What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world's most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his "superiors".

This guy seems to recollect the plenary session, not the US-BICSA soiré to which no press were invited. He doesn't name G-77, which proposed the 1.5C in opposition to G8 2C ceiling; doesn't mention India which went in refusing any limits and verification; insinuates the Chinese delegation proposed no domestic targets, not even -40%/2005*; and AND represents China having failed some kinda fiduciary duty to G-77 membership.

Why did China, in the words of a UK-based analyst who also spent hours in heads of state meetings, "not only reject[!] targets for itself (1, 2, 3), but also refuse to allow any other country to take on binding targets?" The analyst, who has attended climate conferences for more than 15 years, concludes that China wants to weaken the climate regulation regime now "in order to avoid the risk that it might be called on to be more ambitious in a few years' time".

Really, that's just a disgraceful way to present oneself.

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* energy intensity unit per unit of GDP which is no less valid a metric of emission control than a
carbon offset allocation, i.e. kgoe per capita or per USD, respectively.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.