Having begun this thread I was gobsmacked to read this from Ben Webster in The Times today.

Loopholes in a UN agreement on climate change will allow China, India and other emerging economies to delay setting ­targets to cut their overall emissions.

Britain and other European Union member states must now decide whether to continue with plans to make ambitious pledges next year to cut emissions by 2030 without any guarantee that countries with far larger carbon footprints will follow suit.

China weakened the wording of the agreement during a 36-hour final negotiating session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Warsaw. This meant that the convention ended without setting a clear course towards the global deal on emissions that is scheduled to be signed in Paris in December 2015.

A suggestion by the US that each country should propose emissions targets for discussion by March 2015 was watered down by adding that only those nations “ready to do so” would observe the deadline. It was also weakened when the word “commitments” was replaced with the weaker “contributions”.

The changes were made to accommodate a group of 130 developing nations that argue that Britain and other countries that were early to industrialise have a “historical responsibility” for emissions. The 130 countries are resisting setting their own binding targets, saying that they must be allowed to continue expanding their economies.

I was gobsmacked by any surprise expressed, of course.

If China has really made it easier for 129 countries less powerful than itself to also do what's right for their poorest, great. But the narrative of man-made climate victimhood preached by the Philippines delegate and lapped up by the 130, plus scamming of most of the resultant handouts into the hands of greedy corporations, rather than genuine and useful adaptation, plus the dead hand of World Bank loan terms and other forms of green murder, means that's not completely clear.

Don Keiller shows not everyone was buying Fantasy China, even in 2007:

A rare moment of truth.
In her new autobiography, The Bird and the Beeb, the broadcaster Liz Kershaw recalls a surprising moment of honesty on the subject from Tony Blair in 2007.

With the microphones switched off, the presenter was chatting about green issues when Blair suddenly sighed. “Liz, we in the UK could shut everything down and turn everything off,” he said. “And within two years all our efforts would have been wiped out by what’s happening in China now.” Kershaw says she hasn’t bothered to switch off her television since.

So we have to adapt, right, and not shoot ourselves in the foot with meaningless green gestures? This could of course have been appended to Robin Guenier's more recent Current climate policy is pointless. But why not get the ex-prime minister himself to chip in there?

Thanks, geronimo, but it's really h/t Don's eagle eye. Isn't it amazing though what someone like Blair was aware of seven years ago? Getting EM to understand is one thing. (Good luck with that!) But why can't our leaders come clean and say that there's no answer to reducing worldwide CO2 emissions in our puny green efforts? We don't control China or the other countries you mention and all attempts at negotiation have failed. Facing reality is what leadership is about.