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Saturday 19th December 2009

Triumph in Hopenchangen

Triumph in Hopenchangen: the Future of Future Meetings Is Assured!

An historic agreement has apparently been reached at COP-15 in Hopenchangen. Having read the draft text, it appears to be nearly as historic as some of the earlier historic agreements achieved after heroic efforts at the last several COPS.

It seems that President Barack Obama has made almost as much progress by attending the COP as President George W. Bush made at earlier COPs without attending. The world will now congratulate and thank President Obama for pulling the world back from the brink just as they expressed their gratitude to President Bush.

Of course, as President Obama said at his press conference, it's going to take a lot more work and--surprise--many more meetings. Here's what the President said: "We hope [these decisions] will bring about a result which, if not what we expected from this meeting, may still be a way of salvaging something and paving the way to another meeting next year."

Hopenchangen has thus guaranteed the future of future meetings! If the UNFCCC wants to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions, I hope they will consider teleconferencing. If they don't, then they are soon going to run out of glamorous cities and resorts in which to meet. They'll have to start revisiting the locations of past COPs.

There was one little ray of hope in President Obama's remarks at his press conference. In thanking India for their role in the negotiations, the President observed that hundreds of millions of Indians don't have more electricity and that he understood that they need more energy, not less, in order to reach decent standards of living. Yes, the world is not energy rich. It's energy poor. That is a much bigger challenge than global warming, and focusing on global warming obstructs progress on increasing access to energy.

Myron Ebell is Director of Energy & Global Warming Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute