The one who has smashed tyranny
Broken the back of untrammelled authority
The horse that pulls the chariot of destiny
That one cannot be destroyed.
That one will never die.
– Kedarnath Agarwal in Jo jeevan ki dhool chat kar bada hua hai
Historians argue that Marie Antoinette never uttered the infamous retort ascribed to her. But 'let them eat cake' continues to be the exemplar of royal callousness regardless of its contested origin. Whether negotiators of BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) countries at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP 15) were aware of the power of urban legend in impacting reality is not known. However, when history is written to record the degeneration of "Hopenhagen" into "Nopenhagen", they would stand guilty of having endorsed the draft prepared by the world's biggest per capita emitter of CO2 gases – the rich and the powerful countries – that seem to be saying derisively to the rest of the world: "eat less and avoid burning dung patties".
In hindsight, it appears that the collapse of COP 15 was written in its script. Recovering from an economic meltdown triggered by the Casino Capitalism that had swept the world in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the powerful of the planet were in no mood to listen to desperate appeals for mandatory emission cuts or increased commitment of funds for mitigation measures. It has been much cheaper to sponsor cabinet meetings in scuba gear at the seabed in the Maldives or outrageously expensive oxygen-assisted picnics at the base camp of the Mount Everest in Nepal. The real purpose of the conference may have been to co-opt newly industrialising BASIC countries and then sew them up with strings, the controlling ends of which would be in the hands of financial-military elite in Washington.
The Chinese know that they can never be what the Soviet Union once was to the United States of America – an alternative system of social philosophy and political economy. The destiny of the Chinese is tied with that of Wall Street. So Prime Minister Wen Jiabao chose to absent himself from the last-minute meeting with the world leaders to finalise the draft resolution. Contrary to what was reported in the Western press, it was not a snub to President Barrack Obama but merely an expression of helplessness of the Chinese leaders – they know that they can do nothing to change global warming or anything else of universal concern. China slams those critical of what was decided in Copenhagen because it knows that every promise made in the accord is empty and devoid of empathy for the poor and the environmentally distressed population of the world; its anger is an admission of guilt and an expression of utter frustration.