The fallout from 'failing'

Everyone predicted Copenhagen would be a failure so no one's surprised by the outcome. Some form of communiqu – in this case a non-binding 'Accord' – was always on the cards given world leaders like the UK's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the US President Barack Obama would not have walked away from the summit without something to show for it.

In the lead up to the UN Summit on Climate Change, I'm sure expectations were diminished deliberately in keeping with the political maxim of 'under play, over deliver'. No one's exactly accusing delegates of over-delivering but are the headlines describing the outcome as a 'disaster', a 'cop out', 'toothless', 'hot air' completely fair?

Achieving a legally-binding treaty was always going to be tough. Apart from the complexity of negotiating a deal that met the expectations of developed and developing nations, that balanced the interests of environmental and industry groups, and set targets for emissions and temperature rises, the logistics of managing around 40,000 people was nightmarish.

The Copenhagen Accord falls wildly short of expectations and what the science dictates. While it proposes limiting global warming to 2C, it contains no targets to reduce greenhouse emissions and is not binding.

But was the entire exercise a complete failure?

Is there any significance in the fact that so many people gathered in one place to debate a contentious and world-threatening problem? No-one died, protests were relatively peaceful and people talked.

No worse perhaps than the failed World Trade Organisation's (WTO) Doha round and, while not as organised nor as civil as a World Economic Forum (WEF), the latter is not expected to reach agreement on controversial subjects.

Citizens, quite rightly, can lament the lack of action and rail against the expense involved and the environmental impact of the event:delegates left carbon footprints the size of yeti – and that's just the 120 strong Australian delegation. But isn't there a positive in 190 plus countries meeting in one place at one time to debate and discuss a world-wide issue instead of acting unilaterally or not at all? A meeting of different cultures, and nations at vastly differing stages of development. Our forebears could only dream of such a coming together.

Perhaps it is just too easy to say "it's a failure and I told you so”. But what's the point of anything if not a valiant attempt to get the planet healthy? I suspect the climate change deniers feel smug because they predicted Copenhagen would not achieve what it set out to do. But isn't this typical sidelines nya-nya?

Hot air or not, we can wonder the political fallout for Australia?

As island nations like Tuvalu are left to contemplate the idea of water lapping at their knees one day, Kevin Rudd's challenge is to see if he can recapture the climate change debate.

The UN Summit was to be the Prime Minister's grand moment on the international stage. He was to ride in on the success of his Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) legislation and play a leading role on behalf of a trail-blazing nation.

Instead, Mr Rudd is now one of a small (albeit powerful) group of leaders forced to defend a deal that doesn't even contain the targets the government presented to our Parliament.

"Not everyone will be happy," Kevin Rudd twittered on his way home. He may well have been envisioning yesterday's protest by green activists who stopped trains at the Kooragang coal export terminal in Newcastle. He also may well ask what the protesters have done that measures up to the achievement of getting a mass of people together to discuss a major problem. Let's face it, you could see the sheer slog involved, the tired faces of those negotiating, now speculate: how this compares to sitting on a pole?

The green groups are circling and Rudd can expect some overdue pressure.

Greenpeace, among others, has called on Rudd to reject the deal. This is significant given the government has kept the environmental lobby (especially the Australian Conservation Foundation) onside throughout the CPRS debate, even with its light-touch targets and tens of billions in compensation for polluters.

No doubt, the Greens are licking their lips at the possible media and electoral ramifications of the Prime Minister's position at Copenhagen. With alacrity, Senator Bob Brown issued an invitation to the government to enter into negotiations with the Greens and suggested his Deputy, Christine Milne, as a Special Adviser on Climate Change.

He must know these invitations are unlikely to be accepted even as the government weighs up the desires of those desperate for action on climate change with those voters now spooked about a spike in their electricity bills.

Oddly enough, Malcolm Turnbull's original ETS strategy might have worked for the Prime Minister: Kevin Rudd could have waited to see what the big economies and polluters did at Copenhagen and then returned, spurred on by the need for action, and – within sprinting distance of a federal election – sought a mandate for his ETS.

Now he faces an election with climate change potentially a central issue but with a 're-energised' and climate change-sceptical coalition and an electorate increasingly wary of his original scheme now that it has been pummelled by the Greens and the conservatives.