Mark Lynas writes for the Guardian that despite the general consensus that Obama screwed up Copenhagen, it was in fact China who killed the process

Here’s what actually went on late last Friday night, as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between Gordon Brown and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. The Danish prime minister chaired, and on his right sat Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the UN. Probably only about 50 or 60 people, including the heads of state, were in the room. I was attached to one of the delegations, whose head of state was also present for most of the time.

What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country’s foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world’s most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his “superiors”.

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To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China’s representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. “Why can’t we even mention our own targets?” demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil’s representative too pointed out the illogicality of China’s position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why – because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord’s lack of ambition.

China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak “as soon as possible”. The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exceptions of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks popping in every corner of the world.

I’m sure this isn’t the last word on what happend, but it’s an interesting bit of data.  Mark’s conclusion is that China doesn’t want to bother with dealing with climate change because its economy is primarily coal-fired, and any cuts in emissions will necessarily lead to a diminishment in its ability to expand.

So this seems to be in the news lately; the government is providing subsidies for people to trade in their old cars for newer ones with better fuel efficiency.  Slate just published a helpful article which runs the numbers on both the environmental efficiency of replacing a car and the cost effectiveness of the program:

The environmental rationale behind the Car Allowance Rebate System is pretty straightforward: The government offers a few thousand bucks to any consumer who’s willing to scrap a low-mileage gas guzzler and buy a more fuel-efficient replacement. That’s supposed to help reduce our dependence on nonrenewable petroleum and limit the carbon dioxide emissions associated with driving. At first glance, the numbers look pretty good: Burning a gallon of gasoline produces about 19.4 pounds of CO₂, so if you if you swapped a clunker that got 18 miles per gallon for a new car that got 27.5 mpg (the current average fuel economy standard for passenger cars) and drove it for 12,000 miles (the average distance an American car travels annually), you would personally save a little more than two tons of CO₂ from being emitted in one year. Multiply that by the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve already participated in the program, and the savings look even more impressive.

It’s not quite as simple as that, however. As you point out in your question, it takes a lot of energy—and makes a lot of CO₂—to manufacture a brand-new car. (The same logic applies to replacing your household appliances or switching from a Corolla to a Prius.) According to William Chameides, dean of Duke University’s Nicholas School for the Environment, making a new car produces 3.5 to 12.4 tons of carbon dioxide, with an average of 6.7 tons per vehicle. The average new car would therefore need to save about 700 gallons of gas to offset the carbon costs of its manufacturing.

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According to an early analysis from the Web site Cash for Clunkers Information—which estimated an average fuel-economy increase of 69 percent and total sales of 250,000 cars—the program would cut overall fuel consumption by about 76 million gallons a year and carbon dioxide emissions by about 737,200 tons annually. Using Chameides’ figures, it would produce about 1.7 million tons of CO₂ to manufacture those 250,000 cars, so we won’t really see those savings until a little more than two years from now.

Was spending $1 billion a particularly cost-effective way to achieve those CO₂ reductions? Probably not. Assuming the above calculations are correct and that each consumer keeps his or her car for 10 years, then the total savings should be a little less than 5.7 million tons of carbon dioxide. That means each ton of carbon dioxide would be worth about $175.53 to the U.S. government. As the Washington Policy Center pointed out on its blog in June, a ton of CO₂ currently goes for about $17.50 on the European Climate Exchange.

It’s always nice to have actual numbers to talk about – if this type of analysis interests you I’d highly recommend downloading Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air, a great book that’s available free online and is full of fascinating statistics about energy use and climate change.

After reading Tom’s post and thinking about it a little, I started to wonder what would be the best way to go about participating in the recent spirit of change.  The traditional way to do this is to join a PAC or an industry group or give money to representatives in hopes of securing some access.  But that was before the internet.

Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Stanford, and has been one of the guiding influences in the copyleft movement.  He’s recently stopped working on intellectual property issues (he hates that term btw) and has started focusing on the influence of money on politics (a nice way of saying pervasive corruption).  His primary tools of influence?  Web pages.

His first page is Change Congress, a home base of sorts for people interested in dealing with the corruption issue.  It’s mostly a quick way for people to register their support, make dontations and get their representative’s contact info.

More recently, he’s started OpenGovernment.org, which seems to be aimed at persuading the new administration to use technology to open the governing process to the public as much as possible.

Obama’s campaign itself has been an excellent example of how the internet can facilitate grassroots movements – it was designed to be highly interactive and to facilitate irl meetings between supporters while providing easily accessible information regarding ‘the cause’.  After the election he put up the cleverly named Change.gov which I haven’t spent much time looking over, but seems to be an attempt to transform the vibrant campaign web community into some form of governing community.

So where am I going with all this?  The internet provides an ideal method to integrate advocacy, petitioning, community organizing and fundraising.  If we can develop a concise and attractive message, it should be extremely easy to get that message out.  Why limit ourselves to local representatives when we can work at multiple scales simultaneously?