Yet evidence is piling up that the very opposite is the case. The main challenge from the world’s new industrial superpower is not that it will continue to use the dirty, old technologies of the past, but that it will come to dominate the new, clean, green ones of the future.

As developed nations fail to put an adequate price on carbon, and thus to stimulate clean-technology development themselves, they risk handing market supremacy to the rival they most fear. Indeed, it could even be hypothesized that China’s blocking of agreement on rich-country emission targets in Copenhagen was intended to hold back the development of cleantech by its Western rivals.

Visitor after distinguished visitor to the world’s most populous country returns home shaken, if not stirred, by the speed and determination with which it is adopting these technologies, especially in renewable energy. David Sandalow, the U.S. assistant secretary of energy for policy and international affairs — a longtime expert in the field, both in and out of government, who has trekked across the Pacific five times since last summer — says, “China’s investment in clean energy is extraordinary. Unless the U.S. makes investments, we are not competitive in the cleantech sector in the years and decades to come.”

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote from China earlier this month that he was increasingly convinced that the most important development of recent years would prove to be “not the Great Recession, but China’s Green Leap Forward.” He, too, warned that unless the United States rapidly caught up, “we are going to gradually cede this industry to Beijing and the good jobs and energy security that would go with it.”

Certainly China’s commitment and growth in this area are breathtaking. It already boasts a thousand solar water heater manufacturers providing some 600,000 jobs. One in every 10 homes in the giant country has them installed, making up two-thirds of the entire world’s solar hot water capacity; by 2030, some estimates suggest, half of all the country’s households could have them.

Solar electricity is not far behind. In 2005, China produced a relatively tiny 100 megawatts of solar cells. Two years later, it was leading the world with 1,088 MW. This year, it is predicted to exceed 5,000 MW, a third of the world’s total — and it’s expected to go on expanding to reach 10,000 MW in just five years time. Solar thermal power is also on the rise: 2,000 MW of solar thermal power stations are expected to come online over the next decade, with a dramatic increase in the years after that.

At the same time, installed wind-power capacity has been doubling annually: China is expected to meet its original 30,000 MW target for 2020 in two years time, and last year it vastly increased the target to an ambitious 100,000 MW.

Indeed, the wind-power expansion reveals something of China’s ruthless determination to lead the world in these new low-carbon industries.  In 2003, just before the headlong growth of the industry began, the country heavily restricted imports, requiring its wind farms to source 70 percent of its parts from the domestic market. The restriction was only lifted last year, by which time home production dominated the business.

And an even more ominous development seems to be gathering pace. China is responsible for 97 percent of the world’s production of rare earth elements or metals, vital for many cleantech products from wind turbines to hybrid-car batteries, fiber optics to low-energy light bulbs. But over the last seven years, it has reduced the quantity of them available for export by 40 percent, and before long may be using all of its production to feed domestic demand.

Other countries — including the United States, South Africa, and Greenland — have significant deposits of rare earth metals, but are years away from properly exploiting them. By increasingly restricting supplies, China could strangle overseas clean industries while boosting its own.

The U.S. administration, at least, is alive to the danger of China dominating the cleantech market. Last April, President Obama warned, “The nation that leads the world in 21st-century clean energy will be the nation that leads in the 21st-century global economy.” The tens of billions of dollars in his stimulus package devoted to renewables is an attempt to gain that lead for the United States.

In fact, there may be an even more productive course: partnership with China. Whereas China can make things much more cheaply than the United States — and open factories much faster — it is, as yet, still far behind the U.S. in innovation and venture capital. There is an opportunity to come together to benefit both countries — and the world.

But seizing that opportunity would require the U.S., as well as other Western countries, to take serious action to raise the price of carbon and spark a wave of new technological innovation, rather than ceding the field to China while falsely professing to be protecting their economies from it.

One by one, as last month’s Copenhagen summit approached, the main developing countries — China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, and Indonesia — announced surprisingly ambitious emission targets. Indeed, measured against what the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says will be needed by 2020, they did much more to fulfill their side of the bargain than rich countries. An analysis published during the summit showed that every one of their offers fell within the range of what would be required of them — with Brazil and Indonesia even surpassing that range — while only two of the developed country commitments, from Norway and the E.U., did so.

And the momentum appears to be continuing, even though their governments balked at endorsing global targets for emission cuts at the summit itself.

Little more than a week after leaving Copenhagen, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a law to require a 39 percent reduction on forecast emissions for 2020. His environment minister, Carlos Minc, commented that this showed the country’s determination to respect its pledges: “It doesn’t matter if the Copenhagen summit did not get the results we wanted,” said Minc. “We will still meet our goals.”

Indonesia’s forestry minister then announced a plan to plant more than 52 million acres of forest by 2020, cutting the growth of its emissions by over 26 percent.  At present, Indonesia’s deforestation, according to a World Bank study, makes it the third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States. And South Africa is aiming to submit a plan by the end of this month for curbing its emissions growth by 34 percent by 2020.

Even India and China, which proved the most resistant to international targets in Copenhagen — and who, apart from the obstructive Saudi Arabia, expressed most pleasure at its limited achievement — have pressed ahead.

