Andrew Revkin of the New York Times “Dot Earth” blog writes a post called “Climate Talks Make Way For Design Show,” making the case that even if enacted, carbon pricing will not be enough to transform the energy industry:

“A recent analysis of climate plans by the International Energy Agency in Paris concluded that it would take until 2025 or longer for a carbon price to reach a level sufficient to start driving big changes in energy technology, said Thomas Kerr, an analyst at the agency. He said that to fill that gap, the world’s major economies need to be spending somewhere between 3 and 10 times more than current levels on direct financing of research, development and the large-scale demonstration of technologies that could be game changers. And such investments were not a major focus of the Copenhagen talks.”

Instead of investments, the talks focused largely on carbon pricing that clearly lacked political feasibility in the current economic climate.  The International Energy Agency, as quick look around their website reveals, does claim carbon pricing to be entirely ineffective, but believes that the prices would be set far too low to stimulate adequate investment.  Either way, the politics of an extra tax, particularly in the United States, were highlighted by the situation in Copenhagen that allowed obstructionists to block a meaningful agreement.  University of East Anglia scientist Mike Hulme voices that frustration in the Times:

“We’re not even close to designing a world in which we have global climate on a leash,” he said. “Let’s forget this illusory big-picture goal and go for stuff we know we have a better chance of doing – shorter-term, smaller-scale, more diverse partnerships, less rhetoric and more delivery.”

While Hulme falls short of articulating an alternative to the “illusory big-picture goal,” his words seem reflective of the dominant tone emerging from the Copenhagen meetings.  The current methods of fighting climate change – trying to force countries to rein in economic growth – are not yielding results. Perhaps if the conversation were to change, and investments in new innovations were to take center stage, the outcome would change with it.