The goal of giving every country, big and small, equal say in crucial issues and the need for unanimous consent led to countries such as Sudan and Tuvalu playing an outsize role in global negotiations. British climate secretary Ed Miliband called<\/a> the two-week process a \u0093farce,\u0094 and called for a reform of the UN process, saying \u0093We cannot again allow negotiations on real points of substance to be hijacked in this way.\u0094<\/p>\n Indeed, it\u0092s not clear whether the summit\u0092s conclusion underscores the need to ditch the existing UN framework or whether that framework has already been scuttled. <\/p>\n Thanks to the opposition of a handful of countries\u0097luminaries of international cooperation such as Bolivia, Venezuela, Sudan, and Cuba\u0097the conference ended not with a formal agreement but simply by \u0093taking note\u0094 of the 3-page climate accord. Which, in diplomatic language, means pretty much what it means when you tell your mother-in-law you\u0092ll \u0093take note\u0094 of her suggestions. <\/p>\n So what\u0092s that leave? Perhaps a return to climate talks between a handful of major economies<\/a> which between them account for the vast majority of greenhouse-gas emissions. As Michael Levi puts it<\/a>:<\/p>\n This conference has also starkly demonstrated the limits of the UNFCCC process. Future climate arrangements are far more likely to be hammered out in small groups like the one that gathered Friday night to salvage a deal than in plenaries of nearly two-hundred countries…this is likely to be the last time that the world places such high hopes on the global climate conference.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Yes, there\u0092s a name for that\u0097the Major Economies Meeting<\/a> or Forum. That\u0092s something that then-president George W. Bush started, and which President Obama kickstarted. It puts the emphasis on reaching emissions agreements between countries\u0097with the U.S. and China at the forefront\u0097whose climate policies actually will make or break global attempts to rein in emissions, and whose economies produce clean-tech gear and generate the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to help the rest of the world adapt.<\/p>\n Of course, as Mr. Levi points out, President Bush\u0092s idea alone wouldn\u0092t bear fruit: Witness the rest of the world\u0092s intransigence on taking steps without some sort of U.S. commitment in writing. <\/p>\n That is, the breakdown of the UN process in Copenhagen may drive climate talks in a more productive direction\u0097but even that won\u0092t go far unless the U.S. Senate takes up climate legislation in earnest next year.<\/p>\n President Barack Obama put in 13-hours of negotiations and appears to have saved the Copenhagen climate talks from utter collapse with his last-minute push. But is George W. Bush the real victor? One of the early and overwhelming conclusions in the wake of the \u0093Copenhagen Accord\u0094 is that the United Nations process for reaching agreement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":761,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/761"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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