Indeed, India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, was contradicted by his boss after he expressed satisfaction with the results: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh insisted that “no one was satisfied with the outcome” [of Copenhagen], adding, in a flourish of hyphens, “There is no escaping the truth that the nations of the world have to move to a low-greenhouse-gas-emissions and energy-efficient-development path.”  India, he added, “must not lag behind” in adopting low-carbon technologies. Sure enough, environment minister Ramesh then announced that the country would go ahead with its plans to cut its carbon intensity — the amount released per unit of GDP — by 20 to 25 percent by 2020. And this without awaiting international financial help. “We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do,” said Ramesh. “We will have a low-carbon growth strategy.”

And China, which is already taking big steps to moderate emissions and develop clean technologies, has, if anything, stepped up the pace, despite having done more than any other country to block progress in Copenhagen. China is confident that it will, this year, meet its current target of reducing its carbon intensity by 20 percent in just five years. The country is also drawing up tough new goals for 2015. It is widely expected to exceed its formal pledge of a 40 to 45 percent reduction on 2005 levels by 2020.

Already the world’s leading manufacturer in solar cells — a position achieved in just two years after a standing start — China, last week, signed a deal with a California company to build a series of solar thermal power stations. China’s windpower is expected to exceed its 30,000 MW target by 2012, eight years ahead of schedule. It has just tested the world’s fastest train, as part of a high-speed rail program. And it is increasing sales of electric cars to the United States.

India has invited China, Brazil, and South Africa to meet with it next week to coordinate future strategy. And the E.U. is proposing pursuing a new climate agreement through the G20 — which includes such leading developing countries — rather than through the unwieldy United Nations negotiating system. But all this momentum holds real dangers.

Keen though they are to press ahead with their national strategies, the rapidly industrializing countries are reluctant to be bound into agreements with developed countries. Why? They are uneasy, at the best of times, about being placed under an international, legally binding obligation to curb their pollution, and they balk at any suggestion that developed nations would be telling them what to do. And their wariness is increased because rich countries have so far offered to do less than their share of the job and have a poor record of meeting the targets they set themselves under the Kyoto Protocol.

Besides, a deal between developed and fast-growing developing countries would bypass the U.N., with its universal representation, and thus exclude those nations most likely to be victimized by climate change.  Such an agreement would, effectively, be struck among the polluters. This would mute demands from more than 100 countries, including a call for the world to aim at a 1.5 degree centigrade rise in global temperative rather than a 2 degree one. And it would breed resentment amongst those left out of the bargaining.

Such resentment among poorer and most-vulnerable developing nations emerged as a major problem in Copenhagen. Any way forward will have to address this.

Once again, the climate clock is ticking…The message — sent to a who’s who of top officials on both sides of the Atlantic, was from Prof. Tom Burke, a close adviser to three successive British Conservative environment secretaries in the 1990s, and one of Europe’s shrewdest observers of green politics.

He was referring, of course, to the recent Copenhagen climate summit, which he told us “would do more to shape human history for longer” than any other meeting in world history. The reason? “Climate change is forever,” its nature such that “the future cannot redeem today’s mistakes.” He added: “We have one chance to reach a political agreement to reduce carbon emissions in time to stay safe. This is the year in which we take that chance.”

Or not, as it turned out.

Burke’s words stuck with me throughout the fiasco that the summit became. Indeed, on its last day I woke up thinking, “If Tom is right, this is the most important day ever.” In a sense, it lived up to that billing, with key world leaders — including President Obama, Britain’s Gordon Brown, Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Mohammed Nasheed of the Maldives — personally negotiating an agreement line by line. But even they accepted that the “accord” that resulted fell far short of what is needed.

So I kept a special eye on my inbox this new year to see if Burke would send another missive. It never came. Meanwhile, I came across an article he recently published in ENDS, perhaps Britain’s most authoritative environmental journal. Its message was just as uncompromising. “It will take a while for the full magnitude of the calamity that has befallen the world to become clear,” he wrote. “But calamity it is.”

He went on: “Not one of the 119 world leaders who attended the Copenhagen summit came intending to shatter a global climate regime so painfully built up over 20 years. But that is what they accomplished”

The “core elements” of a deal that would have kept global warming beneath 2 degrees centigrade “were within view, if not within grasp, before the meeting began,” Burke added. “A little more movement on emissions reductions, a bit more money on the table, and a real foundation could have been laid. By the end, enough had moved on both those central issues for a deal to have been grasped, But so sour had the mood become, and so chaotic the process, that it slipped from the hand.”

I agree with Burke about how close agreement was when the conference opened and that, even though the formal negotiations got nowhere, there was enough movement (not least in the Americans’ unexpected agreement to endorse a $100 billion-a-year fund for the poorest nations) to have made it possible to seal the deal. I agree, too, that the sour atmosphere at Copenhagen — founded on deep mistrust arising from decades of broken promises, enhanced by the poor chairmanship and chaotic organization of the summit, and exploited by a few countries to frustrate progress — was the principle reason for the summit’s failure.

