China fingered as Copenhagen roadblock

Mark Lynas has written a provocative article describing how (and why) China derailed and devalued the Copenhagen climate treaty process. It's international diplomacy at its worst. It's no wonder that Gordon Brown and his proxy, Ed Miliband, did not mince words when blaming China for the failure, and it's also not surprising that the Chinese delegation and premier, DID waffle and obfuscate.

Article:
Copenhagen failure is China's fault


My observations: I've said before, and you can look back in my posting record, that China will not fail externally. They are an economic superpower, and that economic superiority is built on cheap energy -- just like the Western nations did it. It's no surprise that they want to catch up and pass us. They are driven by an autocratic system, where the goals of the leaders do not get considered and evaluated by a representative government. They control the people, and much like King Edward I at Falkirk, who didn't mind firing arrows into the Scots even if he hit a few of his own infantry, too, they will sacrifice a few thousands or hundred thousands of their people toward the goal of economic success. And they will be unhindered by their own government, with lackadaisical regulations that aren't evenly enforced (if they are at all), regional level corruption that either overlooks or condones evasion of the supposed environmental regulations -- and most importantly, they will ignore the perils of climate change, such as reduced water flow in their major rivers, until such time as criticality becomes catastrophe.

Then they'll try to engineer their way out of it, like the Three Gorges Dam. And it won't work. And then millions will suffer.

The way that this could change is revolution. Truly, if the populace of China perceives the widespread abandonment of their health and safety by the autocratic leadership, then they could rise up. The best thing that could happen for the world climate, and world peace, and even the world economy, would be representative government in China. That would open up at least the possibility of environmental consciousness and environmental action. But something will have to change, pretty drastically. As long as China keeps expelling or executing dissidents, the peasants won't stand a chance, and they'll keep breathing and drinking and eating poison, and dying young. But when you have a population of 1.3 billion, the government dictatorship doesn't even view that as a significant problem.

The center will have to collapse to force China to the table.