The Cancún Climate Meeting

Walter Russel Mead says it all:

What a difference a year makes.  Last year at this time, the Great Green Delusion — that the United Nations process could deliver a treaty that would stop global warming dead in its tracks — was the hottest idea in town.  Those who dissented were scorned and despised; the environmental movement and its army of press loyalists were the Great and the Good who knew how to solve the world’s problems.  120 country heads dropped whatever they were doing to catch a flight to Copenhagen: who could miss a historic moment like this?
Now, a year and two high-profile international negotiating fiascoes later, the next scheduled meeting in the UN process in Cancun, Mexico isn’t getting nearly the same kind of attention.  The New York Times will not even be sending a reporter for the full event; “What will there even be to cover in Cancun in terms of public policy or reader interest?” asks the chief climate reporter of the Washington Post.  The BBC sent 20 reporters to Copenhagen; only one will go to Cancun.

It is not just that the Cancun meeting isn’t expected to produce much.  The whole UN treaty process is increasingly being seen as a colossal and humiliating blunder. 

Read the whole article here.