A woman listens to Barack Obama's speech at the Copenhagen climate change conference on 18 December. Photograph: Axel Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful “deal” so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.

China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world's poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait. The failure was “the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility”, said Christian Aid. “Rich countries have bullied developing nations,” fumed Friends of the Earth International.

All very predictable, but the complete opposite of the truth. Even George Monbiot, writing in yesterday's Guardian, made the mistake of singly blaming Obama. But I saw Obama fighting desperately to salvage a deal, and the Chinese delegate saying “no”, over and over again. Monbiot even approvingly quoted the Sudanese delegate Lumumba Di-Aping, who denounced the Copenhagen accord as “a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries”.

Sudan behaves at the talks as a puppet of China; one of a number of countries that relieves the Chinese delegation of having to fight its battles in open sessions. It was a perfect stitch-up. China gutted the deal behind the scenes, and then left its proxies to savage it in public.

Here's what actually went on late last Friday night, as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between Gordon Brown and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. The Danish prime minister chaired, and on his right sat Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the UN. Probably only about 50 or 60 people, including the heads of state, were in the room. I was attached to one of the delegations, whose head of state was also present for most of the time.

What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world's most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his “superiors”.

Shifting the blame

To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China's representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. “Why can't we even mention our own targets?” demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil's representative too pointed out the illogicality of China's position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why – because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord's lack of ambition.

China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak “as soon as possible”. The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exceptions of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks popping in every corner of the world.

Strong position

So how did China manage to pull off this coup? First, it was in an extremely strong negotiating position. China didn't need a deal. As one developing country foreign minister said to me: “The Athenians had nothing to offer to the Spartans.” On the other hand, western leaders in particular – but also presidents Lula of Brazil, Zuma of South Africa, Calderón of Mexico and many others – were desperate for a positive outcome. Obama needed a strong deal perhaps more than anyone. The US had confirmed the offer of $100bn to developing countries for adaptation, put serious cuts on the table for the first time (17% below 2005 levels by 2020), and was obviously prepared to up its offer.

Above all, Obama needed to be able to demonstrate to the Senate that he could deliver China in any global climate regulation framework, so conservative senators could not argue that US carbon cuts would further advantage Chinese industry. With midterm elections looming, Obama and his staff also knew that Copenhagen would be probably their only opportunity to go to climate change talks with a strong mandate. This further strengthened China's negotiating hand, as did the complete lack of civil society political pressure on either China or India. Campaign groups never blame developing countries for failure; this is an iron rule that is never broken. The Indians, in particular, have become past masters at co-opting the language of equity (”equal rights to the atmosphere”) in the service of planetary suicide – and leftish campaigners and commentators are hoist with their own petard.

With the deal gutted, the heads of state session concluded with a final battle as the Chinese delegate insisted on removing the 1.5C target so beloved of the small island states and low-lying nations who have most to lose from rising seas. President Nasheed of the Maldives, supported by Brown, fought valiantly to save this crucial number. “How can you ask my country to go extinct?” demanded Nasheed. The Chinese delegate feigned great offence – and the number stayed, but surrounded by language which makes it all but meaningless. The deed was done.

China's game

All this raises the question: what is China's game? Why did China, in the words of a UK-based analyst who also spent hours in heads of state meetings, “not only reject targets for itself, but also refuse to allow any other country to take on binding targets?” The analyst, who has attended climate conferences for more than 15 years, concludes that China wants to weaken the climate regulation regime now “in order to avoid the risk that it might be called on to be more ambitious in a few years' time”.

This does not mean China is not serious about global warming. It is strong in both the wind and solar industries. But China's growth, and growing global political and economic dominance, is based largely on cheap coal. China knows it is becoming an uncontested superpower; indeed its newfound muscular confidence was on striking display in Copenhagen. Its coal-based economy doubles every decade, and its power increases commensurately. Its leadership will not alter this magic formula unless they absolutely have to.

Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower's freedom of action. I left Copenhagen more despondent than I have felt in a long time. After all the hope and all the hype, the mobilisation of thousands, a wave of optimism crashed against the rock of global power politics, fell back, and drained away.

