The word heard over and over again for the Copenhagen treaty on global greenhouse gas emissions seems to be “face-saving” — as in international bureaucrats get to save face by making the world a little worse rather than a lot worse.

Here’s the Euractiv.com take:

The face-saving deal, dubbed the “Copenhagen Accord,” failed to bring a binding agreement on tackling climate change, which Europeans said they expected before the UN conference opened.

Now, take that with a grain of salt. The accord is still bad, according to African leaders who are quoted in industry-trade publication E&E, which reports:

Within hours of Obama’s public remarks, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, a Sudanese diplomat who speaks for the Group of 77 developing countries, rejected the accord out of hand.

“Sudan will not be signatory to a deal that will destroy Africa,” Di-Aping said. Under U.N. rules, consensus is required before any agreement can be cleared and any one country can scuttle the deal.

One can only imagine what a “perfect” deal in Europeans’ minds would have done to African nations and other developing economies.

So far the bad news for the president is good news for our economy. We’ll see if this leads U.S. leaders to look to other issues or redouble their efforts to push a costly cap and trade scheme.

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