The United Nations Climate Change negotiations in Copenhagen are failing. The outcome is likely to be a terrible fudge. The headline emissions cuts agreed will not be the 40% by 2020 that green NGOs are calling for. Rich countries will allow themselves to carry on business as usual by permitting carbon offsetting, which offloads the problem we created on to poorer nations; by backing carbon capture and storage, which is unproven; and by and investing their hopes in carbon trading, which, thus far, has achieved nothing except give greedy, unscrupulous bankers and traders another way to steal our money. Idiot ruses like counting mega monocrop plantations as rain forest are likely to be allowed. And the amount of money agreed by developed nations to fund the greening of the developing world will not compensate them for the damage we have done and will do to their countries.
It is a human disaster recounted by George Monbiot more eloquently than I ever could in his latest post "This is about us".
The only thing I can suggest at this stage is that everyone signs the "Save Copenhagen" petition organised by Avaaz, the independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making.
It is not the human race's finest hour.
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