Der Spiegel: The Durban Climate Agreement 'Is Almost Useless'

[hatrack]

3. We're out of time - YOY increases in atmospheric GHG content in 2010 were 5.95%

Granted, there will assuredly be fluctuations going forward. However, I'd be willing to bet that the trend is not going to flatten out or go negative any time soon, whatever the pronouncements of diplomats or however many CCS pilot projects AEP or Duke propose and later scrap.

Extending (for the sake of illustration) the trend of 5.95% over time, today's annual GHG output of 10 billion tons becomes 16.8 billion tons by 2020, the time the treaty will ostensibly enter into force, and will double to 20 billion tons by 2023.

Is there anybody who thinks that dealing with an annual GHG output of 16.8 billion tons (or 20 billion tons) is going to be easier than dealing with an annual GHG output of 10 billion tons?

For that matter, is there anybody who thinks that dealing with an annual output of 10 billion tons would have been easier, or preferable, to dealing with an annual output of 6 billion tons, which is what it was at the time of the creation of the original protocol?

To borrow a phrase from the Japanese government in early December 1941, "things are automatically going to happen" - and we're not going to be able to control of any of them.