With no major breakthrough coming out of the APEC summit, the leaders who were in attendance, including US President Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Danish PM Rasmussen (Denmark's Pacific coast is supposed to be beautiful this time of year), have declared a legally-binding deal on climate change in Copenhagen impossible. Negotiators will instead focus on forging a 'politically-binding' agreement as step one in a two-step process (with step two being the legal agreement.)
I plan on moving all my money into boat stocks tomorrow morning.
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I think Philip Stephens was right in arguing that the best case scenario for Copenhagen is a "successful failure:" or a political commitment to reach a legal commitment sometime next year.
Consider the can officially kicked down the road.
I worry that might turn out to be a very long road. With mid-term elections in the US in 2010, and Obama's political capital depleted following his health care legislation, I simply see no way a legally-binding agreement can make its way through congress. In an election year, with unemployment stubbornly high, the opposition Republicans can easily frame climate change legislation as job-killing, and no moderate Democrat will come within ten feet of that image.
I agree with you that a political agreement is substantive and better than the alternative (absolute failure), but getting to the second step is looking pretty unlikely next year.
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