The US and China have stolen the show in Copenhagen, with a very unhappy ending. This is quite understandable: they produce nearly half of global greenhouse gas emissions. But in the midst of this trans-Pacific rift, the EU perspective has received too little attention, as Europeans have sidelined themselves by being unable to speak loudly in one voice. This is regrettable, for two sets of reasons that point respectively to praise and constructive criticism of the EU climate policy.

The EU, often maligned on the world stage as a power so soft it is hard to feel it, deserves a high mark on the climate front. The road to Copenhagen was indeed largely paved by the EU, acting within the UN in its most important capacity, that of global normative power. Europe was the first region in the world to write down in its laws the basis of the scientific consensus on climate change tenaciously built over the past 20 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The EU acknowledged the need to limit the increase in earth's temperature to 2C, which is now a global reference included in the Copenhagen agreement.

Furthermore, without the European commitment taken in 2007 to unilaterally deliver a 20% cut on 1990 emissions by 2020, and possibly 30% if other countries aim for comparable targets, emerging and developing countries would have hardly been seen at all around the Copenhagen table.

Finally, the EU leads the way in terms of economic instruments mobilised for mitigation, whether one considers standards and norms, cap-and-trade or carbon taxes. In this respect, the EU has managed to construct the core element of the potential global co-operative effort to curb emissions that will have to be worked out in 2010: the EU's emission trading system (ETS), ie the European carbon market.

This market now accounts for two-thirds of all carbon traded worldwide, which means that any meaningful agreement between developed and developing countries will have to rely on the EU ETS. This also means that the global price for carbon will be determined in Europe. And this is where praising the EU for its climate commitment should also lead to asking the EU for a better climate policy.

In a study just published, we show that the price signal coming from the EU ETS is actually hard to catch: it is unstable and too low. Since its creation, the cost of a tonne of CO2 in Europe has twice collapsed, first by 65% between April and May 2006, then by 75% between July 2008 and February 2009. Today's price, around €14, has not yet recovered from the effect of the global recession. It also does a poor job as a benchmark for national carbon taxation, as the French example shows. The French government finally opted for a level of €17 per ton of CO2 for its carbon tax, half of the €32 recommended by experts, following the principle that households should not be asked to pay more than firms in the EU ETS.

Yet, the inefficiency of the EU ETS can be easily fixed to make the EU the centre of the decarbonated world. One of the scenarios we propose aims to “taxify” the EU ETS. “Taxify” here means both strengthening the obligations on carbon emissions and making them more predictable, thereby making the EU ETS's effects comparable to a tax. Coupled with a reform of the clean development mechanism, the reform of the EU ETS could prove to be the EU's most important contribution to fighting climate change in the coming decades.

Before it even began, Copenhagen was at once already a success, because no country could pretend to ignore any longer the scientific consensus on climate change, and already a failure, because it was clear that no binding treaty or full protocol would emerge from it. The meagre agreement painfully reached in Copenhagen screams for European leadership: as we enter the nuts and bolts era in climate change policy, we will need fewer and fewer grand declarations and more and more small steps towards efficient economic instruments.

• Éloi Laurent and Jacques Le Cacheux are economists from OFCE (Sciences-po Centre for Economic Research) and the authors of the policy brief An ever less carbonated Union? Towards a better European taxation against climate change

Fuqiang Yang, director of global climate solutions, WWF International

The negotiations in Copenhagen ended without a fair, ambitious or legally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Despite this, what emerged was an agreement that will, at the very least, cut greenhouse gases, set up an emissions verification system, and reduce deforestation. Given the complexity of the issue, this represents a step forward.

I hasten to add that much of the hard work still lies ahead. The Copenhagen accord, the text that came out of the talks, leaves a long list of issues undecided. Among them are the emissions targets industrialised nations will accept, and how much climate finance they will offer.

The accord essentially allows countries to set their own greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals for 2020.

But I am optimistic, because the talks did achieve $100bn in aid from industrialised countries to poorer nations. China, as well, submitted to an emissions verification system under which all nations will report.

The accord also includes measures to help cut greenhouse gases and reduce deforestation, particularly in heavily forested developing nations such as Brazil and Indonesia.

These are big steps forward, and I think it is important to remember that there were achievements made in Copenhagen. There is still a great deal that needs to be done by China and all other signatories. Specific, binding targets are extremely important and need to be worked out. But we did see a move towards an agreement that could keep atmospheric Co2 levels from rising above dangerous levels.

