65 Days Until Copenhagen

The Obama administration concedes that US climate change legislation will not be enacted before Copenhagen, setting the stage for a US commitment to global conditions, side-stepping Congress in the process. Ingenious tactic or failure of bureaucracy? Meanwhile, the US and EU have teamed up in an attempt to disband the Kyoto Protocol and initiate a new regime through the Copenhagen negotiations, which would hold developing nations, led by India, to the same binding emissions reductions targets as industrialized nations, and without financial or technical assistance. With both camps firmly establishing disparate and extreme bargaining positions, compromise does not seem inevitable.