Beware of Chinese leaders bearing grudgest

I don't think Obama had any interest in leaving Copenhagen without an accord.

Speaker after speaker from the developing world denounced the deal as a sham process fashioned behind closed doors by a club of rich countries and large emerging powers. The debate reached such a pitch that the Sudanese delegate likened the effect of the accord on poor nations to the Holocaust.

That set off a backlash and many of the smallest and most vulnerable nations, while continuing to express reservations, began falling in line behind the deal. Ultimately, all but a handful of countries — Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan and Saudi Arabia among them — went along with the decision to accept the document.

Before the parties gathered in Copenhagen, the United States and China had been sniping at each other over various aspects of the proposed agreement, particularly over American demands that Beijing agree to a system of international monitoring, through which its public promise to reduce the carbon intensity of its economy — the rate of emissions per unit of economic activity — could be verified. But as that friction was growing, there was also significant progress on sharing clean energy technology and even exchanges between American and Chinese environmental officials over ways to accurately measure greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Obama and Premier Wen Jiabao of China conducted a productive summit meeting in Beijing last month. On Thanksgiving Day, the Chinese government announced its pollution reduction target and said it would enforce it with domestic law. American officials privately said the target was too low and raised questions about the reliability of Beijing’s reporting methods, saying that some form of international monitoring would be necessary. China protested and declared that it would not sacrifice its sovereignty to an outside verification scheme.

The friction boiled over on Friday, as Mr. Obama arrived at the Copenhagen meeting.

Twice during the day, Mr. Wen sent an underling to represent him at the meetings with Mr. Obama. To make things worse, each time it was a lower-level official.

It was bad enough, said officials, describing the atmosphere later, that Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei was sitting at the table with President Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and other world leaders. But Friday afternoon, after what administration officials believed had been a constructive one-on-one meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Wen, the Chinese premier sent his special representative on climate change negotiations, Yu Qingtai, to a meeting of the leaders of major countries, including Mr. Obama.

The White House made a point of noting the snub in a statement to reporters. Mr. Obama, for his part, said to his staff: “I don’t want to mess around with this anymore. I want to talk to Wen,” according to an aide.

The White House set up an evening meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Wen. It also set up a separate meeting with Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, and Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister. The approval of those was needed to seal any climate deal.

Shortly before the appointed time of the meeting with Mr. Wen, Denis McDonough, the national security council chief of staff, and Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, arrived and were startled to find the Chinese prime minister already meeting with the leaders of the three other countries.

They alerted Mr. Obama and he rushed down to the site of the meeting.

“Mr. Premier, are you ready to see me?” Mr. Obama called from the doorway. “Are you ready?”

Despite its tense start, the meeting led to an accord that settled a number of issues, including a compromise on wording on the issue of monitoring and verification that satisfied Mr. Wen.

Mr. Obama then took the proposed text to a group of European nations whose representatives grumbled but signed off.

I'm sure the various wingers and neofools will see this as being too deferential to the inscrutable Chinese, but for the first time in a long time it looks to me that the U.S. has begun to take its rightful leadership on addressing carbon emissions. A weak accord, and far short of goals, but a deal and start nevertheless. Hmmm. Not to compare to what hopefully is a deal that gets a lot closer to its goals, health care reform, but I sense a pattern. Action's better than inertia if change is to happen.