A contemptous little note
So, it seems that, in spite of all the effort taken to keep unpleasant realities and inconvenient truths out, the Copenhagen congress has comprehensively failed. And indeed, it was bound to fail. I am not even speaking of the absurdity of trying to achieve "consensus" between 192 countries, many governed by bandits. I am not even talking - except peripherally - of the disastrously-timed explosion of the Climategate scandal, for that was no cause of failure - not even peripherally. Although rudely mentioned out of turn by Russians and Saudis, it was ignored by everyone else and laboriously silenced by the massed ranks of gathered and obedient journalists, who produeced a performance worthy of Italy in the nineteen-thirties.
No, what doomed the congress was that one of the leading participants took it seriously. When a whole structure is built on unreality and falsehood, then the least injection of reality and earnest desire to succeed condemns it to disaster. Communism died in Russia when a genuine and idealistic believer in Communism, Gorbachev, tried to make it work. Likewise, the death knell of the Copenhagen jamboree rang when President Obama showed that he took its goals seriously and demanded, in public and aloud, that a certain unnamed country should open itself up to international inspection to verify that goals were being met. The Chinese, for some inconceivable reason, decided that this was meant for them, and took it as a slur on their honour. As if the planet could not trust their unverified word! End of the game; and, should the Chinese leadership remain annoyed with the President, possible beginning of an undesirable row between the world's chief debtor and its chief creditor.
No, what doomed the congress was that one of the leading participants took it seriously. When a whole structure is built on unreality and falsehood, then the least injection of reality and earnest desire to succeed condemns it to disaster. Communism died in Russia when a genuine and idealistic believer in Communism, Gorbachev, tried to make it work. Likewise, the death knell of the Copenhagen jamboree rang when President Obama showed that he took its goals seriously and demanded, in public and aloud, that a certain unnamed country should open itself up to international inspection to verify that goals were being met. The Chinese, for some inconceivable reason, decided that this was meant for them, and took it as a slur on their honour. As if the planet could not trust their unverified word! End of the game; and, should the Chinese leadership remain annoyed with the President, possible beginning of an undesirable row between the world's chief debtor and its chief creditor.