John Prescott, climate change rapporteur for the Council of Europe

I've read a lot about so-called Brokenhagen and the failure to get a legally binding agreement. Frankly we were never going to get one, just as we didn't get one at Kyoto, when I was negotiating for the EU.

What you need is a statement of principle. At Copenhagen this was a final admission that we cannot let temperature rise 2C above pre-industrial levels.And to get approval from 192 countries on this principle is remarkable, considering Kyoto dealt with only 47 nations.

The details and targets to meet that principle will be settled at COP16 in Mexico in 12 months' time. Until then, countries must show, as Ban Ki-Moon said, greater ambition to turn their backs on the path of least resistance.

Many of the countries have set out their own carbon action plans by 2020. So let's see them put those plans into action and put those figures in the annexes to the Copenhagen accord. The rest of the world will follow.

Copenhagen's achievements are an acceptance of the science (contested at Kyoto), an admission there will be global emission cuts, and an acceptance that there will have to be verification.

Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, master of Trinity College, professor of cosmology and astrophysics, university of Cambridge

Plainly the outcome of Copenhagen was less than many hoped – but perhaps not substantially less than could be realistically expected. The involvement of India and China was clearly going to be crucial. But the grandstanding by particular nations (and the insistence by some on an unreasonable target of 1.5 degrees) was plainly unhelpful to the negotiations.

We in the UK should surely acclaim the constructive and committed role played by our government, and by Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband in particular, both in the lead-up to Copenhagen and during the frustrating and exhasting negotiations last week.

Next year, one hopes the US internal debate will evolve further, so Obama feels able to play a less muted role. Let's hope also that negotiations within groups of nations are carried forward. There is more hope of something being agreed among a group of up to 20 key nations (provided the group covers developing and developed countries), which others then sign up to.

And to be positive, the Copenhagen meeting, circus though it was, carried the process forward. For instance, it stimulated pledges of funding from developed nations (albeit, not as firmly as might have been hoped) and made progress on forestry. And it maintained global long-term concerns about climate change on the international agenda.

Bryony Worthington, climate campaigner with sandbag.org, who helped draft the UK climate change bill

Copenhagen was a spectacular failure on many levels. The UN process was stretched to breaking-point, with no consensus on any pressing issues.

The accord that was signed was clearly designed to meet the needs of the US, who always wanted a voluntary “pledge and review later” type agreement with minimum enforcement.

The sums of money agreed to help developing nations adapt to climate change are so low as to be insulting.

The future of the major mechanism driving private capital into solutions, the carbon market, has been left with a question mark over its future, and the long-anticipated agreement on stopping deforestation lacked clarity.

What happens next? The most honest answer would be to accept that under the current arrangements consensus will not be reached.

We have to focus on domestic action in big fossil-fuelled economies: the US, China, and Europe. All three have made pledges about their intentions to act – each has the opportunity to introduce policies which will create huge markets in climate solutions. If they lead, these solutions will become available for use in all parts of the world, with the costs of development having been born by those most able to pay.

That is our best hope.

Gavin Schmidt, climate scientist at Nasa and co-founder of  RealClimate.org

Look at the history of environment negotiations – take the ozone ones as the best example. People start off negotiating very hard and the first agreement does nothing but moderate the problem.

While the Montreal protocol was ultimately a huge triumph, it made an infinitesimally small difference at first. It took them four amendments to get from reduction to a ban [on CFCs], a process of 20 years after science identified the problem.

Carbon and climate change are much more complicated, and we're just getting to that 20-year mark now. Anyone expecting a definitive solution to the problem on timescales any shorter than that is extremely optimistic.

It's not an event, it's a process. I guarantee that the decisions we will be making in 2050 will not be the ones made in Copenhagen.

Copenhagen did show some improvement in the process. People are now talking about changes in greenhouse gas emissions that are commensurate with the size of the problem. Before, they weren't.

People are now seeing the problem for the challenge that it really is. But, in seeing that challenge, it makes the process – because that challenge is very large.

Kumi Naidoo, executive director, Greenpeace International

The outcome of the summit was not fair, ambitious or legally binding. This eluded world leaders because they put national economic self-interests, as well as those of climate polluting industries, before protecting the climate.

