Goalposts move all the time, but rarely are they disassembled and carted away, leaving the teams to circle aimlessly while the crowd roars and the commentators prattle on as if nothing had changed.
That’s what happened at the just-concluded Paris climate talks, which managed to produce an agreement but also marked the collapse of a 25-year effort to catalyze collective global action on climate change. The collapse settles the long-running debate over whether strong “leadership” by the United States would induce developing countries to make sacrifices for the sake of reducing emissions; it didn’t. By the time leaders jetted from around the world to the opening ceremonies, such actions were not even on the table.
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