We have to believe the prize is worth the pain. In many established democracies it seems the pain has been forgotten and the prize is undervalued. And I would query your “reasonably benign”, but I realise I’m dragging you off-piste here.

Returning to your initial post, my instinct is to favour a comprehensive multi-national agreement. I happen to believe that the sovereignty of countries is devalued when their governments exercise power without the freely given consent of their people.

I’d welcome a peaceful transition of reasonably benign autocracy to democracy in China. History suggests that such a transition is not guaranteed.

With great power comes great responsibility. China is projecting some of its great power - primarily economic - in a growing number of developing countries (mainly because it is “not the West”), but constantly seeks to evade any accompanying responsibility - and may not even be aware of these responsibilities. This strengthened its negotiating position in Copenhagen.

And I would be surprised if you thought that China would be worse off if the Chinese people’s consent to be governed were given in the accepted democratic manner.

I think you’re going overboard there. China will not be truly scare until the Communist Party loses grip.

I agree that the EU is totally - and almost irredeemably - naive in its dealings with China on energy and climate change issues. I’ve seen this at first hand. And the US President is weakened by a weakened economy, a foreign war that damages, rather than advances, US interests and Houses of Congress that are behaving more like a polarised parliament than the legislature that the Founding Fathers intended. It is still, however, unwise to allow a rising superpower, that enjoys a measure of democratic legitimacy only by default, to behave in this matter with relative impunity as it may encourage more damaging behaviour in other areas.

The perils of appeasement should not be associated solely with the failure of political will that accompanied, and assisted, the rise of Hitler.

Any target is a value judgement. The two degrees target is, therefore, a political statement rather than a scientific recommendation.

The Chinese got out of Copenhagen what they wanted. The Europeans did not get out of Copenhagen what they wanted.

So who did something wrong again? Hat off to the China delegation. They again talked us into giving them money for nothing.

The Chinese Communist Party has a Faustian pact with the Chinese people: “You can stay in power while you deliver continuing (and more widely dispersed) prosperity; fail and you’re history.” The Party cannot deliver without increasing coal consumption. Over time the growing Chinese middle class will demand the climate change policies that many of their developed economy counterparts are now swinging behind.

If Lynas ’s account is accurate, and I believe it is, Milliband’s frustration was understandable.
The next election is far from being a done deal, one way or the other
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/20/polls-conservatives

Regarding the Chinese; Wen Jinbao’s discourtsey towards the President of the US is indicative of how the Chinese intend to play ball, so I wouldn’t be too surprised at how they react to any situation in the near future.
The main thing is THERE IS NO DEAL.

What are your own views on the desireability of a national debate on the nuclear issue?

Milliband’s swipe at China was silly. They will not have forgotten if and when he returns to power.

Sorry to have to disagree with the general consensus, but Copenhagen was a disaster.
This was caused by the Chinese and here is an accurate account of what happened and how they did it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/22/copenhagen-climate-change-mark-lynas

I now believe, that technology alone will save the planet.
Amongst other things, a replacement must be found for the internal combustion engine and in the near term we must now look more seriously at nuclear power (carbon free) as a bridging technology.

We cannot afford to waste any more time on trying to secure
‘International Agreements.’
First George Bush wrecks Kyoto and now the Chinese have wrecked Copenhagen.
These deals which rely on a wide diversity of peoples with an even wider diversity of hidden agendas are always destined to end in failure.
Lets accept that fact now and move ahead.

The mountain can still be climbed, but a new path must be discovered.
CO2 abatement is the key and nuclear will help us buy time, but we need to face facts and get on with it.

While the Greens are in government they should, as a matter of urgency, organise a NATIONAL DEBATE and lets see if there is any will for this solution. Because it is a solution and some of you ageing hippies out there who are trenchantly opposed have some stark choices facing you with the collapse of Copenhagen.

Patrick Moore faced reality and so must we all …
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Greenpeace_founder_supports_nuclear_energy

On Coase: Sure. If China adopts a cap-and-trade system with very lenient targets / a very low carbon price, and this cap-and-trade system is linked to the EU ETS, then both China and the EU are better off.

This is Dave Bradford’s No Cap But Trade proposal. (Bradford was a world-leading authority on the provision of public goods.) Katrin Rehdanz and I quantify this: http://ideas.repec.org/p/sgc/wpaper/68.html (paper has since appeared in Climate Policy). China and India can cut emissions by 10% (from baseline) at no net cost.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/6858095/Heavy-snow-blankets-the-north-eastern-states-of-the-US.html?image=1

http://climateprogress.org/

Here is also an overview of the leading climate change sceptics.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/04/climate-sceptics-public-opinion

Richard, your GWPF is mentioned favourably, though it should release its list of donors to avoid being suspect as denialism in sheeps’ clothing, especially as it still boasts a chart of cherry-picked data on its website. Cherry-picking (using only data that supports your case) is an old denialist scam (learned from the Creationists, the tobacco lobbyists & Holocaust denialists).