Even if all countries reach their pledges, our planet will be propelled towards a 4C temperature rise, double what leaders say they must achieve. This will have devastating climate impacts, including crop failures and the disappearance of the Amazon rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef.

With each month of delay in getting a real climate deal, the chances of the world staying below a 2C rise slips further away, and the cost to this and the next generation in tackling climate change increases.

To avoid this, industrialised countries as a group – which bear historic responsibility for the problem – must make the largest emission cuts. They also need to provide at least $140bn a year to help developing countries.

The non-result from Copenhagen calls into question the ability of leaders to deliver what is needed. Citizens around the world will need to elect more ambitious leaders and embrace new, low impact technologies.

Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office

At previous meetings in the runup to Copenhagen, in Barcelona and elsewhere, there was talk about greenhouse gas targets for 2020 and 2050; it is disappointing that those have been lost, but it is good that everyone accepted the scientific reality that climate change is a problem and that we need to limit warming to 2C.

The accord is fairly weak, and we will only know how effective it will be when countries fill in the table that details their targets to reduce emissions (they have until the end of January to do so).

Only when we have those targets and we can add them up to see the scale of cuts will we be able to properly judge what has been achieved. It is a positive thing that finance is included, as that could help to make things happen.

Going forward, the first thing that needs to happen is that the table of targets needs to be filled in. Then the whole agreement needs to be made legally binding.

Nicholas Stern, chair, Grantham research institute on climate change and the environment, London School of Economics and Political Science

The Copenhagen meeting was a disappointment, primarily because it failed to set the basic targets for reducing global annual emissions of greenhouse gases from now up to 2050, and did not secure commitments from countries to meet these targets collectively.

Nevertheless, the road to Copenhagen and the summit itself generated commitments on emissions reductions from many countries, including, for the first time, from the world's two largest emitters, China and the US. The Copenhagen accord also did recognise that a rise in global average temperature should be limited to below 2C.

In addition, the prime minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, speaking for the African Union, put forward a very important proposal on financial support, much of which is reflected in the Copenhagen accord, including the creation of the Copenhagen green climate fund to administer funding for developing countries.

The current UN framework convention on climate change process has been found wanting over the past few weeks.

One potential way forward is for Mexico, as hosts of COP16 (the next full summit) in 2010, to convene a group of 20 representative nations, as Friends of the Chair, to work on a potential treaty and tackle the outstanding issues and building consensus around strong action. The group should start its work immediately.

Dr Myles Allen, head of climate dynamics group in the atmospheric, oceanic and planetary physics department, University of Oxford

On one level, it could be argued it is quite a good outcome.

There is a goal to limit global temperature rise to 2C and an acknowledgement that current commitments are not enough to meet that goal. It is good that China recognises the 2C goal and that emissions reductions are the way to go.

I am glad they did not make serious progress towards a legally binding treaty, because the current thinking that nationally negotiated emissions targets and a system of carbon trading will solve this problem is flawed. I'm very sceptical about that whole approach.

A legally binding regime based on that principle would lock us into that process, and it could take 20 or 30 years before it became sufficiently obvious it was not working. Once set up, there is enormous investment in a system like that and it becomes difficult to change. So something close to success in Copenhagen based on what the politicians were aiming for could have been counterproductive.

It's depressing that governments appear to have walked away from Copenhagen only to say they are going to spend the next year fighting for the legally binding treaty they wanted it to produce, rather than use the time to consider some radical alternatives.

One way we have suggested is to target producers rather than emitters. A mandatory requirement on fossil fuel companies to capture and store carbon emissions, to clean up after themselves, could solve a big part of the problem without complex international negotiations.

Bernarditas de Castro Muller, former lead negotiator for the G77 plus China group of developing countries

What was achieved in Copenhagen? The Copenhagen accord contains what was possibly the most that the leaders of the world's biggest countries could give in terms of actions to address climate change.

However, there are problems with the document as it stands. The main one is the process pursued to reach this agreement, which completely undermined the cardinal rule of multilateralism in international negotiations, and that is transparency and inclusiveness.

The final session and the mishandling of the process by the Danish presidency delivered the knockout blow to any meaningful agreement. That this travesty should take place before the eyes of the main guardian of multilateralism, the UN secretary-general, only added to the irony of the tragic situation.

But the worth of the “deal” (I actually prefer the word “accord”; “deal” sounds like some sleazy business plot) lies in laying out clearly what each of the major countries could live with in terms of addressing climate change. In my opinion, it is still inadequate insofar as developed countries' commitments to reduce emissions are concerned. However, we are always told to take into account the “political realities” of rich countries. I revolt against this, but have to live with it, and put aside our own political realities in the developing world, which have to do with basic necessities and even survival itself.

Where do we go from here? We could take the accord as some kind of political guidance from the leaders of major countries. We are now clear on where the major groups stand. It is now up to negotiators to come up with universally agreed next steps.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

I think there are three major achievements that could be listed at Copenhagen:
• The acceptance of a 2C limit for temperature increase, and reference to the scientific basis for doing so. This indicates that science has finally had an influence on negotiators defining what would represent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
• An agreement was reached between the so-called Basic countries [Brazil, South Africa, China and India] and the US on a tricky issue, which had become a bone of contention particularly between the US and China.
• A sum of $30bn has been included in the agreement for funding developing countries' actions during the period 2010 to 12.

Is the agreement worth anything? The accord would be worth something only if we build on it with a sense of urgency and take it forward towards a binding agreement by the end of next year.

The next step is that the negotiators, and particularly the leaders of major countries, must now get into action to see that we come up with an inclusive agreement involving all the countries of the world. This would require early convening of some meetings under the Conference of the Parties, and a timetable for specific outcomes to be achieved before Mexico.

You don't have to run your search engine too long to discover it's the blogs where you'll find the most interesting information about what emerged from the Copenhagen climate talks. But that's not where we're going tonight. Instead, what follows are links to the headlines and first three paragraphs of numerous English-language newspaper Web sites, and a couple of news services. Some of those excerpts about the five-nation Copenhagen Accord are long, some are short. A handful of headlines and links to foreign-language papers is also included.

The overall message is not as soothing as the press releases.

Add your own newspapers if you like. If you speak languages other than English, a translation will be appreciated by other Kossacks.

From the Guardian:

Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure:

The UN climate summit reached a weak outline of a global agreement last night in Copenhagen, falling far short of what Britain and many poor countries were seeking and leaving months of tough negotiations to come.

After eight draft texts and all-day talks between 115 world leaders, it was left to Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, to broker a political agreement. The so-called Copenhagen accord “recognises” the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C but did not contain commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal.

American officials spun the deal as a “meaningful agreement”, but even Obama said: “This progress is not enough.”

From The Australian:

Copenhagen Accord rescued from 'abyss', says Australia's Prime Minister:

PRIME MINISTER Kevin Rudd said world leaders had brought global climate negotiations back from the “abyss” after 17 hours of continual discussions that ended at 1am in the Danish capital city today.

But Australia’s Prime Minister conceded that the final Copenhagen Accord left “much more to be done”.

As it stands, the accord simply describes Australia’s current emission reduction target range of 5 per cent to 25 per cent in the political agreement. Mr Rudd said Australia would announce its final target once all nations had submitted their targets by February 1.

From Agence France-Presse:

Climate activists declare Copenhagen agreement a disaster:

Environmental campaigners branded the Copenhagen climate summit an abject failure, saying it made progress on financing the battle against climate change but little else.

President Barack Obama announced the deal at the end of the 12-day, UN-led meeting in the Danish capital, calling an agreement among key leaders “unprecedented” but conceding that it was not enough. His announcement was made late on Friday Copenhagen time.

Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International, called Copenhagen “an abject failure.”

From the Washington Post:

World leaders reach deal on climate change in Copenhagen:

President Obama said Friday night that an international deal to combat climate change had been reached, but “it is going to be very hard, and it's going to take some time” to get to a legally binding treaty.

“Today, we've made a meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough here in Copenhagen,” Obama said.

The agreement, which appeared to fall short of even modest expectations for the talks, has not been endorsed yet by the full summit.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Tentative deal reached in Copenhagen on climate change curbs:

Key international leaders have reached a tentative deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb climate change, after the United States and China agreed to a method for recording developing nations' pledges to limit emissions and ensuring those pledges are carried out.

