A Deal in Durban

The good news is nations reached a deal to stem climate change; the bad news is the deal’s terms could allow temperatures to rise by as much as 4 degrees centigrade. Countries will continue negotiations on a new treaty with legal force by 2015, planning to make it operational by 2020, thus ending the divide between developed countries that have long polluted and fast-growing developing nations emerging as major polluters. Africans aligned with Europeans to press China and India into the deal, suggests this essay in the Economist, and the US was largely a bystander that fretted about a climate fund for poor countries being subjected to UN process. Climate change poses the most serious threat to the world’s poor who struggle to adapt. The essay suggests that the US has abandoned its global-leadership role and can hardly demand in the future “that China, India or Brazil take bold steps for the global good, on trade or security.” – YaleGlobal