Clinton at Copenhagen: ‘We’re running out of time’

Over at Passport, the top story on today’s Morning Brief is Secretary Clinton’s last-minute efforts at the climate-change talks in Copenhagen:

In an 11th hour proposal to save the ailing UN Climate talks in Copenhagen and have some agreement on the table by the time U.S. President Barack Obama comes to town tomorrow, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed that developed countries including the United States come up with $100 billion per year over the next decade to help poor countries fight climate change. This represented a tactical shift from the Obama administration, which has been reluctant to put a dollar amount on aid as climate legislation remains stuck in the senate.

"We’re running out of time," Clinton said. 

Clinton appealed to countries to drop the "us versus them" mentality when it comes to climate change and unite in order to come to an accord: 

We have lost precious time in these past days. In the time we have left here, it can no longer be about us versus them — this group of nations pitted against that group. We all face the same challenge together."

I hope Clinton’s star power will get countries to come to an agreement, but I don’t feel too optimistic about global accords given that the Doha round of trade talks has been going on since 2001 over at the World Trade Organization. Plus, as the recent FP article "Recipe for Failure" details, computer modeling by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita predicts that the Copenhagen talks will fail — and the CIA says he has a 90 percent accuracy rate.

Photo: OLIVIER MORIN/AFP/Getty Images