Copenhagen Climate Summit May End in Bitterness, Editorials Say

In editorials about the Copenhagen climate summit today, the Washington Post and the New York Times noted that time was running out for the Copenhagen climate summit with little sign that an agreement was near. The summit concludes tomorrow.

The Wall Street Journal said the primary impact of any carbon cap-and-trade treaty would not be on the climate but on the global economy. The Post said the summit "was supposed to produce a landmark accord on climate change. It won't. Hopes for a binding treaty died weeks before the meeting. And with some observers terming the proceedings 'Constipagen,' it's all too easy to wonder whether the conferees will even be able to conclude a less ambitious political agreement."

The Times said "most of the news from Copenhagen is grim. With only two days left to go, negotiations for a new climate treaty were stumbling toward stalemate. We hope President Obama and other leaders will realize how much is at stake and pull off a last-minute breakthrough." The Journal said that cap and trade was a "scheme that would impose heavy carbon taxes and allowances on U.S. industries, which would then have an incentive to move overseas themselves, or to sell those allowances to overseas companies that could use them to become more competitive against U.S. companies."