But I am not so gloomy about the outcome. I place some faith in the very readiness of the leaders to work painstakingly throughout an entire day to try to get a worthwhile agreement. Burke dismisses this as itself “a recipe for disaster” with “getting out of town with the right headline” being “the most urgent priority” for the Obamas and Merkels in attendance.

Yet, far from contenting themselves with concocting a face saving press release, the leaders almost pulled something off. Had China not issued a last minute veto of the accord’s most important elements — notably a 50 percent global reduction in emissions by 2050, and a commitment to work on producing legally-binding treaty — there would have been something valuable to build on, an extraordinary achievement in the circumstances.

Many of the leaders, including all those listed above, have demonstrated a personal commitment to tackling climate change that in almost every case goes beyond what either their political parties or their electorates are demanding (the exception is President Nasheed, but only because his people are just as desperate as he to prevent their country’s extinction at the hands of rising sea levels).

All, too, have taken steps to reaffirm that commitment since Copenhagen. And, in another hopeful straw in the wind, China’s vice foreign minister, He Yafei — one of the main figures blocking progress at the summit — has just been pushed out, suggesting at least that his government is embarrassed by the blame it has attracted.

Such experienced observers as David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute, and Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists also take a more optimistic view. Burke dismisses such people as “shell-shocked survivors of a political hurricane, picking over the disaster site for any useful fragments of their past existence.”

But these experienced NGO hands have realistic hopes for the next twelve months, ending in another attempt at finalizing a global climate agreement in Mexico.

So maybe Burke’s message was off by a year, making 2010 is the “most important” year of all.

Did the messy outcome at Copenhagen make it less likely that world governments can reach a deal next year in Mexico?The blame game began with Europe-based environmental groups pointing the finger at President Obama and the United States. Greenpeace International said the U.S. had “dragged the talks down,” while Christian Aid singled out Obama for special condemnation and decried rich countries’ “strong arm tactics and intransigence.” President Lula of Brazil joined in, blaming Obama for offering “too little” when it came to pledges to cut emissions.

Then it was China’s turn. Writing in The Guardian, UK energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband condemned China for vetoing emission targets supported by “a coalition of developed and the vast majority of developing countries” and suggested the country had “hijacked” the negotiations. He was supported by the writer and journalist Mark Lynas, who had been at the heart of the bargaining as an adviser to the Maldives. Lynas took to The Guardian’s pages with a detailed, first-hand account of how the emerging superpower had “wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an ‘awful’ deal so that western leaders would walk away carrying the blame.”

China, predictably, hit back, calling Miliband’s comments “unfair and irresponsible” and accusing him of “trying to shirk the obligations of developed countries.” China had “performed no worse than any others,” its officials insisted.

Then the European Union weighed in, saying it was “obvious” that both China and the United States “did not want more than we achieved in Copenhagen.” It, in turn, was heavily criticized for joining U.S. opposition to the continuance of the Kyoto Protocol and for failing to rally other countries to ambitious emissions targets. Just about everybody blasted the Danes for their how they chaired the conference, while many identified widespread failures in the UN negotiating system, which British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called “at best flawed, at worst chaotic.”

If success has many fathers, as the saying goes, failure breeds a host of unpleasant, caught-out children, all trying to shift the blame to a sibling. And there is plenty to go around.

For what it is worth, China deserves most of it. It led the disruption in plenaries that made it impossible for the conference to get down to serious negotiating, took the targets out of the “accord” that finally resulted and has expressed more pleasure at the emasculated outcome than any other country.

The United States certainly made mistakes, particularly in its approach to China. But in the weeks preceding Copenhagen, the Americans moved quite far (despite political pressures from a wary Congress), and President Obama worked hard to rescue some sort of a deal at the actual gathering. The environmentalists’ failure to recognize this suggests that deep-seated anti-Americanism continues even after the departure of the much-loathed Bush administration. And though the EU should have taken more of a lead and was foolish to join in attempts to undermine the Kyoto Protocol, its leaders led the last-minute rescue missions in Copenhagen.

The Danes were undoubtedly not up to the job of charing the gathering. Indeed, the accord only won arms-length acceptance from the plenary after the Danish prime minister, Lars Løkke Ramussen, was quietly ejected from the chair. This type of situation probably won’t be a problem next December in Mexico, not least because a developing country will be presiding. And the shambolic failure of the UN system, not just in Copenhagen but over the whole of the last year (leading even one of its stalwarts, Malta’s Michael Zammit Cutajar, to confess “its tough to keep the belief in it”) is leading to an unprecedented drive for reform.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced he was setting up a “high-level panel” to see “how to streamline the negotiations process,” adding that he wanted to discuss “how we can do better” with governments and civil society. And that was just one sign of the most remarkable development of the last ten days. For even as the blame flew around, the key participants — far from taking refuge in it, and scaling down their commitments — were actually underlining their determination to do more.

Obama reemphasized his resolve to get a cap-and trade bill through Congress, insisting that clean energy will “drive economic growth for decades to come.” Gordon Brown said he would be stepping up efforts to get a climate treaty. And France’s Nicolas Sarkozy offered to host a summit this spring of the leaders that signed the Copenhagen accord, while Angela Merkel’s Germany will host a ministerial meeting in June.

