europe bypassed on Climate Summit

Summary:
This article starts by stating that the European Union(E.U), after their immense actions concerning greenhouse gases has been pushed to the sidelines of the Copenhagen conference. It continues by talking about how America's lack of effort to become environmental has ruffled some feathers with the E.U. After talking about some successful attempts over CO2 cap and trade in the E.U., it states that the E.U.'s purpose behind this conference is for all the developed countries to pay the bill which will help undeveloped countries to deal with the effects of climate change. At the end of the article however, it says that Italy , Poland and some east European countries disagree with this approach because of its expenses. This could become bad if there was an internal political fight in the E.U. in this time in which we need leadership.

Personal response:
When i read this article i could believe what i was hearing. In an environmental conference, the two most polluting countries in the world are trying to set the rules? How can the E.U allow such travesty to take place? We all know that both the U.S.A and china don't really care for the environment, or at least their government. What we need is a strong leadership from Europe. It is true that the E.U. has been recently been created, and that they lack regulations, but if we can ever hope for any solution they need to get their act together. Concerning the successful cap and trade experiments in England and New Zealand, i wonder why they don't just say in actual meetings that this experiments were successful.

Article source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/science/earth/02iht-euclimate.html?_r=1