Details of the agreement were approved in an evening meeting with President Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, sources said.

Obama has scheduled a press conference in the host Bella Center to unveil the agreement.

From The New York Times:

5 Nations Forge a Climate Deal, but Many Goals Remain Unmet:

President Obama announced here on Friday night that five major nations, including the United States, had together forged a climate deal. He called it “an unprecedented breakthrough” but acknowledged that it still fell short of what was required to combat global warming.

President Obama made statements following a meeting with Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao, the prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, and other world leaders at the climate summit.

The agreement addresses many of the issues that leaders came here to settle. But it has left many of the participants in the climate talks unhappy, from the Europeans, who now have the only binding carbon control regime in the world, to the delegates from the poorest nations, who objected to being left out of the critical negotiations.

From the Sidney Morning Herald:

Compromise Copenhagen deal reached:

US President Barack Obama has announced a climate deal with other major world leaders calling it “unprecedented'' but still not enough to beat global warming.

More than four hours after the scheduled close of the summit and an exhaustive round of diplomacy between the world's most powerful leaders, Obama said an agreement had been reached but acknowledged it was limited and would not be legally binding.

The pact includes an agreement to put off until next month a decision on targets for reducing carbon emissions by 2020, a European diplomat said.

From the Telegraph:

Copenhagen climate summit: 'meaningful agreement' hailed by leaders:

US President Barack Obama reached a “meaningful” agreement with the leaders of China, India and South Africa at the Copenhagen climate conference.

The shift was described as an “historic step forward” but US officials made clear that it was not enough to stop the world warming up.

As details began to emerge, officials stressed that no country was “entirely satisfied” with what had been agreed.

From The Independent:

Obama's climate accord fails the test:

World leaders late last night agreed a hugely watered-down version of a new global pact on climate change, after an astonishing day of deadlock, disagreement, misunderstandings, walkouts and insults at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen.

The agreement, patched together after massive and rancorous divisions between the rich nations and the developing countries, especially America and China, was described as a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” by the US President Barack Obama. However, a senior American official openly admitted it was not enough to combat the threat of a warming planet, saying merely: “It is a first step.”

Known as the Copenhagen Accord, the new agreement falls massively short of the ambitions many people had centred on the two-week meeting in the Danish capital, in the hope of a major new effort to combat the global warming threat. Although in principle it commits – for the first time – all the countries of the world, including the developing countries, to cut their emissions of the greenhouse gases which are causing climate change, the accord is not legally binding, merely a political statement.

From the (London) Times:

Copenhagen deadlock wrapped up as emissions deal:

The United Nations climate change summit ended last night without setting any emission reduction targets.

President Obama forged a non-binding agreement with his counterparts in China, India, Brazil and South Africa but it was unclear whether all 192 countries would accept the compromise text.

Mr Obama said that a “fundamental deadlock in perspectives” had overshadowed the negotiations. He described the deal as “meaningful” but admitted that it would not be enough to prevent global warming. “We have much further to go,” he said.

From the Straits Times:

Deal reached: Obama

FOLLOWING are the main points in the draft deal agreed among leaders of more than two dozen countries at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen.

The text, called the Copenhagen Accord, is aimed at being a springboard to a worldwide pact on tackling climate change.

The draft - which delegates said would be put to a plenary session, presaging a rocky ride from nations deemed to have been excluded from the process - spelt out these provisions:

GLOBAL WARMING 'should be (kept) below 2 deg C', says the draft.

From the Toronto Star:

Copenhagen deal not binding:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other world leaders are leaving the Copenhagen climate talks with an outcome that is weaker than hoped for – and possibly in disarray – and a vow to work out the details later.

Harper said Friday that Canada, the United States, China and several other countries reached a “comprehensive and realistic” agreement, while U.S. President Barack Obama hailed it as a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough.”

But other leaders questioned Obama's interpretation of the outcome, and it wasn't immediately clear in the early hours of Saturday morning if a deal had actually been reached after 12 days of tempestuous talks in the Danish capital.

From the Vancouver Sun:

Obama reaches climate deal with China, India, S.Africa:

An international deal on global warming was reached late Friday, a last-minute breakthrough that was described as only a first step and insufficient to fight climate change.