Mexico pledged to press for the most controversial international commitment of all — a 50 percent global emissions cut by 2050 — as part of “a binding international agreement” under its chairmanship. Brazil announced it would stick to its own ambitious targets. India — whose celebration of the Copenhagen’s failure was second only to China’s — launched a plan for special “green economic zones.” And China announced new regulations to increase the use of renewable energy.

Welding all this into a new treaty remains a formidable task, probably more so than before the Copenhagen summit opened. But there is still much to work with, if only governments can start working together.

The first step is to move beyond the finger-pointing. As Yvo de Boer, the UN official in charge of the negotiations, pointed out last week: “These countries will have to sit down together next year, so blaming each other for what happened will not help.”

The world needs solid directions for getting to a real climate deal in Mexico next year.Asking the question recalls the famous joke about the Irishman who, when asked by a motorist to give directions to his destination, replied: “If I wanted to get there, I would not be starting from here.” Indeed, it is rather worse than that — for we never expected to be starting from this point at all.

“When negotiations were launched two years ago in Bali, I was firmly convinced that we would be arriving in Copenhagen to adopt a legally binding document,” Yvo de Boer, the top UN official in charge of the talks, ruefully recalled as the summit ended. Even when the slowness of this year’s negotiating process made it clear by the autumn that this would not be possible, he went on, he thought that it would make decisions that could soon be translated into a treaty.

Indeed, even as the conference opened optimism was running high. All the major emitting countries, developed and developing, had announced targets for controlling their pollution by 2020. The pledges varied, with the most aggressive dependent on others taking similar action, but when the best offers were totted up they fell only slightly short of the lower end of the 25 to 40 percent that scientists say will be needed to avert dangerous climate change. Hopes were high that these emissions pledges would be improved.

There was also growing acceptance that a $10 billion annual emergency fund would be needed to help the poorest countries cope. A series of preliminary meetings between the major players had made enough progress for participants to see how an agreement could be concluded. And in the last weeks ahead of the conference, world leaders had rushed to register their attendance, confident of sharing in success.

Rarely have such high hopes been dashed so swiftly. From the start it proved virtually impossible to get negotiations going, as a constant stream of procedural motions and points of order — led by China — slowed efforts to move the talks out of the unwieldy 192-nation plenary and into the smaller group meetings where progress is traditionally made.

The summit was only saved from total disaster by unprecedented negotiations between the leaders themselves. Though the Copenhagen Accord announced late Friday stipulates that global warming must not exceed two degrees centigrade, it fails to set out how this will be ensured. It contains no emissions targets, merely encouraging signatories to register their own goals by the end of January. While it does endorse $10 billion a year in immediate financing for poor nations (rising to $100 billion by 2020), it does not even mention the possibility of a new treaty.

Furthermore, even this accord was not formally adopted by the conference, partly because it had not formally set up the leaders’ meeting where it was drafted. The conference almost rejected the deal altogether, but eventually “noted” it. Countries are invited to sign up to it — and will have to do so if they are to receive any of the adaptation funding.

So where, given this unexpected and unexciting starting point, do we go from here? Here are seven suggested steps, not to heaven, but perhaps to salvation:

First, work must be done to soothe feelings ruffled by the dramatic events of the final hours in Copenhagen. Many countries are upset that the deal was done by a relatively small, unauthorized group of leaders behind closed doors, with their agreement presented to the rest of the world as a fait accompli. They also dislike being forced to endorse it in order to receive any money. Unless dealt with, these feelings could erupt at the next meeting, in Bonn in the summer, bogging it down too.

Second, countries must be persuaded to pledge a significant amount of greenhouse gas reductions. The European Union is central to this. It has so far held back from increasing its emission reductions from 20 to 30 percent by 2020, which it said it would do if others took similar action. It must now do so, to encourage others to be more ambitious.

Third, the U.S. Senate needs to pass its energy and climate bill. Opinions differ on whether the outcome of Copenhagen will make this more or less likely, but it is clear there can be no real progress without it.

Fourth, the UN negotiating system needs reform. Smaller representative groups will need to hammer out compromises, but they will have to be properly authorized by plenaries. Ministers should get involved earlier; it was only when politicians arrived in the Danish capital in the second week of the gathering that movement occurred.

Fifth, the pledged money needs, as indicated in the accord, to be additional to existing aid programs. A nd it should start being disbursed very soon, building confidence.

Sixth, the question of the form of an eventual treaty needs solving. Developing countries, it became clear in Copenhagen, will not let the Kyoto Protocol be replaced. Just as clear is that the United States will not join it at any price. The answer is probably to keep it, with a separate linked treaty to cover the U.S. and developing countries.

And seventh, China must be persuaded that a treaty is in its interests. It seems China’s leaders turned against the idea in the weeks immediately before Copenhagen, fearing that their country’s formidable growth may soon classify it as a developed country and so subject it to much greater emissions controls. But as a leading developer and exporter of green technology, China has much to gain from a worldwide move to a low carbon economy.

Well, here we are at last. After two years of largely fruitless negotiations, the real bargaining on the terms of a new global climate pact has just begun.

