Was the Copenhagen Climate Conference a failure?

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>> Copenhagen, I mean was it a total failure; was there something we can pull out it? I mean what was your take? Was there a half full glass there to look at?

>> I think taking into account realistic expectations upfront it probably wasn't as big a failure as people think. I think if you look at the positive side you got heads of state, as you said, who ended up writing real treaty language at the end. You've got developed countries all stepping up with some level of commitment. You've got developing countries who at least all now have come to the table and I'd say the 2 other areas I think that they moved forward on forestry. The fast stop aspect of, you know, putting $30 billion out every 3 years, ramping up to $100 billion over time. And I think on the technology side the IP myth around technology transfer was somewhat taken off the table as a hostage point. On the negative side there's nothing legally binding and the process going forward is very unclear. So, you know, as we look at it where we come out is, you know, the -- it's sort of run its course in terms of what it could deliver. And I think now if you talk to the -- where we've got we've got to the state where the individual players see that for national and domestic reasons it's in their self interest, but not around climate. In the maintenance around energy security, it's around global competitiveness. And I think on that basis now there is enough framework for individual countries to move forward on those grounds. And so I think you're gonna see a lot of national action, you're gonna see a lot of bilateral agreements popping up. And the question then is, you know, at what stage does that all aggregate up again to some kind of binding deal. But I think we're a ways away from that and that the multinational process in some respects is sort of run its course a little bit for now.

>> Mark, what do you think? I mean do you see more for the U.N. here? Do you see going ahead we have -- you know we have Cancun coming at the end of the year aside from having better weather hopefully than Copenhagen is there going to be more that can be done here or does it fall down to the national governments and we see what happens after that?

>> Mark: Obviously it's still to be determined. But, you know, I think I've been at 8 or 9 of the cops phonetic spelling my first one being Kyoto and I tend to agree with Dicken assumed spelling. I think that this, you know, in its current form this has run its course, and in some ways I think that's actually a good thing. I think that what this is now shown is that the issue of climate and the, you know, the attended issues around technology development and implementation has really reached the, you know, the serious strategic level among countries and it's no longer a bit of a diplomatic backwater in which you sort of, you know, you have that going on on the side. It really is now a leader to leader type of thing. And when you start thinking of it, you know, you can get pretty much 60% of the world's emissions together with about 5 signatures. You can get to about 88%, 90% with about 15 to 20 signatures. You know the circus, and it really was a circus in Copenhagen. My favorite explanation was imagine the DMV office and that'll tell you ticket counter got together and tried to save the world. It was that disorganized and it showed that you really don't have, you know, that that, you know -- if it inaudible the fact to be more of a technical institution and really being a supporting institution I tend to think that what you're going to see is as, you know, first of all, there's a strong desire for domestic solutions now that, you know, achieve multiple aids in the United States jobs and particular investment and recatalyzing the U.S. economy. If -- and there are a lot of climate solutions domestically that can do that. The U.S. Senate, you know, and the U.S. House in both the bills that were out last year, and I tend to agree I don't think cap and trade as much of a chance this year, but we're both, you know, looking at trading with countries that were willing to do very specific commitments with the U.S. You know binary agree -- bilateral agreements and I tend to think that that's the type of thing you're going to start seeing a little bit more of. And, you know, the ultimate one would obviously be a U.S., China agreement which would encapsulate an enormous number of economic, finance, political and other issues. But smaller ones like U.S., Mexico, U.S., Chile, Brazil, Europe, things like that. And then the U.N. being more of a sort of coordinating agency among those to make sure that the rules of how, you know, -- if there's going to be trading it's irrational to not have emissions trading as a tool to reduce emissions. But, you know, ultimately I don't think that, you know, doing it, you know, as I say, this top down U.N. system I think has run its course.

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