Whatever Chris Huhne says, Durban hasn’t changed anything

This morning the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) told us that the climate summit in Durban, which concluded over the weekend, has been ‘heralded a success’. As they say, the ‘talks resulted in a decision to adopt the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol next year in return for a roadmap to a global legal agreement covering all parties for the first time’. Should anyone be heralding that as some kind of step forward? Was I wrong to be sceptical last week?

As it happens, the various parties were actually trying to secure that ‘global legal agreement’, covering all of them, two years ago in Copenhagen — not just talking about securing it in the future. The new roadmap, the ‘Durban Platform’, merely pledges an agreement by 2015, and succeeds the Bali Roadmap that was agreed four years ago and pledged an agreement by 2009. Richard Tol has