First off, the summary view:
"The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful 'deal' so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame."
I'm reckoning that this may turn out to be the date from which we date China's accession to superpower status, politically.
Certainly, they 'played' their game cannily:
"The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world's most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his "superiors"."
Clever piece of political theatre.
I think that this was China flexing muscle and as such gives us a glimpse of things to come.
The analyst, who has attended climate conferences for more than 15 years, concludes that China wants to weaken the climate regulation regime now "in order to avoid the risk that it might be called on to be more ambitious in a few years' time".
This does not mean China is not serious about global warming. It is strong in both the wind and solar industries. But China's growth, and growing global political and economic dominance, is based largely on cheap coal.
So there you have it folks: China is in the front line of climate change and will be taking it seriously, but ...
2 comments:
Very good and thought-provoking. However, it is also worth observing that it may well suit Obama quite well in terms of home politics to be able to come away from Copenhagen without a binding agreement, yet able to point to his own track record in fighting for the green cause because the failure of the whole enterprise can be blamed on China.
Climate-change scepticism is rampant in the US, and in a recession, binding commitments to curb the energy industry would not play well. I have no doubt that it was China's fault, and that those blaming the western nations are shortsighted. However, for a President already committed to persuading his nation to approve a deeply controversial healthcare reform that is likely to be economically painful in the midst of recession, this 'failure' may have a silver lining...
You may be right Mark. I guess it may depend on whether it looks like that once refracted through the USAmerican media. I've read a lot of stuff that is blaming him for the failures of the talks, and that 'take' depends on a prior understanding of his mission not conducive to a denialist perspective. In which case he's going to be damned for failing to tostand up for what he believes ...
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