Yvo de Boer, the U.N. official charged with shepherding a new international climate pact, must feel as if he’s carrying the world on his shoulders as COP15 enters its final week.Courtesy UNFCCCAfter a confusing first week of the Copenhagen summit, with conflicting texts of a draft agreement (at least five of them) apparently being drawn up in every corner of the spectacularly ugly Bella Center, some order has finally been imposed on the proceedings.

So the stage is set for a truly momentous few days. If, as I was advised in a letter from an authoritative expert last January, Copenhagen makes 2009 “the most important year in human history,” then we are entering its most crucial week. If the conference is successful, then the more than 100 world leaders due to come to the Danish capital this week will initiate the biggest economic change since the Industrial Revolution, turning the world away from an ever growing reliance on fossil fuels towards what is being increasingly dubbed “low carbon prosperity.”

At least the process of the negotiations is now resolved, even if very little else is. First, the conflicting, sometimes leaked, texts have all been jettisoned in favor of simple documents drawn up by the chairmen of the relevant negotiating committees. And everyone has agreed to use them as the basis of an eventual deal, a major step forward.

Next, ministers from around the world have begun meeting in permanent session to resolve outstanding issues. Lower-level officials will continue to labor over the new negotiating texts, but when they cannot agree they will now refer each dispute to the ministers. If they also cannot resolve the matter, it will go on to the leaders.

One dispute that may go all the way to the top is the objective of the agreement itself. Until recently, this was expected to be to keep global warming beneath two degrees centigrade. That’s still the goal of the big polluters, whether developed countries or industrializing ones like China and India. Science, however, increasingly indicates that this would not save low-lying island nations or other vulnerable countries from devastation, and over 100 delegations -– backed by a fast-growing, worldwide youth movement pressing for concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to be brought back to 350 parts per million — is demanding no more than 1.5 degrees.

The problem is that past emissions have already set the world on course to experience that degree of warming, and there is no way the big polluters will agree to the drastic measures needed to stop at that point, which would involve actually reducing concentrations by some 10 percent from their present level. The best the potential victims are likely to get is an agreement on two degrees to be reviewed in a few years after further scientific studies.

Even achieving that will be hard: the measures offered by industrialized countries so far fall short of the lower end of the 25-40 percent cut in emissions that scientists say will be needed by 2020. Vigorous attempts will be made this week — not least by the Danish government and by Yvo de Boer, the UN official in charge of the negotiations — to get them to do more.

Targets for 2050 are also highly controversial. Rich countries have agreed that global emissions should be halved by then and offered to reduce theirs by 80 percent. But, revolutionary though that would be, achieving that would still mean that developing countries would have to make big cuts too -– perhaps by 60 percent per capita, cuts made all the more painful by the continued population growth poor nations are expected to experience. They are resisting, demanding massive financial help.

Rich countries are offering an emergency fund of $10 billion a year to help the poorest countries cope with climate change. The trouble is that this is almost entirely made up of existing aid, diverted from other needs. The Third World is understandably unimpressed.

The big battle, however, is over longer-term finance. A consensus has emerged among developed nations that this should be about $100 billion a year. Developing countries –- and some pressure groups like the World Wildlife Fund — say it needs to be much more, but even this figure will be hard to achieve. President Obama will be severely constrained on what he can offer while climate legislation remains held up in the U.S. Senate, and other nations will not want to commit until the United States does.

There also is division on how measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions will be monitored and verified. The industrializing developing countries have made unexpectedly large offers on cutting the rate at which their emissions will grow, but see these as voluntary commitments and resist any suggestion that they should be subject to international control. The United States and other developed countries insist that these promises must be checked and enforced — but then object to any suggestion of similar controls over their own emissions reductions promises.

Finally, there are arguments over the very form of any deal. Developing countries are insisting on retaining and improving the Kyoto Protocol, but its very name is anathema in the United States, and Russia is also privately turning against it. The likeliest outcome is a toughened Kyoto Protocol, with a linked treaty covering the United States and developing countries (at present excluded from its provisions) and new agreements made in Copenhagen.

None of this will be agreed unless and until it is all agreed. It will be one big package, or nothing. And it may all come down to the last few hours of the last day — or night, since no one wants to move until the last minute. The outcome of the Copenhagen talks is going to be a cliffhanger.

Spread the news on what the føck is going on in Copenhagen with friends via email, Facebook, Twitter, or smoke signals.

The Rutschbanen roller coaster.Photo courtesy wikimedia commonsCOPENHAGEN — The Danish capital’s famous Tivoli gardens boasts an equally celebrated roller coaster. Built in 1914, it is the oldest all-wooden one still operating in the world; being at the climate summit here over the last two days has felt like taking as ride on it.

In truth, the 15,000 people from over 190 nations attending the summit were always in for a series of stomach-wrenching ups and downs as the vital talks proceeded, with hope alternating with despair. But few expected that the roller coaster ride would start so violently and so soon.

The summit opened with more optimism than I can remember for any similarly difficult negotiations over the last 40 years, with a widespread and growing belief that a worthwhile agreement to get global warming under control could be struck by over 100 heads of government when they arrive towards the end of next week. But within just two days the hopes were being dashed by a revolt by the world’s poorest countries against the very basis of the proposed deal.

