Blame failure of Copenhagen summit on Denmark, not China

It's been several days since the chaotic end to the Copenhagen climate conference but the aftershocks from its failure are still reverberating. The pointing of fingers in the blame game does not help the regaining of trust needed for the positive resumption of talks early this year and to complete them by December 2010, the new deadline agreed to in Copenhagen.

First, the misinformation put out in the past few days has to be corrected. The UK climate secretary, Ed Miliband, has turned on China as the villain that "hijacked" the conference. The main "evidence" they gave was that China vetoed an "agreement" on a 50 percent reduction in global emissions by 2050 and an 80 percent reduction by developed countries, in the small meeting of 26 leaders on Copenhagen's final day.

There was indeed a "hijack" in Copenhagen, but it was not by China. The hijack was organized by the host government, Denmark, whose prime minister convened a meeting of 26 leaders in the last two days in an attempt to override the painstaking negotiations taking place among 193 countries throughout the two weeks and in fact in the past two to four years.