Durban Debacle?

Durban, South Africa—All right, the above headline may be premature, but one big rumor here at the convention center at near 9 p.m. on Saturday night is that a critical phrase insisted on by the European Union has been changed from "begin a process to develop a Protocol or other legally binding instruments or arrangements" to "begin a process to develop legal outcomes." As arcane as it may sound first phrase preferred by the EU is lifted from the 1995  Berlin Mandate from an earlier U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting. Tellingly, the negotiating process launched by the Berlin Mandate ended up producing the Kyoto Protocol.

So rumors here say that China and India (and probably the U.S.) have countered with the far less precise phrase "legal outcomes" in order to not fall for a replay of the Berlin Mandate that would lead to a treaty that could legally bind them to make definite cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions. If the EU refuses to go along with this changed language, the EU may well refuse to make any further commitments to cut their greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.

If both of these things happen, the Durban conference would then be a near total failure from the point of view of global warming activists, even worse than the 2009 Copenhagen conference. But delegates are still talking, so the activists may still get something from the talks. More later.