Wall Street Journal: Copenhagen Climate Summit Now Pointless

The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial published today, said the upcoming climate summit in Denmark next month has become pointless as nations have offered their concerns about climate change but have not enacted policies that could lead to dramatic reductions of GHGs.

Wrote the Journal: "The environmental lobby is blaming Copenhagen's pre-emptive collapse on the Senate's failure to ram through a cap-and-trade scheme like the House did in June, arguing that 'the world' won't make commitments until the U.S. does. But there will always be one excuse or another, given that developing countries like China and India will never be masochistic enough to subject their economies to the West's climate neuroses. Meanwhile, Europe has proved with Kyoto that the only emissions quotas it will accept are those that don't actually have to be met."

The Journal pointed out that President Obama had pledged to avert delays, but it was President George W. Bush who had actually focused on meaningful ways to reduce GHG emissions while not endangering the economy. The Journal concluded: "Of course, the pointlessness of Copenhagen will now become part of Mr. Obama's argument that the Senate must inflict cap and tax on the U.S., as well as a justification for the EPA's nondemocratic carbon crackdown via clean-air regulation. If he and we are lucky, however, the Senate will fail to act too, the EPA will get tied up in court, and the economy will recover faster without the looming burden of higher energy taxes."