to ratify a legally binding treaty coming out of Copenhagen.

The summit was an overall failure, but at least Obama and Hillary walked away with something.

See: The TPP.

It's not legally a treaty. It's a series of "executive actions" that only require a simple majority.

The same game can be played with other "treaties".

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/excerpt-obama-on-disappointment-in-copenhagen/

Additionally, what had been done was that we had nearly eliminated the possibility of working with China. You may not have followed the Bali conference in 2007, but its main positive outcome was a call for goals for both developed and developing nations that recognized that they had to be constructed differently. John Kerry had a lot to do with that accomplishment through his discussions with both the Chines and Indians - for which he actually was praised at both Senate and House committees by the Bush administration. At Bali, both Gore and Kerry raised expectations for Copenhagen when either a Democrat or McCain would likely be President.

At Indiana University, speaking on foreign policy, John Kerry spoke of the low expectations that Obama had when Kerry became Secretary of State.

To be honest, when I became Secretary of State, I was told that climate change was not likely to be a promising area for diplomacy. And China was a big part of the reason, because we had been completely opposed to each other at the last global meeting on climate in Copenhagen, and China was leading the charge of 77 nations to say your responsibility, not ours. China and the United States are now the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world, just shy of 50 percent of all the gases. But earlier efforts at cooperation were nonstarters.

So shortly after I was sworn in in that February date that the president mentioned, I think I went to China in late March, early April. And I had called them two weeks earlier, called my counterpart and said, “Look, here’s what we need to do. We need to come together. We’ve got to find a way to work on this. And when I come, I have a plan. We’re going to lay it down, and let’s see if we can do this.” I proposed the start of regular, formal discussions with China that could break down the barriers and begin to build up our capacity to work together, and laid out every aspect of the issue in a systematic way.

Last fall, I visited – I invited the Chinese state councilor to my hometown of Boston to talk about what more our nations could do together in order to tackle the problem. And then in January, after we’d laid the groundwork, President Obama went to Beijing for further talks. The result was a spectacle that few expected: The American and Chinese presidents standing side-by-side in the Great Hall in Beijing to announce their nations’ respective – their agreement to announce their nations’ respective greenhouse gas emissions targets for the years to come.

The substance mattered. It was a dramatic moment of transformation, where China and the United States joined together, and it took away the excuse from less-developed countries. And the symbolic breakthrough of this coordination was bigger than many of us maybe even anticipated. Since then, every major economy in the world and 150 nations have come forward with their own set of targets or, in the case of India, unveiled a plan to make massive new investments in alternative energy.


http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/10/248257.htm

The US/China pact reflects what could be done to jump start an agreement that will lead to something that either can get or will not need Senate approval. Podesta, who worked on some of the details of this agreement had also developed in 2013 the Obama plan to make a difference using executive actions rather than something legislated. That Podesta is heading her campaign gives me more confidence that as President she might be decent on this issue than anything she personally has done.

I think that Copenhagen was a wasted opportunity. It might be that neither Obama or Clinton had the passion of a Gore or Kerry on this issue and did not want to expend the political capital that it would have required. I do think that had an agreement been reached at the end of 2009 that really did follow the principles agreed to at Bali, it could have been passed.

I followed the Senate work on climate change led by Kerry and Boxer. The fact is the Senators did not split on party lines. Many of the Democrats against it were from coal states. At that point, the tea party had not yet emerged - as they would the following summer. If there were an agreement with countries like China and India involved -- I think it would have been tough, but like the START treaty, I think Kerry and Lugar might have been able to round up the Senators needed. (I think it would have been tough - in early 2010 for a Democrat to vote against a climate change treaty.)

eom

Like everything else, polite noises were made while the reality was so far from it.

Now we're 6 more years into it, possibly past the tipping point...and wondering if the 1% will get out of the way for once so we can save their asses...again.