So the Doha climate conference ended as it began, with disappointment.
There were hopes that the host nation, Qatar (The world's biggest carbon emitter per head), were going to open the conference by announcing bold plans for cutting their emissions (Wow, what an impact that would have had!). Instead, it appears they'd attempted to broker a regional agreement between Middle East countries and failed because of lack of agreement. Which, I assume, led the Qataris to believe they didn't have to make any unilateral commitments....
In a way, this is climate conferences in miniature: A group of nations failing to agree how to tackle climate change (which they all say they want to do) and walking away with a collective sigh of relief - The status quo has been preserved for another year.
Or am I being too cynical here?....Nah! Politicians are masters of seeming to be doing something when, in fact, they're planning on doing nothing.
The Durban climate agreement gave leaders of the rich nations plus the likes of China and India the perfect opportunity to agree precisely nothing until 2015. Doha demonstrated that all too well.
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