The search for a global climate treaty - Climate Change: The Facts - page 144

dismissed the gimlet-eyed realism of US negotiators and their pragmatic view that getting
somethingagreedwasbetterthannothing—anapproachthatwasdrivenoffthefieldbythe
temporary success of the Europeans at the Durban COP.
TheEuropeanswereconsumedbythedesiretoturntheParisclimatechangesummitin
2015 into an all-or-nothing replay of Copenhagen six years earlier. Nothing had happened
to change the fundamental interests of the key players and therefore deliver a different
outcome.Inonerespect, though,theEuropeansgotwhattheywanted.Thefalsedawnthey
created at Durban was sufficient for the EU, together with the rest of Europe, to hoodwink
itself into signing up to a second phase of Kyoto just as all the other Western nations were
queuing up at the Kyoto exit door to join the US. The EU had invested too much political
capital inglobal warming and toomuch physical capital in decarbonisation forit to be able
to pull the plug on Kyoto.
If the cost of cutting carbon dioxide emissions was relatively modest, doubtless there
would have been a deal done years ago. At Durban, Christiana Figueres characterised
the discussions as being about 'nothing short of the most compelling energy, industrial,
behavioural revolution that humanity has ever seen.' 43 To expect nearly 200 independent
nations to voluntarily and irrevocably commit, as a conscious act of policy, to such
unprecedented economic upheaval always was a pipedream. So it has proved.