People who worry a lot about global warming sometimes talk about tipping points – a moment when catastrophic climate change becomes irreversible. But I am beginning to wonder whether the climate-change debate is not in danger of reaching a tipping point in the other direction – the moment when it becomes impossible for the global warming lobby to win the political argument for serious action.
Arguably, the fiasco of the Copenhagen summit has already demonstrated that it will be all but impossible to achieve a proper global agreement. But at Copenhagen, all the major governments were at least committed to the idea that “something needs to be done”. I wonder how long that consensus will last.
In recent weeks, there has been a drip-drip of stories eating away at the official consensus about global warming. There was the furore about the e-mails from within the University of East Anglia climate unit. Then the revelation that the much-cited scare about the imminent disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers was just that – a scare. Now there is mounting pressure on the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri to resign in response. There is no doubt that Pachauri has mishandled the fall-out from all this – sounding arrogant, high-handed and panicky by turns. Still, if he goes, it will be a really serious blow to the global-warming consensus, since his resignation will be seized upon by every climate-sceptic in the world, as sweet vindication. This article by Walter Russel Mead gives, I think, a good sense of the direction of the debate in America.
For views and opinions on the European Union from Peter Spiegel, Joshua Chaffin, Alex Barker and Stanley Pignal, follow the 