Like a room full of schoolchildren, the delegates at the UN  Climate Talks in Bali resorted to boos, jeers, and various other public embarrassment techniques to get the United States to join the ranks of Chicken Littles and socialists on the human-induced global warming issue.

Paula Dobriansky, the United States delegate who managed to make it through most of this nursery school bullying with her head held high, finally succumbed to the taunting.

TO A New York state of mind, it was as if the well-mannered halls of the United Nations had been invaded by wrestling fans from Madison Square Garden – global diplomacy with a raucous ringside audience. Bali had its own house rules, where reverence surrendered to racket. Boos, jeers, tears – and then a most unfamiliar noise: the sound of the US saying “consensus”.

George Bush’s Washington – home to the with-us-or-agin-us administration – had backed down in a dramatic, 11th-hour concession that marked an end and a beginning. Delegates said the tension and emotion of the summit’s final moments was the culmination of seven years of frustration with the US. That era of animosity ended in a remarkable public capitulation.

“We want success here in Bali,” the US Under-Secretary of State, Paula Dobriansky, told a gathering that had seemed primed for a lynching. “We will go forward and join consensus.”

(Emphasis mine.)

When asked what led her to change her mind:

Dobriansky said she changed her mind because the developing country speakers convinced her that they were serious about acting to fight climate change. She said she did not consult Washington before changing her mind.

That usually happens when you’re having the same scenarios crammed down your throat for days on end, without so much as a differing opinion on the subject at hand, all while being taunted by a crowd who appears “primed for a lynching”. 

I’m troubled that this incredibly important decision that will dismally effect the economy and sovereignty of the United States, appears to have been left up to this single woman.   

After Dobrainsky succumbed to the jeers, there was great rejoicing:

“The mood in the room exploded. The secretary-general and the president — that just electrified the room,” said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat.

Bill Hare of environmental group Greenpeace said he believed it was the first time since 1996 that Washington had won applause at a U.N. climate meeting.

I wonder which they were more pleased with?  The fact that the US will now embrace human-induced global warming as something they can help influence, or the more likely scenario that the most powerful and wealthy nation on earth will now begin redistributing its wealth and power through UN-imposed carbon taxes and various other global legislation, thus leaving it weak and impotent, ripe for a UN overtaking.

I tend to think it’s the latter.

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