convenience with China to withstand pressure of the rich states lead by the US. And last, a show of proximity to the US to counterbalance China, its strategic rival and the principal hegemon in Asia. On two out of four counts, it could have done worse. But certainly it has not stuck by the poor states, particularly those in Africa, as much as it should and could have. Nor was the PM close to realizing his Copenhagen benchmark of a minimum and absolute return to Kyoto. China, on the other hand, appeared to have worked its cards better, keeping a foot inside the African camp (it is plundering African resources), and surreptitiously stoking its opposition in Copenhagen, while playing hardball at the high table with the United States.

All in all, Copenhagen was less about climate control than about high politics. And even though that politics had its winners and losers, the ultimate and mortal victim will be Earth, you and me, unless better sense soon prevails, starting with the United States. Shame’nhagen would describe what’s gone on the past two weeks in the guise of carbon control talks.