The Copenhagen Disaster: How easy to blame China

EcoLogics breaks a self-imposed hibernation to comment on the disastrous outcome of Copenhagen:

Let’s be very clear: the future that awaits us in the era of the Chinese empire that is fast replacing its American counterpart is grim—very grim. Even if one is critical of the systematic Sinophobia that characterises U.S. and European media representations of most matters Chinese, it seems very clear that the following decades will make the authoritarianism, and the culture of corruption associated with Anglo-American neoliberalism seem meek and mild by comparison to what is coming. Chinese rulers have been, and will in all probability continue to be absolutely ruthless. Many have also been shown to be corrupt.

That said, the current effort on the part of British and U.S. spinmeisters to blame China (‘and a few other countries in Latin America’) for the abject failure of the Copenhagen talks is as foolish as trying to say that New Labour’s Ed Miliband played a key role in ‘saving’ some kind of agreement. Both versions are not only disingenuous, but extraordinarily convenient to the cause of the selfsame neoliberal forces that Miliband represents, and which have worked so hard to scupper any truly meaningful agreement. If you want to get a sense of what really is the outcome of the deal, and how it was achieved, have a read of Joss Garman’s ‘Copenhagen: Historic Failure that will Live in Infamy‘.

EcoLogics’ one proviso is that Garman is wrong—or is playing politics—when his article singles out Ed Miliband for praise. The following excerpt from the Guardian pretty much sums up the attitude and true stance of New Labour, behind all of its quasi-green grandstanding:

Last night Miliband was being credited with helping to rescue the summit from disaster. He had been preparing to go to bed at 4am, after the main accord had been agreed, only to be called by officials and warned that several countries were threatening to veto its signature. Miliband returned to the conference centre in time to hear Sudanese delegate Lumumba Di-Aping comparing the proposed agreement to the Holocaust. He said the deal “asked Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries”. A furious Miliband intervened and dismissed Di-Aping’s claims as “disgusting”.

Just what is ‘disgusting’? The fact that Lumumba Di-Aping spoke the truth? Or that he spoke the truth ‘out of turn’, and in so doing broke the spell of lies that had already begun to be spun by Britain, the United States, and the small group of signatories of the Judas-like betrayal of Kyoto? We have here the true measure of the cynicism, and hypocrisy of New Labour.