“We have much farther to go,” U.S. President Barack Obama said, adding that more trust would have to be built between rich and poor nations to reach a legally binding pact.

The talks went into overtime Friday, bolstered by hopeful discussions between the U.S. and China, but muddled by numerous confusing drafts of a new United Nations agreement swirling through the conference centre.

From The Montreal Gazette:

Limited, last-minute climate deal struck in Copenhagen:

World leaders attempted to pull all the meaning they could from the tenuous deal brokered between the U.S., China and other major economies during the final hours of climate change negotiations Friday night and Saturday morning — but the newly christened “Copenhagen Accord” elicited mainly resignation or disappointment.

The agreement is missing some of the hard targets contained in earlier drafts of the accord, but sets out an ambitious plan for providing $100 billion in climate aid to developing countries by 2020. U.S. President Barack Obama, who held a key bilateral meeting with China Friday afternoon to help usher through the deal, acknowledged “no country will get everything that it wants.”

Although many exhausted politicians from industrialized countries said they planned to sign the agreement, there are still months — perhaps years — of negotiations ahead before the pact has any real impact.

From The Wall Street Journal:
Climate Pact Falls Short:

Leaders of the U.S., China and several other major economies said late Friday they had tentatively reached a new climate accord, though they said the pact wasn't aggressive enough to meaningfully curb greenhouse-gas emissions and merely set up a future round of negotiations to hash out the details.

The announcement followed a hectic day of diplomacy that included an approximately four-hour meeting that featured clashes between U.S. and Chinese officials. But the so-called “Copenhagen Accord” leaves key questions unanswered, and will likely have little immediate impact on companies in the U.S. and elsewhere that had hoped for more certainty about the future direction of regulation to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The agreement was still subject late Friday to final ratification by nations at the conference.

From the Associated Press (via the Houston Chronicle):

Poor nations not happy with climate deal:

Two years of laborious negotiations on a climate agreement ended Friday with a political deal brokered by President Barack Obama with China and other emerging powers but denounced by poor countries because it was nonbinding and set no overall target for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a leading proponent of strong action to confront global warming, gave the Copenhagen Accord grudging acceptance but said she had “mixed feelings” about the outcome and called it only a first step.

Obama's day of frenetic diplomacy produced a three-page document promising $30 billion in emergency aid in the next three years and a goal of channeling $100 billion a year by 2020 to developing countries with no guarantees.

From the Cape News:

Obama: Imperfect deal is better than nothing:

US President Barack Obama on Friday told the world to stop bickering and embrace even an imperfect new climate deal, or risk a disastrous split that would let global warming advance unchallenged.

“I have to be honest, as the world watches us today, I think ability to take collective action is in doubt right now and it hangs in the balance,” Obama told leaders in the cliffhanger final hours of the UN climate conference.

“At this point the question is whether we will move forward together or split apart, whether we prefer posturing to action.”

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Copenhagen summit: Major powers broker compromise:

The United States and four other countries agreed to a new, voluntary climate pact today. The move, which could become the framework for a broader agreement here, drew responses ranging from cautious acceptance to outrage. But it could prove a historic development in big-power negotiations, say some analysts.

The announcement came at the end of nearly 24 hours of intense talks among nearly two dozen world leaders and their negotiators. In announcing the agreement to reporters from the United States, President Obama acknowledged that it falls short of what the science demands in order to hold global warming to roughly 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.

But, he added, “it's a first step,” one designed to overcome what he called a “deadlock in perspectives” between developed and developing countries and build the kind of confidence between the two camps that will eventually allow for a legally binding treaty.

From the New Zealand Herald:

Eleventh hour climate deal not enough - Key:

Big emitters are backing a deal for rich countries to slash emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 under a “Copenhagen accord” that is being hammered out in the dying minutes of climate talks.

The deal falls far short of what was hoped for from Copenhagen and leaves much to be agreed at a follow-up meeting in Mexico to be held sometime next year.

Frustrated leaders turned up to the final day of talks to find no agreed text on the table and spent the last 12 hours trying to reach an agreement.

From El Pais:

Las potencias resuelven la cumbre con un pacto climático insuficiente

From the Berliner Morgenpost:

Klimaschutzgipfel endet mit Minimal-Einigung

From Le Monde:

Dans la confusion, Copenhague s'achève sur un échec

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