Environment
The Great Global-warming Crackup

The Great Global-warming Crackup

Since the failure of the great global-warming conference in Copenhagen in 2009, many pundits have written of the demise of the global-warming crusade, but it isn’t dead yet. ...
William F. Jasper

What a difference a year can make! In December 2009, thousands of politicians, diplomats, and bureaucrats swarmed into Copenhagen for the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), accompanied by hordes of journalists, celebrities, and paparazzi. According to a UNFCCC press release at the close of the conference, “119 world leaders attended the meeting, the largest gathering of heads of state and government in the history of the UN.” President Barack Obama was there. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was there, along with a sizeable congressional delegation. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was there. Britain’s Prince Charles was there. Billionaire activist gadfly George Soros was there. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Bloomberg, Thomas Friedman, Darryl Hannah, and Bianca Jagger were there. And, of course, Al “Mr. Global Warming” Gore was there.

Fast forward one year to COP16, the UN’s just-completed global-warming confab in Cancun, Mexico. No Barack Obama in attendance. No Hillary Clinton. No Nancy Pelosi. No huge Hollywood entourage. No traffic jams of luxury limos. No pontificating by cause-of-the-week billionaires. No elbow-to-elbow crowd of journalists. And none of the minute-to-minute media coverage that was lavished on COP15.

“No big leader is going, only environment ministers at best,” noted Brazil’s President Lula da Silva, in a press conference on December 1. “We don’t even know if foreign ministers are going. So there won’t be any progress.” President Lula himself decided not to travel to the Mexican summit.

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