Whatever happened to Hopenhagen???

Rex Murphy on the nothingness from Copenhagen...

But however doomed the effort, it is worth the strain to re-summon the spectre of the Copenhagen festival. The prelude to the event was a blizzard, a windstorm, a tsunami of worldwide press attention. The myriad and extremely well-orchestrated voices of climate alarmism had warned the world of its importance. Copenhagen was make or break for the planet. It was do or die. Either Copenhagen would prove to be a greater Kyoto, a summit that crafted binding resolutions on the carbon-belching nations of the world, or it would be but a little while that we passed the “tipping point,” and poor Mother Gaia and her shielding atmosphere would be sent inexorably on the path to ecological doom. Island states would be deluged, a new tropics would settle over our northern climes, millions would be displaced or worse and rogue mankind would have missed its last best chance to halt the sultry drift into global ruin.

The buildup to the Copenhagen conference had better writers than the Book of Revelations (and certainly better press management). All that was missing from the drum-roll of anticipation for the summit was a walk-on part for The Great Whore of Babylon to add a little lurid colour to its vision of meteorological apocalypse.

And then the summit met. Forty-five thousand of the most professionally worried people on the planet, jetted and limousined their way, with a blissful unconsciousness of the titantic carbon propulsion it took to get them there, into Copenhagen for two weeks. They yammered. They press-released. They fossil-awarded like mad. And they went home. Finis.

That was it.

Three days after the great gloom-bazaar, it was hard to find a sentient human being on this threatened planet who had a word to say, or a thought to waste, on Copenhagen. If I knew the Latin for “What happened?” (and I am for once unwilling to Google-cheat for the knowledge) this is where I’d drop it. After all this splendid fanfare, after so glorious an overture — what happened to the symphony?