Hopenhagen, schmopenhagen. Yesterday, the papers were awash with claims that the US, the almighty saviour of mankind, had stepped in at the last moment to deliver the world from eco-death. Well, that may be putting it a little bit strongly. To avoid such an eventuality, global carbon concentrations need to peak in 2015, and gradually return to 350 parts per million, thus avoiding a global temperature rise of more than 2 degrees. That isn't what is on offer. Instead, this veritable god, in the person of Hillary Clinton, laid down the new world order in bold headline grabbing commandments. First, the US would not reduce its carbon emmissions below 3% on the 1990 levels by 2020. Second, in order to protect the poor countries from the ravages of climate change, the US would launch a fund of up to $100bn a year specifically earmarked for that purpose. Now, such a solution is clearly amenable to one of the denialists' favourite last resorts: namely that, even if the environmental catastrophuck (copyright Malcolm Tucker) is man-made, then the most appropriate solution is not to try to stop it by restructuring global systems of production, but to adapt to it. That way, there won't be any nasty socialist surprises in the post. In this case, the US was simply telling the most likely victims that those most responsible for the problem would not meaningfully try to solve it, but would send a little compensation cash to make its effects a little more bearable.

That cash will probably end up in those dollar reserves that Third World countries have been compelled to amass over the last decade, thus making them net creditors to the world's superpower, but forget about that for a second and think about this:

Now, I told you - didn't I tell you? - that this summit was going to be a flop. Half of the world's species facing extinction while the planet both burns and floods looks like a flop to me. Bear in mind that the Stern report is relatively conservative in its estimations. Recent research by the World Wildlife Fund suggests that the arctic ice-caps are melting much more rapidly than previously anticipated and that even an average global temperature rise of 2 degrees could be catastrophic. It may be enough to reach that tipping point where the year-round arctic ice disappears for good. Melting permafrost will unleash enough methane to cause a major extinction event. Islands will be submerged, southern Africa will dry up, and global hunger will surpass its already disgraceful levels. And it isn't just those unpleasant poor people down south you've got to worry about (though you see how the politics of climate change is already being structured by imperialism). As Mark Lynas has pointed out, if you increase average temperatures in the sea in that fashion, even with a 1 degree global temperature increase, you get more hurricanes, more frequently, and much closer to home for Europeans. You also get dustbowls in previously fertile food-growing areas across North America, which wasn't particularly fun when it happened last time round. You get soaring temperatures in Europe, more extreme and death-dealing summers, water shortages as precipitation declines in the Mediterranean region.

At the 3 degrees rise predicted by the UN on the basis of current negotiating positions, you can declare the game over. That is potentially the tipping point beyond which it is impossible to regain any control over global temperatures, the point at which positive feedback mechanisms cause temperatures to increase exponentially. I cannot adequately describe the full horror of such a scenario - the food shortages, the droughts, the floods, the fleeing of millions of people from newly uninhabitable territory, the intensified geopolitical competition over basic resources, the extinction of half or more of the species on the planet... it's just unthinkable. But, as Copenhagen shows, unthinkable horror is exactly what the rulers of the world have in store for us.

Guest post by Dave S:

Yesterday's referendum brought an end to the campaign that has dominated Manchester politics for months. An overwhelming majority (around 80%) of a fair turnout of voters (over 50%) rejected the government's plan to make Manchester "a 21st century city".

In a scheme that was to be repeated across the country, the plan was to put up £3bn from the government's Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) into public transport infrastructure, and then pay it back over 30 years with revenues from a congestion charge. The Labour Party and their allies have really thrown themselves into the campaign, as have the Greens and environmental campaign groups like People and Planet, with lacklustre and opposition coming from the Tory party and their allies, as well as reactionary Clarksonite interest groups with names like The Motorist Alliance, bravely standing up to any suggestion that hardworking, Daily Express-reading families might have to cough up a bit of cash for the losers and sponges taking up seats on the bus. As with the Lisbon treaty, the mainstream "no" campaign did a spectacular job of missing the point, but on this occasion the Greens managed to outdo even them.

When I accuse yes campaigners of supporting what is a flat tax, the response is almost invariably to say that normal working class people can't afford cars, so this is really a progressive scheme to redistribute wealth from the motorised middle classes to the pedestrian proles. I am vaguely aware that somewhere in the provincial backwater that lies outside the M60, a congestion charge has already been in place for a few years, and I can sort of believe that the kind of logic being used here works in Central London. I can't really conceive of taking a car to the heart of the tube network without also being shortlisted to join the panel on Dragons' Den. But London this isn't. The area covered by the Manchester scheme would have been vastly more vast, and as one earnest environmentalist informed me, the poorest third of families therein don't have a car. Meaning that two-thirds of us do, and two thirds of us are not the middle classes . My mum, before she retired, worked as a nurse. She drove to work. When I spent a summer working at the box factory, it wasn't the bosses who filled the car park at the start of each shift.

For the issue isn't one of motorists' "rights", as the Jeremy Clarksons of the world would have it, but nor is it one of unsustainable privileges and lifestyle choices, as an obnoxious but vocal tendency within the Green movement seems to believe. Driving to work is a source of much pollution, yes, but it's also its own punishment. No-one comes out of the commute in a state of beatific relaxation, much less in hedonistic abandon. It's a source of great stress that most people would happily do without. The way in which capitalism runs our cities involves mass diurnal displacement on the part of the workers, and the way in which transport is organised on a private and mostly individual basis puts the burden of paying for this on the workers too. Piling a congestion charge on top of this only adds to that burden.

