Le texte rêvé des pays émergents said Le Monde. The emergent countries in question, led by China, would like:
- to emit carbon in any quantity indefinitely (to eliminate poverty)
- to have developed nations (who have caused the problem) meet all the costs of climate-change damage – and to bypass the World Bank
- to export freely without the importing nation imposing any carbon-related duties
- not to submit to any regime of international inspection
A text for negotiation, says Le Monde. Looks more like a gauntlet to me. Whatever decisions are reached in Copenhagen, the conference has helped to clarify the new political polarisation of the planet. We can expect this document to bring cheers from the international Left, who in every aspect of life would like the West to pay and to go on paying.
Hovering over it all, the 2 per cent target, which the BASIC nations say, rather oddly, that they accept. The developing situation resembles the nuclear arms race, another political conflict with scientific constraints on its resolution. But whereas most decision-makers then understood (in the end) that destruction was mutually assured, there seems little likelihood that countries like Sudan will allow their dreams to be limited by statistics.
Meanwhile the Chinese are pouring money into Africa without all those fussy bits about the environment that Western countries insist upon.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:How the chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.