Climate Change - an agreement too far?

As COP 15 concludes, the rest of the World will be left wondering exactly what has been achieved at a conference which has been marked by hostility and division notwithstanding the expected grandstanding and neogiating stances taken by delegates, environment ministers and Heads of State. The deal going forward for the consideration of the 190 countries attending the Climate Change Conference is to try to limit global warming to 2 degrees C but contains no targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions and is not a binding deal. The alternative to this very mild platform was to have the conference collapse into chaos yet with indications that the global environment is going to heat by 3 degrees C , this approach will be too little to effectively mitigate against changes already underway. On the basis that some agreement is better than no agreement at all COP15, has been successful in some key measures of reaching an understanding that action is needed. The devil, as always, is in the detail and key aspects such as the level of $ in the climate change fund, verification of reduction in emissions and a binding agreement remain glaring missing items.