But better to start by focusing on the hope. The delegates arrived at the cavernous concrete Bella Center on the outskirts of Copenhagen with the wind at their backs, both figuratively and literally. But if anything, the warm zephyr of momentum towards a deal was blowing even more strongly than the bitterly cold winds blowing across the flat land of Denmark all the way from the Russian steppes.

Over the past few weeks, remarkable progress had been made on the two most difficult issues facing the summit -– rapidly reducing the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and providing finance for the world’s poorest countries to help them cope with the devastating effects of climate change.

Country after country had put offers on the table to cut emissions (in the case of rich nations) or to reduce their rate of growth (in the case of fast-growing countries in the developing world). Though the pledges do not yet add up to enough to avert dangerous climate change, they come in at far more than was expected -– particularly at a time of recession — only a few months ago.

The UN Environment Programme and Britain’s Grantham Research Institute, chaired by Lord Stern, jointly published a study (.doc) the day before the meeting opened which concluded that the best offers by rich countries to cut emissions and by industrializing ones to reduce their rate of growth already amounted to up to 80 percent of what was needed to meet the lower end of what scientists say will be required. Much of the difference, it added, could be made up of measures to reduce the felling of forests and to reduce pollution from shipping and aviation.

And Yvo de Boer, the top official in change of the negotiations, reported “encouraging” progress on agreeing on a $10 billion a year emergency fund to help poor countries. The United States, Australia, Japan, and the EU have all supported it.

Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark — the man who will chair the summit of more than a hundred heads of governments when they arrive next week — said that “intensive consultations” with the leaders had revealed that “without exception” they backed “an ambitious agreement to halt global warming.” Connie Hedegaard, his minister for energy and climate, added; “I have never seen anything like it when it comes to political willingness.”

While stressing the many obstacles ahead, she described a deal as “do-able.” Gordon Shepherd of the WWF International put it more colorfully: “We are within spitting distance, but its a very long spit!”

By Tuesday evening, however, the spitting had begun in earnest, and it was directed at the very foundations of the agreement itself. The catalyst was the leak of a draft text for the agreement drawn up by the Danish government in consultation with other rich countries and gradually being circulated among industrializing developing ones.

The text contains provisions that the Third World does not like — downplaying the existing Kyoto Protocol, to which they are attached, and giving powers to the World Bank (which rich countries control) at the expense of the United Nations. But these were less important than the fact that it brought to a head growing frustration among poorer nations that a deal was being made behind their backs.

Any deal would aim to keep global warming below two degrees centigrade, a goal agreed by rich and rapidly industrializing countries at a special summit in L’Aquila, Italy, last summer. But the poorest countries have been becoming increasingly convinced that only a much lower increase (1.5 degrees) would give them a chance of avoiding disaster.

On Tuesday evening the growing pressure caused an explosion. Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, chief negotiator for the Group of 77, which represents developing countries, said the two-degree target “exposes over 100 countries to suffering and devastation,” leading to the disappearance of low-lying island nations and “certain death” for Africa.

He added that, in supporting the deal, President Obama was condemning “the cousins and extended family of his own daughters to be destroyed to preserve the interests of the few.” And he said that the $10 billion-a-year fund, promoted by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, would not be enough “to buy the poor nations the coffins.”

His remarks resonate so strongly because scientists say the world is already on course for a rise of 1.5 degrees. Meeting his demand, therefore, would mean a rapid phase out of emissions, plus active measures to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. There is no way that rich countries — or even the industrializing ones — will agree to that in Copenhagen.

No doubt, hopes will rise again in the next few days; the summit is still at the stage when initial negotiating positions are being staked out. There will be many ups and downs on the roller coaster before the hair-rising ride comes to a conclusion next weekend.

Spread the news on what the føck is going on in Copenhagen with friends via email, Facebook, Twitter, or smoke signals.

Are the climate skeptics increasingly winning the battle for public opinion? On the very eve of the Copenhagen conference, there are signs that they are — and that environmental groups are allowing them to.

Polls on both sides of the Atlantic over the last weeks indicate that fewer people now believe that global warming is taking place or that humanity is responsible. Books by prominent skeptics have become bestsellers. And in the last week a furor about e-mails hacked from a computer at Britain’s University of East Anglia have given added voice to the skeptics’ misinformation campaign that prominent scientists manipulate data to give a false impression that climate change is under way.

Perhaps the first sign of the shift came six weeks ago when a Pew Research Center poll reported “a sharp decline in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising” — only 57 percent compared to 71 percent in April 2008 and 77 percent in the two previous years. Those who believed that humans were causing it dropped to 35 percent, from 41 to 50 percent in previous polls.

Environmentalists were disturbed, but inclined to disbelieve a shift in public opinion had occurred. Possibly they were right, as far as the size of the drop was concerned. But last week a Washington Post-ABC News poll appeared to confirm the trend, suggesting that the proportion of believers had dropped from 80 to 72 percent over the past year.

Between the release of the two U.S. polls, one across the Atlantic delivered a largely similar message — only 41 percent of Britons, concluded the survey for The Times, accepted as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made.

