Der Spiegel interviews German Environment minister on the Copenhagen Conference

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'China Doesn't Want to Lead, and the US Cannot'

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,669208,00.html

German Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen talks to SPIEGEL about the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit, why neither China nor the US can take the lead in the fight against global warming and Germany's role in the new world order.


Norbert Röttgen: First and foremost, the result is a great disappointment. But one should not overlook the fact that one thing has been achieved and secured: The goal of keeping global warming from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius is included in the closing document and there is a stated desire to provide aid worth billions for sustainable development in developing nations. China has also agreed for the first time to allow its emissions cuts to be tracked. We agreed to this because it is better than doing nothing. We will now continue on this basis. The alternative would have been a total collapse of the climate protection process.
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Röttgen: There is no disguising the fact that the outcome does not meet our criteria for success, and it is miles away from what we consider to be urgently necessary. If you want to call that failure, then I can understand that -- even if I do not entirely share that view.
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Röttgen: The chancellor and I have seen up close that in some quarters there is great interest in seeing the UN's climate protection process fail completely. Therefore, it can be dangerous to talk everything down. Those who always talk about the conference using only the vocabulary of failure must be careful not to herald the end of international climate protection efforts. The brutal disappointment, which I also feel myself, should not cause us to become resigned. On the contrary, it has now become more urgent than ever that we find solutions.
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Röttgen: Emerging economies, led by China, were not willing to commit themselves to CO2 reduction targets as a part of their foreign policy or to join the common political will. With the United States, the problems were domestic in nature. The political conditions are lacking there for the country to be part of a global framework. Both countries are not prepared, for different reasons, to solve the problem on the basis of reciprocal obligations. Both seem to consider national politics to be more important. (more)

[GliderGuider]

1. +100 for Röttgen's (generally) clear-eyed, clear-minded assessment.

I especially appreciate his recognition that there was a global power shift on display in the events at Copenhagen.

In the United States, the country's political and economic elite know that the hour has arrived in which the US, for environmental and economic reasons, needs to follow the path that will lead it to becoming a CO2-neutral society. But this elite is unable to secure majority support for that approach. Too many people are unwilling to follow them because they prefer to have cheap money to consume, and they don't want to limit their CO2 emissions, so that they can continue to do things their way. The elite believe they will lose the majority if they try to explain the energy issue. So I do not believe there is a conscious American-Chinese alliance. It is more a case of two forms of weakness coming together.

However, I'm entirely unconvinced that America's economic elite want their economy to go CO2-neutral, as much as they might recognize its hour has come round at last. Blaming it on the elite being unable to get "majority support" is diplomatic dissembling. The ones who most want cheap money are the large corporations themselves, and the politicians they own.

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2. I think he has a somewhat idealized view

of how American society operates. Europeans seem to believe us when we prate about Life, Liberty and Constitutional Democracy. The Germans, who we mentored so gracefully after WWII are particularly susceptible in this regard. They don't fully appreciate just how dissolute and disfunctional America has become in the last 40 years. I think Christopher Lasch was right. Our elites have bailed on the idea of Democracy. Even the courts (maybe Especially the courts) seem to think the Constitution is mainly for the protection of Corporations and the Unitary Executive State.