“It is a solution based on values, the very same values in our opinion that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces,” Di-Aping scathingly added. Whilst Ian Fry, Tuvalu's lead negotiator, equated the non-event of the decade as, “Being offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our people and our future,” but... what, exactly, is the furore all about?

The long anticipated, much heralded, Copenhagen climate talks were intended to produce legally binding agreements pertaining to the stringent control of man-made pollutants. These include what is considered by many but certainly not all inhabitants of our beleaguered planet, to be primarily responsible for 'global warming'... a currently rampaging pandemic which is actively 'poisoning' the natural world. This is causing dangerous swings in weather patterns, resulting, in turn, in higher temperatures than average, drought, famine, desertification and rising ocean levels brought about by 'unprecedented' melting of polar ice caps.

This particular climate crisis conference—not the first one of its kind but hailed as being the most critical if the planet is to continue being inhabited by the humans who are killing it—was dominated, from day one, by vote hunting politicians and the money grubbing economics of global conglomerates and entrepreneurs employing all the dirty tricks they could conceivably conjure to convince 'lesser' mortals that a deal, in everyone's favour, could and ultimately would, be done.

The crux of the matter is non-negotiable 'developed' countries must reduce their carbon emissions to a level 40 per cent lower than they were back in 1990. They have exactly 10 years to do it if, that is, the planet as a whole is to avoid the catastrophic consequences of, amongst other things, an average temperature rise in the region of 2C.

The governments and inhabitants of 'developed' countries however, have, on the whole, absolutely no intention of altering their lifestyles and reverting back to the good old days prior to the Industrial Revolution when they produced carbon footprints of a planetary sustainable size. Therefore, to ease their collective conscience, they can opt to pay a 'developing' country to reduce emissions it isn't actually making right now but may do so in the future.

This reduction in emissions is then being used to off-set their own unsustainable levels. An example of this 'Carbon market' as it is called, would be for America to pay Pakistan not to deforest vast swathes of the country which we haven't yet got around to putting under timber production but might do so in the future if America or some other carbon market seeking country coughs up the necessary cash to get the project off the ground.

Or... in other words, America pays us not to do something we are unlikely to do anyway with the consequently generated cash supposedly being earmarked for environmentally friendly projects. By planting sustainable forests, for example, which, if the government doesn't harvest the timber mafia will. This is the reason why, unsurprisingly, tax paying inhabitants of 'developed' countries accuse 'developing' nations of raking in the climate change handouts being foisted on us, whether we ask or not, by carbon marketers.

Adding to this incomprehensible scenario, wickedly designed to salve any latent 'mother earth' feelings bubbling to the surface, is the equally ludicrous system of 'permits to pollute' issued 20 years ago when the industrial world had a very different shape. At that time, for instance, the Soviet Union was merrily pumping out atmospheric pollutants at an astonishing rate and received a permit to continue to a point.

However, the Union then collapsed, industrial output and therefore pollution, dropped. Yet the permit remains unaltered which now allows independent, former Soviet Union states/countries to sell, to the highest bidder, allocations of emissions they are not, and cannot make, to Uncle Sam who, if the circus continues, doesn't seriously have to consider its own abominable emissions until the mid 2020s at least!

As one 'developed nation' politician after another propounded scarcely disguised economic theories camouflaged as emergency planet saving measures, it is little wonder that extremely concerned citizens around the world took to the streets in protest. Outside Copenhagen's' Bella Centre where the farce was staged, between 30,000 and 100,000 (official and unofficial figures) demonstrators vented their rage at the posturing politicians inside with at least 938 of them being arrested for their pains.

Chinese protesters took to the streets in Beijing, their counterparts in countries including The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, America, South Africa and the Philippines doing likewise as the Council of Churches in the UK had their members toll their steeple bells a reverberating 350 times.

Meanwhile, the debacle continued, with developing countries twice managing to bring the show to a temporary halt with well founded cries of sell outs and unfair play as 'powerful' countries totally dismissed the 'weak'.

Money, the root of all evils, had more influence on the proceedings than the findings of climate change scientists whose crucial research, which should have been pivotal in this 'Conference of parties', was largely dismissed with climate change funding, supposedly to be awarded to cash strapped nations to help them fight off the inevitable consequences of debilitating environmental changes directly caused by the polluting rich, coming very much to fore and, in many respects, with good cause.

The West African country of Liberia, for example, claims that it needs to utilise 50 per cent of its national budget to construct defences for its coastal cities threatened by rising oceans, and feels that the developed countries from which most atmospheric pollution originates, should foot the bill. Historical fact proves that industrialised countries are responsible for causing the climate change which poor nations cannot afford to fight yet, even though wealthy countries happily signed the UN climate change convention some time ago. However, they still haven't agreed to make specific payments and hopes were high that this would now happen.

As proceedings dragged on, the inevitability of a 193-member committee being able to agree on a single agenda item was increasingly apparent. Britain's Prince Charles naturally felt the need to throw in his well intentioned two-pence worth as did the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed, Brazilian Climate Change Ambassador Sergio Serra and Head of China's delegation, Xie Zhenhua to name but a few. But it was, of course, US President Barack Obama who, at the very last minute just when all appeared to be as lost as it really is, flew in... spun a spin... then flew back put just like Batman to face the next approaching storm, an East Coast American snowstorm aptly spawned by climate change!

This dubious deal, termed the Copenhagen Accord, reached only between the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa at the arrogant expense of everyone else, is not a legally binding agreement and has no inbuilt deadline for transforming it into one. Neither was it unanimously accepted by representatives of the 193 countries in attendance but merely 'recognised' as the piece of worthless paper it is.

The 'accord' does accept the necessity of limiting rising temperatures to no more than 2C but fails to identify a timescale for carbon emissions to peak and, while it requests countries to indicate, by February 1, 2010, how much they will cut their carbon emissions by 2020, it contains no penalties for those who welsh on the deal.

It also promises that developed countries will give $30 billion, over the next three years, to developing countries, increasing to $100 billion per year by 2020, to help them cope with climate change but the source of this funding has yet to be ratified, present indications only suggesting a variety of possibly reluctant cows to be milked.

Transparency of emission monitoring of developed countries is promised but hardly likely to be fulfilled as too many loopholes exist and developing countries will be left to monitor their own emissions under a method 'that will ensure that national sovereignty is respected'.

This meaningless 'accord' is scheduled for review in five years by which time, if developed countries continue to emit greenhouse gases at unacceptable and therefore environmentally unsustainable levels as they undoubtedly will, it may well be too late to reverse the climatically catastrophic situation which will then prevail.

Under the circumstances, money being given pre-eminence over humanity, rich nations riding roughshod over poor, the words of Nnimmo Bassey, Friends of the Earth International, are particularly apt “Copenhagen has been an abject failure. Justice has not been done. By delaying action, rich countries have condemned millions of the world's poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life as climate change accelerates. The blame for this disastrous outcome is squarely on the developed nations.”