The EU, US, and China now each have domestic emission targets in the medium term. It’s time to play hardball. China has a large export potential for emission permits. The EU and the US should simply refuse to buy Chinese permits unless they are backed up by Chinese law and internationally verifiable monitoring.

The EU has a functioning permit market. Markets grow, because it is in everyone’s interest to trade. But just as we put minimum standards on goods and services on the market, we should put minimum standards on emission permits. Unilaterally. Anyone who is willing to abide by the rules is welcome to the market.

The New York Times had an interesting piece on this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/world/europe/21scene.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

A google news on “Ireland carbon tax” reveals that our newest tax was not effectively used in international diplomacy, if at all.

Climate policy was defined during an era of never-ending economic growth. The costs of a ‘zero carbon economy’ or massive subsidisation of renewable energy systems or shifting industry and jobs to the developing countires via Kyoto’s CDM policy, just to pick out a few obvious examples, didn’t matter all that much when everyone in the developed world was getting richer anyway, there was near to full employment and enivronmentalists were universally acknowledged as singularly pure of heart. To paraphrase Colm McCarthy (in an entirely different context), the developed world hasn’t run out of compassion, it has run out of money. Arguably, the entire UN framework on climate change belongs to an era that is now past and what happened at Copenhagen is, at least in part, a reflection of that.

That the EU’s climate strategy now lies in tatters hasn’t received much attention in the media, but should become subject to more rigorous analysis in the months ahead.

In the short term , media coverage of climate change issues and consequences may become more polarised than it is already. But there should also be an opening for ‘the middle ground’(including those recently referred to by Ed Milliband as ‘saboteurs’) who regard the current structural approach to climate change as flawed. More space too for critiques of the costs of policy changes and where funding should be directed.

As to how the results of Copenhagen should influence the contents of the proposed Climate Change Bill, promised for early next year, also bears thinking about.

Thanks! I needed that! I see a SC judgement where Obama can now strip anyone he wishes of all civil rights in the USA! Gives the measure of the man, I think?

http://www.sbpost.ie/commentandanalysis/climate-of-chaos-reigns-supreme-in-copenhagen-46344.html

It is another perspective on the whole affair at least. It will be difficult to know where to strike the balance right for Ireland in this debate over different technologies and means of sourcing power.

The advantage of renewables over nuclear being that we can source our fuel right at home, and manage, own and run the equipment to a large degree also. Nuclear wouldn’t seem to offer us those opportunities.

Just from my superficial observation of things. A book I once read part of was Isaiah Berlin’s ‘The Crooked Timber of Humanity’. Quite an interesting book, to explore how choices made by one human culture at one particular age, may not be ‘compatible’ in any real sense with human culture in another age.

I suppose this idea applies to energy technology also. What we are experiencing in Ireland is two very different human outlooks or even cultures at the same time in the same place. The energy technology debate has merely uncovered its existence.

From what you say, I take it that the EU ETS is OK , but implemented very badly. But it could could be made to work, by a better design of the market.

A stray thought arising from your comment on the relative power of lobbyists over dispersed groups. When slightly more expensive (to end users) options are know to be workable, how many are rejected by policy-makers/decision takers because they fear that the “dispersed group” would not accept the slightly more expensive option?
The normal economic model says people will not pay more. Do behavioural economists study - in the real world (as opposed to gaames being played by students/volunteers) - the extent to which people are prepared to pay more (or lose some existing way of doing things) for some reason. This reason may have to be explained and campaigned for.

The example I use is that in some French cities, the introduction of on-street LRT transport was voted on eg. Grenoble, Strasbourg. Options had to discussed in public.

I gather that in some German-speaking parts of Europe, surveys showed that citizens and decision makers both responded positively to proposals for on-street LRT - when polled separately. But the decision-makers were inclined to decide against the on-street LRT option, on the grounds the people would not put up with the inconvenience during the construction phase and the reduction in the amount of street-space (for car drivers) during the operational phase. I gather something like this tookplace when the citizens of Zurich voted on whether the LR should be mainly on-street or mainly underground. It is mainly on-street.

Once the loop is closed, outcomes that the mental models of the policy-making/decision-taking classes would not opt for, become possible.

In summary, if a better designed EU ETS resulted in slightly higher energy charges to end users, would people pay more once the reasons were subject to wider public debate and even decision by voting?

Or the Carlow motorway is opened on time, because the word got out that it was being delayed, for a few weeks, by pussillanimous politicians or by people who decided that even delay would be least painful for those the Minister listens to.