LA Times—Climate summit ends with major questions: ‘Breakthrough’ or ‘cop-out’?

Posted by Kendall Harmon

An international climate summit officially ended here today with an agreement among the world's largest economies to take steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, no formal consensus from the 193 nations present, and major questions over what comes next in the global negotiating process.

Conference attendees merely acknowledged -- and did not vote to adopt -- the so-called Copenhagen Accord, which stemmed from an eleventh-hour deal cut Friday evening between President Obama and leaders of four fast-growing nations.

Obama had hailed the deal as an "unprecedented breakthrough" in climate talks, but it was denounced by critics as too weak to avert the harshest effects of global warming.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-WatchClimate Change, WeatherGlobalization* Economics, PoliticsEnergy, Natural Resources* International News & CommentaryEuropeDenmark

4 Comments
Posted December 19, 2009 at 2:01 pm [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Statmann wrote:

President Obama goes to Copenhagen to complete a climate deal and what do we get? A blizzard! Is that the works of a wizard or a messiah or what?  Statmann

December 19, 5:33 pm | [comment link]
2. Br_er Rabbit wrote:

Statmann, pay no attention to the temporary reversal in the thermostat and weather. Actually, we’re in the midst of Global Warming. Don’t you feel the warmth?

December 19, 7:15 pm | [comment link]
3. dwstroudmd wrote:

Cop-out.  The big guys (read 1st world) want to restrain the little guys (read 2nd and particularly 3rd world) since they have the power.  Beyond that reality, it’s all baloney.  Sort of like the alleged “science” it is supposedly “based upon”.  Even the Canadians report the ice masses in the Arctic are stable: http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/content_contenu/CIS_2009_Minimum_Sea_Ice_Extent_eng.PDF

December 19, 9:53 pm | [comment link]
4. Jim K wrote:

IMHO, this climate meeting and the East Anglian University revelations have brought much needed attention on both the politically compromised “science” behind anthropogenic global warming as well as the anti-capitalist/anti-American roots of much of the environmental movement.  When that vile dictator, Chavez, gets standing ovations for announcing the ghost of capitalism (he actually means the ghost of freedom but is too mendacious to say so), it is impossible not to see the real intent of this movement.  I noted also that our President (such as he is) got only muted applause, perhaps because he only permitted a mere $200B to be extorted from the US taxpayers. Combine those scenes inside the meeting with the scrums on the outside—not covered in any detail by the MSM—as well as the hypocrisy revealed by the hundreds of private jets and thousands of limousines and the Providential blizzard in Copenhagen—also largely ignored by the MSM—and the whole silly picture comes clear.  I would suggest that, in contrast to the intent of the UN and other organizers, this conference in fact effectively demolished both the factual and political basis for action of any kind.  It especially exploded the cap and tax efforts here in our own Congress.

December 20, 10:06 am | [comment link]
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