And so another chapter in the strange, fantastic history of global warming has come to an end. As over a hundred heads of state return home from a freezing Copenhagen, the process of trying to work out exactly what, if anything, has been agreed begins. But spokesmen from the UN, the EU, the UK and the US are already busy trying to salvage something – anything – from the wreckage. They must try to encourage the belief that a document called the Copenhagen Accord was a creditable outcome. There seems little chance that domestic audiences will buy into this myth.

Over 130 of the participating nations were only prepared to ‘note’ the existence of such a piece of paper. Even the vast army of environmental ‘observers’ who were present at the conference are not pretending that there are any words other than ‘disaster’ and ‘failure’ that accurately sum up what has happened. So far as I am aware, there is a vast difference in diplomatic terms between ‘noting’ an accord and signing up to one.

For the weary politicians and their teams of negotiators and advisers, the next task will be to try and explain this fiasco to their own people. In the past, and particularly after the Bali conference two years ago, a vague and inconclusive agreement has been a great advantage in this process. Such a document is a blank canvas on which spin-doctors can exercise their creative skills. This time things are different, and the shortcomings are clear for all to see.

After two weeks of negotiations between over 190 countries it is difficult to detect any real progress towards a low carbon world.  There is no more than a vague aspiration to try to  limit global warming to 2^oC. No medium or long-term emissions targets have been set. The all-important question of how the war on global warming will be financed has yet to be   answered or even seriously addressed.

The ‘road map’ hammered out at Bali has lead only into a cul-de-sac. Worse, that fudged agreement, forged to the accompaniment of hysterical sobs from the UN’s Yvo  de Boer, has been revealed for the fudge that it was; a diplomatic assemblage  built on foundations so shaky that now the whole edifice has collapsed. The idea that in the course of the coming year Humpty Dumpty can be put together again and a legally binding global treaty brought into being is fanciful.

This piffling accord, signed by only a handful of countries and scorned with derision by the rest, lays bare the extent of the fiasco for all to see.

Heads of state and climate change ministers will now have to try and justify the doom-laden rhetoric that most of them have pitilessly inflicted on their fellow countrymen during the run-up to the summit. If the diet of climate porn, apocalyptic claims, and outright propaganda promoting the IPCC’s dogmatic prognostications that we have suffered in the UK is anything to go by then this is likely to be an all but impossible task. Only a few weeks ago our prime minister was warning that Copenhagen was the last chance to save the planet and that if it did not succeed then disaster would surely follow, and very soon. As a general election approaches, how will he explain that measures to prevent global catastrophe that were desperately urgent just a month ago can now wait for another year or two? Continue reading »