Individual polls should, of course, be taken with a pinch of salt, as previous Grist articles have pointed out. They are influenced by how the question is put, and can be internally contradictory. Both U.S. surveys, for example, found majorities in favor of taking action to curb carbon emissions. But politicians, programmed to dismiss unfavorable findings in their public comments, still take trends very seriously. Environmentalists would be wise to do the same.

Other ominous signs are appearing. A few years ago I witnessed Lord Lawson — a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and perhaps Britain’s most prominent climate skeptic — being scorned by establishment figures when he gave a presentation on the issue. Last year, however, he published a skeptical book that sold well, and he has just launched, to a respectful reception, a think tank that will concentrate on global warming. It was an interview with him, on a breakfast radio program, that turned the East Anglian hacked e-mails affair from a blogosphere obsession to a mainstream story in Britain.

A few days ago, a call-in radio program featuring one British skeptic was so dominated by supportive calls the presenter had difficulty finding someone to stand up for climate science — something he said would have been inconceivable a year ago. Private figures suggest that some skeptic blogs that are covering the East Anglia e-mails furor are seeing huge increases in visits.

Of course, there may be many reasons for all this. The recession has certainly had an effect. And as the prospect of action to curb emissions gets closer, more people fear that they will lose out.

But environmentalists must bear a fair share of the responsibility.

Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, which took concern over global warming to its height, has also — I am sure — helped fuel the backlash. In part this is surely because he remains a politically polarizing figure, his identification with the issue helping to send Republicans in the opposite direction. But the film’s polemicism and exaggerations gave skeptics a shred of credibility when they questioned its accuracy — and effectively licensed them to engage in polemics of their own.

Environmental groups, once brilliant at swaying public opinion, have lost their touch. They have progressively become part of the establishment, while the skeptics have taken the insurgent role that environmentalists once exploited so well. As they became more and more involved in the process of formulating agreements and legislation to tackle global warming, talking to governments and attending negotiating conferences, leaders of the environmental movement have increasingly appeared to take public opinion for granted.

The East Anglia e-mail flap vividly exposes the results. From what has been publicized so far, there does not seem to be a great deal in the exposed messages, nothing that would remotely justify the widely touted claims that they prove that the whole edifice of global warming science to be a fraud. But the skeptics have had a free run with the non-scandal, while the scientists involved hunkered down (instead of touring the television studios to rebut the charges) and the green groups treated the gathering tempest as a storm in a teacup.

Climate groups appear to be following John Kerry’s example from the 2004 presidential campaign, when he initially refused to respond to the Swift Boat Veterans. Bill Clinton was wiser in his 1992 campaign, building a rapid rebuttal unit (the infamous “War Room“) to deflate charges before they could take off.

We all know — even if the greens seem to have forgotten — which candidate’s strategy was the more successful. Environmental groups would be wise to rediscover the importance of public opinion — and maybe to set up a War Room of their own.

Will world leaders rocket at Copenhagen?Photo: jurvetson via Flickr Creative Commons

It has all been enough to cheer up the phlegmatic Yvo de Boer, who — as  Executive Director of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change — is in charge of the talks. Last month he was sounding downbeat, but now he says: “There is no doubt in my mind that (the meeting) will yield a success.”

“Almost every day now we see new commitments and pledges from both industrialized and developing countries,” he added. “I am confident that the President of the United States can come to Copenhagen with targets and a financial commitment.”

Maybe de Boer is now erring on the optimistic side, but there is no doubt that there is, at present at least, a new mood in the air. It is reflected in — and partly caused by — a stampede of heads of governments promising to come.

By the weekend, just a week after the Danish Government had sent out the formal invitations, 65 leaders had committed themselves to attend. They included such heavyweights as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown,  German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Prime Ministers Yuki Hatoyama and Kevin Rudd of Japan and Australia, and Presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia.

Several key leaders have yet to reply — including President Hu Jintao of China, India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, South African president Jacob Zuma and, of course, Barack Obama. But so far the Danes have not had a single refusal, and expect many more acceptances.

The promised turn-out is a big vindication for Gordon Brown, who was the first leader to commit to going — as long ago as September. Brown insisted that only heads of governments would have the authority to negotiate and strike a deal. He has since spent much time telephoning and talking to other leaders face-to-face to persuade them to attend.

He will be at it again this weekend at the summit of leaders of the former colonial countries that belong to the British Commonwealth in Trinidad. Manmohan Singh and Jacob Zuma can expect to come under particular pressure if they have not accepted by then.

Meanwhile offers of emission reductions continue to come in. Russia has agreed at a summit with the E.U. last week to accept a 25 percent cut on 1990 levels by 2020, doubling its previous target. This is hardly ambitious because the collapse of its economy in the 1990s means its emissions are now much lower than they were at the start of that decade — but it is important because it represents another developed country coming into the range which will trigger the big cuts promised by the E.U., Japan, and Australia if others followed suit.

South Korea offered a four percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020. Again, this may appear paltry, but is psychologically important because the country is (somewhat anomalously) classified as a developing one, making South Korea the first developing country to announce an absolute cut in emissions as opposed to just reducing its rate of growth.

