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Real optimism lies in saying that the next 25,000 years will be very difficult. - Romain Gary
A year after the Copenhagen Summit, the Cancun Conference (29 November-11 December 2010) showed that, despite some progress, nothing decisive will happen in facing up to climate change without the engagement of the United States as well as the Peo- ple's Republic of China. In the climate arena, as in so many others, the G2 has in fact emerged as a global axis, and countless difficulties that punc- tuated attempts to draw up an indispensable "post-Kyoto" regime from Bali (December 2007) to Tianjin (October 2010) can be seen as so many signs of the general reconfiguration of the post-Cold War international sys- tem - a reconfiguration taking neither the form of unipolarity centred on American hyperpower (dreaded by some) nor of multipolarity (hoped for by others), but rather of Washington-Beijing bipolarity. Of course, the Eu- ropean Union (27-strong) accounts for a quarter of the world's GDP and must play a major role in drawing up a more equitable international order. Unfortunately, divergences among its members on climate, currency, de- fence, and the trans-Atlantic link, among others, keep it from converting its unique institutional structure into political will. As Chris Patten wrote in 2010, "Europe is not and will not become a superpower or superstate. Un- like the US we do not matter everywhere." (1)
China, on the other hand, has been making its voice heard and extending its influence widely on the international scene. The Middle Kingdom is now an indispensable supplier of funds to the United States and to many Third World countries, as well as to Greece and even Portugal. It is no longer the workshop of the world, as it had been dubbed only recently. It has emerged as a development model admired by many governments in the global south. This ascent is illustrated by the fact that some people are now talk- ing about an emerging "Beijing Consensus" to supplant the now defunct "Washington Consensus."
This rearrangement of the global chessboard is not without implications for the "climate question," which is becoming more serious even as its res- olution is getting complicated. This double effect appears clearly as much in the analysis of historic...