Running Hot & Cold
Kyoto was a farce, mostly because the U.S. bailing out was a great excuse for others to do the same or to do nothing. So my expectations from Copenhagen were not high, even though we have a President who recognizes the science and is willing to make an effort. Because the closer we get to actually implementing a way for every nation to participate it will indeed be the smaller, less industrialised countries that get left behind unless Europe and the U.S. are going to need to share the burden fairly and their innovations in carbon-reduction quite freely, which is unlikely to happen easily if at all. Otherwise, Third World industrialisation comes to a standstill to the point where they can’t compete and shut down entirely, leading to the worst kinds of anarchy, dispossession, and an increase in economic refugees, right alongside the waves of environmental refugees set to increase as global warming progresses, a juggernaut of inertia that carbon reduction will only slow over decades. So the haves keep what they’ve got and increase it at the expense of the have-nots, who continue to lose and lose. And then it’s still just an excuse to do nothing until we absolutely have to so it all takes that much longer and has an even more extensive effect on the less fortunate. It’s all very Aesop’s Fables.