George Monbiot’s Alternative Universe

George Monbiot isn’t everyone’s cup of char, not least in these parts. I don’t write much about climate change because the subject* bores me and so I’m happy for Monbiot to promise that the end of the world is just around the corner and I don’t spend too much time worrying about it. I suspect, for what little it’s worth, that he’s an anti-Cassandra: wrong but believed.

Anyway, I do write about American politics so I feel confident in saying that Monbiot doesn’t appear to know anything about the realities of life in Washington. In his Guardian column this week he complains that Copenhagen was a dud and that:

The immediate reason for the failure of the talks can be summarised in two words: Barack Obama.

The man elected to put aside childish things proved to be as susceptible to immediate self-interest as any other politician. Just as George Bush did in the approach to the Iraq war, Obama went behind the backs of the UN and most of its member states and assembled a coalition of the willing to strike a deal that outraged the rest of the world.