As the myriad delgates wend their various snowy ways from the Copenhagen Global Warming Summit, what is the overall assessment?

Not UN, but UM.

Unambiguous Mess.

Key aspects of the whole thing were a priori perverse from a Basic Diplomatic Technique point of view.

Let’s audaciously and even hopefully assume that the science is settled (which it isn’t), and that we all agreed that human pouring out of carbon emissions is really likely to do heavy global damage in decades to come.

And that we all agree that we need to cut man-made emissions.

If the real aim was to deliver a significant global new deal on emissions reductions (as opposed to eg boosting the role of the UN and/or redefining global order as ends in themselves), this was a bizarre and doomed way to set about it.

Look at this Wikipedia list of heavyweight global emitters (lists by countries according to per capita emissions are very different, but not really relevant when it comes to Saving the Planet – it’s total emissions (and the trends of growth of emissions) which matter, not where they come from):

1  China 6,103,493 21.5 % 4.57
2  United States[11] 5,752,289 20.2 % 18.67
–  European Union[12] 3,914,359 13.8 % 7.84
3  Russia 1,564,669 5.5 % 11.03
4  India 1,510,351 5.3 % 1.29
5  Japan 1,293,409 4.6 % 10.14
6  Germany 805,090 2.8 %
7  United Kingdom 568,520 2.0 %
8  Canada 544,680 1.9 %
9  South Korea 475,248 1.7 %
10  Italy[13] 474,148 1.7 %

South Africa is at 13th place, providing 1.5% of global emissions – the most polluting African country by some way, but still not that important overall.

These figures measure emissions by burning fossil fuels. Add in carbon emissions caused by deforestation which exposes peaty soil which then dries and emits CO2, and Indonesia (19th in the list above) soars towards the top of the charts as the world’s third biggest emitter.

So to make a strategic difference, we need a negotiation aimed at a possible treaty involving (say) the top twenty heavy emitting countries alone. No UN. No NGOs. No EU. No-one else.

They could sit in relative seclusion somewhere and work up robust ideas on a comprehensive set of deals – transparency, rich-to-poor subsidies, moves to cheaper energy sources and so on – without a howling circus outside.

Plus any deal reached by those countries (including all UN Security Council members plus a majority of the world’s population) would have such political authority and technical weight behind it that the rest of the world would have little choice but to accept it.

Indeed, if the issue is (as we all agree) so urgent, the rest of the world would be wildly applauding that the countries causing the vast mass of the problem had shown leadership and responsibility and taken real steps towards solving it.

Instead we saw a globalised free-for-all which predictably degenerated into an uncontrolled and squalid haggle in which everyone wanted a bung to sign up.

Since the number of countries which can (a) afford a bung, and (b) might be inclined to pay one is pretty small, the haggle turned into farce, with populist charlatans like Chavez and Mugabe ranting insultingly against ‘capitalism’, and no-one having the nerve to turn off their microphones and bundle them back out into the snow.

So the whole thing was structured to fail, with the EU noisily in the lead.

If you are President Obama, how do you salvage something from this wreckage?

Cut a small deal, any deal, proclaim victory, dash for home.

But there has to be something in it for the USA. No American President is going to throw money into a doubtful international pot without some way of being able to claim that some of the money is being spent honestly now and then.

Hence Obama’s statement insisting that without respectable verification arrangements a deal would be "empty words on a page".

A typical punchy ‘Western’ politician’s sound-bite, which had one important advantage – that it was true.

But also one serious disadvantage – that it allowed various undemocratic regimes to pretend to have a hissy fit at this insulting impugning of their sovereignty, including China.

A US blunder? Or just part of the trite negotiating mind-games going on?

Finally, it all ended in comical gyrations, culminating in Obama sitting down with the Brazilian, Chinese, Indian and South African leaders to hammer out something or other among themselves, far from the madding crowd of NGOs and all the other leaders.

Thus it came about in spasm of post-modern irony that a small self-proclaimed group of countries defined the main outcome on behalf of everyone else, with the European Unionists (collectively the third biggest CO2 emitter) left outside. Ditto Russia, left holding its cute little red reset button handed over by Hillary Clinton. And Indonesia, a huge emitter. 

The progressive-Left symbolism of this is magnificent: no Dead White Men (especially those sanctimonious Europeans) spoiling the photo-shot!

We decide – Dead White Men pay!

A New World arises.

The bickering starts. The UK is pointing the finger of blame at different suspects, including sundry leftist regimes from Latin America: Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba. A bit late now for New Labour to realise what we are dealing with here?

* * * * *

Of course there is a lot of science in climate change. Including physics.

Remember how the EU is a vital and valuable multiplier of UK interests?

How about this:

Europe came to Copenhagen as the bloc that potentially stood to lose the most. The fear was that the US and other countries would refuse to cut their emissions further, but the EU would be forced by public pressure, or by the US … this would leave it carrying most of the cuts and economically compromised.

The EU need not have worried.

No country forced its hand on emission cuts in the negotiations, and it was itself comprehensively split, with countries such as Poland and even Germany reportedly blocking moves by Britain and others to put the cuts on the table.  

Once again President Obama dissed the UK, despite (or because of?) the Prime Minister’s undoubted work and rhetoric to get a ‘better’ deal:

Unfortunately for Brown he did not receive a name check from Obama in his roll call of those to be thanked for their efforts to reach a deal.

Conclusion?

The worst-run negotiation in human history.

Because the issue at stake is by definition ‘global’, everyone demands that everyone takes ‘responsibility’ for tackling it.

And so no-one takes any responsibility.

Small countries irresponsibly exploit a unique chance to act as spoilers to get bribes.

Larger countries mainly responsible for causing the problem exploit the chaos to shrug off any real responsibility for doing something about it. 

And the European Union for all its huffing and puffing ‘leadership’ was left peering through the window as the USA, China and India did what they liked, with the Brazilians and South Africans there to let Obama tick the Latin American and African political correctness boxes.

Can anything be more incompetent in raw diplomatic technique terms than this?

All in all good news, according to some:

If India, China, America, Brazil (and Uncle Tom Cobley and all) carry on with “business as usual”, then anything Europe does to cut its emissions is irrelevant, at best: it will cause pain and hardship for its own citizens to no purpose whatever.

So let’s toast the negotiators of Copenhagen. By failing so spectacularly, they have presented us with a wonderful Christmas present. All we have to do is open it.