Copenhagen Postmortem

Some bits from a postmortem of the Copenhagen Conference, at The Road From Copenhagen http://www.nature.com/climate/2010/1002/full/climate.2010.09.html

"So far, very few people are willing to pay substantial amounts of money to avoid uncertain and distant global warming, and government policy reflects that reality. Governments, to be sure, have made this even worse through their inability to reach even basic effective agreements — as was evident in Copenhagen. But the underlying cause is a basic lack of public interest in addressing the problem."
David G. Victor, Stanford University, California

"Copenhagen was a landmark event for at least two reasons. First, the global policymaking elite assembled there confirmed that the scientific evidence on global warming is the frame of reference for all climate-protection strategies. Second, after almost 20 years of lofty announcements and sustainability kitsch, the meeting made brutally clear how little the respective sovereign states are willing to contribute to the well-being of humankind."
John Schellnhuber, climate advisor to the German government and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, Germany

"It is time to focus much more directly on the decarbonization of the global economy. This means improving energy efficiency and expanding low-carbon energy supply. These actions will result not from treaties but from processes of innovation implemented over many, many decades in a frustrating and incremental process."
Roger Pielke Jr, University of Colorado, Boulder