Even more importantly, Brazilian officials made clear last week that the ambitious target of at least a 36.1 reduction in projected 2020 emissions, would involve an absolute cut of at least 10 percent from current levels.

The big questions are what the U.S. and China will offer. President Hu has promised a “notable” reduction in expected 2020 emissions, and is expected to attach a figure on it in Copenhagen. And Todd Stern, the chief U.S. negotiator indicated that  President Obama was considering going with a provisional number for emissions reduction even if the Senate had not voted on it by then.

There is also a growing consensus on the even more important — and difficult — issue of providing finance to the world’s poorest countries to help them tackle their own pollution and adapt to the devastating impacts of climate change. This is settling out at an acceptance that about $100 billion a year will be needed by 2020 (a figure originally proposed by Gordon Brown last summer), that 22-50 billion euros of this would come from international aid, and that “fast-track finance” of 5-7 billion euros should be provided to finance immediate action.

Of course there will be many stomach-turning ups and downs before the leaders leave the Danish capital, and it could well all come unstuck. But the very fact that leaders are going makes that more unlikely, because the one thing that unites them is a determination to avoid being associated with failure.

As resurrections go, it was a speedy one. On Monday, much of the world’s media declared that the chances of a worthwhile deal being reached at next month’s international climate talks were as dead as the proverbial dodo. By Tuesday, however, the conjectured corpse was clearly still alive, if not exactly kicking.

President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao were quick to insist this week that their two nations are committed to making Copenhagen a success.  Above, the two leaders together at a reception before the formal state dinner at Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on Nov. 17, 2009.Photo: White HouseThe cause of the premature obituaries were weekend statements by President Barack Obama and Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen that it would not be possible to finalize a full, legally binding treaty when diplomats from around the world gather in Copenhagen starting Dec. 7. This, we were told, would turn the meeting into little more than a talking shop, while the real negotiations were postponed until later.

But as Grist readers already know, the fact that the conference will not produce a full-blown treaty is old news. I reported it here two weeks ago, together with quotes to that effect from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the United Nations’ top climate official, Yvo de Boer.

The excruciating slowness of the U.N. negotiating process (which, after a combined eight weeks of formal talks in three cities starting last spring, still failed to produce a final negotiating text) and the recalcitrance of the U.S. Senate in passing a climate bill long ago assured it would be impossible to tie up a full treaty in Copenhagen.

My article also explored the alternative set out by Rasmussen at the weekend — also already suggested by Merkel and de Boer — of a “political” agreement, which would later be formalized in a treaty. Far from being a talking shop, the Copenhagen conference would be expected to agree on all the main elements of a climate pact, including big greenhouse gas emission cuts by rich countries, sharp reductions in the rate of growth of emissions in rapidly industrializing ones, and funding to help meet the vast costs faced by poor countries in controlling their own emissions and adapting to the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Rasmussen spelled this out in his statement, though it was little reported, making it clear that the conference must reach a “binding” deal that is “precise on specific commitments” and “provides for immediate action.” He went on: “We cannot do half a deal in Copenhagen and postpone the rest till later. We need the commitments. We need the figures. We need the action.”

By Tuesday evening, it was clear that such a deal was still a possibility. Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, who as the leaders of the world’s two greatest polluters will do more than anyone to determine whether the conference succeeds or fails, agreed to press for it. “Our aim,” said Obama, echoing Rasmussen’s words, “is not a partial accord or a political declaration but rather an accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations and has an immediate operational effect.”

The two leaders agreed that “transitioning to a low-carbon economy is an opportunity to promote continued economic growth and sustainable development in all countries” and struck deals to launch “a joint energy efficiency action plan and a partnership on renewable energy and the electric power grid” — steps welcomed by Timothy Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, who has put much effort into building links between the two countries.

At the same time, environment ministers from 40 key countries — assembled this week for a two-day preparatory meeting in Copenhagen — made good progress towards a political agreement. “My feeling is that it looks better today than when we started meeting,” said Danish Energy and Climate Change Minister Connie Hedegaard, when the talks ended on Tuesday evening. And indeed — though there is still a very long way to go — an agreement is marginally closer than before the weekend alarm.

Much depends on whether the U.S. Senate can demonstrate real progress on a climate bill that would cap and gradually lower America’s greenhouse gas emissions. The hope is that enough will be achieved by senators over the next few weeks to enable Obama to go to Copenhagen with a provisional offer of emission reductions, pending passage of the legislation in early 2010. That, in turn, would make international agreement possible.

But time is short. If the Senate ties Obama’s hands, it will be hard to salvage much in Copenhagen; the obituaries will then be due. As Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, put it this week, there remains an “extremely high” risk of continuing deadlock.

If Obama assures the conference that the U.S. Congress will finalize a climate bill, the legislation would have to be passed by the end of spring, since the American midterm elections will be approaching fast. Failure to pass a bill by then would be disastrous.

It is all very difficult. But there is a chance that, with luck and skill, a climate-saving deal can be reached. And while far from ideal, the hope that a deal is still salvageable is a lot better than the doom that was so widely pronounced at the start of the week.