Developing nations — and China includes itself in this category — do not see why their future prosperity should be restricted without the material assistance of the nations who grew rich by exploiting fossil fuels in the 19th and 20th centuries. The deal, such as it is, will depend on the rich countries agreeing to limit and reduce their own CO2 emissions, and to transfer enormous sums of money via a Green Climate Fund to developing countries to assist their CO2 reductions while not impairing their economic development. The worthy recipients of this largesse meanwhile recognise:

The importance of promoting, protecting and respecting all human rights, including the right to development, and the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, climate induced migrants, refugees and internally displaced peoples, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations with due respect to sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, as well as promoting health, gender equality and the empowerment of women, while taking into account the needs of local communities, intergenerational equity concerns, and the integrity of ecosystems and Mother Earth, when taking action to address climate change.

I will spare readers more of this stuff. The utopian system encapsulated in the COP21 agreement is intended not only to reduce carbon dioxide emissions but also to transform the global economy on international socialist lines, starting with a massive transfer of wealth from developed to developing world.

Between now and 2020, the Green Climate Fund is supposed to transfer at least $100 billion a year in support of developing nations’ decarbonisation efforts. Before COP21 opened, the GCF had received pledges of $70 million (0.07 per cent of the total). Undaunted, Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican Marxist academic who is nominally in charge of COP21, now suggests that the developed world should transfer $1 trillion a year. To adapt the late Senator Everett Dirksen: “A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

Never mind the numbers, just think what will happen to the cash. Some will be devoted to supporting the secretariat and subsidiary bodies set up pursuant to Articles 13 and 15 of the Agreement. But once indoor relief for the global chattering classes has been established, the rest of the money will be heading south, literally and figuratively. Most developing nations have problems with corruption and the rule of law. Who will guarantee that GCF money is spent the way the climateers of COP21 intended? It is all very well, heartening even, for the representatives of 158 countries to sign up to this complex and mind-bogglingly ambitious set of worthy aims. But words will mean little once the money starts arriving in Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Zambia and the rest.

Even if corruption were not a problem, the difficulties of operating such a massive system have been amply illustrated by the abject failure over the past decade of the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS).