From the tone of his remarks, President Obama seems genuinely surprised that an international conference is generating a lot of talk about the importance of the problem but no consensus on the solutions; that countries don’t want to sacrifice their standard of living or economic growth to mitigate an environmental issue that seems far in the future; that nobody wants to give up some of their wealth so that some other country won’t have to give up as much . . . and that China is not persuaded by his charms or by the ten millionth invocation of “now is the time to act.”

Many of us aren’t surprised by any of this at all, but on the radio this morning, they said Obama’s frustration was evident. Apparently, he expected the conference to go quite differently.