Another recurring theme from more reluctant chargists is the idea that only by accepting this deal will we ever see investment in public transport on any serious level. At its best, this is defeatism, at its worst, blackmail, and it really doesn't wash. One doesn't have to be a revolutionary to see what difference the money going into the banks could have made to public services, and in any case isn't this supposed to be the era of "Yes We Can"? Apart from that, though,it is misleading and dangerous to pose the situation as a choice between social justice and environmental action. Given that the plan involved the congestion charge remaining operational and lucrative for 3 decades to pay back the TIF-incurred , it would have locked mass car use into the city's budget for that time as well - another of those concrete government policies, like airport expansion and a post-NUM return to coal power, that make a mockery of the government's nominal emissions targets.

At the end of the day, Manchester needs public transport, for the health of its inhabitants and for the future of the planet. But what it has, and what would have received a cash injection from the TIF, is private mass transport. Subsidies from the public purse amount to little more than corporate welfare for companies like Stagecoach, which has increased some of its fares by around 40% over 2008 and takes a notoriously hard line on unions and the busting thereof. (By the by, I'd wager that Manchester's favourite article in Socialist Worker over the past few months was the news that strike action forced the owner of Stagecoach to drive his own bus for a bit). Just as it is the priorities of private capital that drives the commute, it is the priorities of private bus companies that draw up the bus timetables: and that means a scarmble over the most profitable routes and neglect of the "sink estates" where people actually live. Accordingly, most of the improvements proposed by the TIF were about beefing up the links between Greater Manchester's main market towns; another focused on the Oxford Road corridor, which is already the busiest bus route in Europe. The journeys that are currently a nightmare, remain a nightmare.

The print and televisual media are already berating those of us who didn't vote (and by the way, registring was a nightmare) for contributing to an historic missed opportunity for public services and the environment. In reality, this is the heartfelt rejection of another attempt to dump the bill of capitalism onto the workers, and a serious setback for the latest "Brown bounce" in the heartland of the Labour party.

Guest post by gareth dale.

I've just returned from a 2-3 day sojourn at the Climate Camp at Kingsnorth -- site of a proposed new coal-fired power station – which is now gearing up towards its climax. As usual the headlines focus upon policing and the inevitable 'discovery' of a weapons cache, more on which below. But once you make the effort – a word I use advisedly -- to get through police lines and into the camp itself the overwhelming impression is of a D.I.Y. heaven: solar panels and a wind turbine being erected, water pipes connected, sanitation systems constructed, media and cinema tents put up, impromptu kitchens, cleaning zones … an al fresco and non-commercial soukh catering to the pleasures and necessities of daily life.

The Camp's great strength is that theory and practice share a space for a week. Having kicked off with marches and due to finish on Saturday with direct action, in the days between there are workshops galore – a hundred or more – covering the usual themes as well as not a few tailored to specialist tastes: "the world lawn tango championships," "five-finger direct action training," and – one cannot but wonder whether practice and theory were united here -- "safe sex for activists." That Arthur Scargill made an appearance was welcome, although it was disappointing to see that he has not yet got it. (In the USA at the outset of World War Two it was union leaders who, against bitter resistance from big business, championed the conversion of auto plants to make planes. In the war upon climate change, just think: the skills of power station engineers; solar, wave and wind; surely a no-brainer.) The high-point was a session (pictured below) at which George Monbiot spoke on the role of the state in mitigating climate chaos -- although it was marred when that organ itself, in the shape of riot police, threatened to enter the camp, prompting most of the 250-strong audience to exit theory in a headlong rush to practice.

A degree of division arose with regard to the appropriate tactics for countering the police, but it was a no-win situation. Agreement to allow the police onto site – with their batons and video cameras, their bullying, snooping, sniffing and otherwise canine ways – would have necessitated constant surveillance of the surveillers, a continuous and enervating tug-of-war. The other option, the one taken, was to concentrate forces at the gates, to keep them at bay. With this, the boys in blue-and-dayglow-yellow needed only to build up forces at one gate, deploy riot police to the fore, or engage in any minor feint, in order to panic and disrupt the Camp. Which of course they did. In afternoons, during workshops. At two a.m. -- waking all with a cacophony of sirens that sparked a mass exit from tents, followed by the thuds of sleepy running bodies tripping over guy ropes. And then again, after adrenaline levels had subsided and campers had returned to sleep, at the break of dawn.

The question is, why have Her Majesty's police force decided to subject a crew of campers to such astonishing levels of harassment? What tactics are involved, and at what level were they authorised?

On harassment and intimidation the litany is endless. We observed their tactics, aghast. They must've looked up and memorised every petty by-law they could find, in addition to compendia of recent legislation. (Thanks to the cop who dropped his copy of the 'Pocket Legislation Guide on Policing Protest,' which gives an overview of legislation that can be used to stifle any form of legitimate protest, we know a bit more about an organisation, the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit, that assisted them in this.) They terminated our shuttlebus service (for ferrying participants from rail station to campsite) and arrested the driver on the grounds that one copper, claiming to have witnessed a passenger give a driver a donation, deemed it to be an unlicensed taxi. They filmed everyone. There were interminable and repeated searches of anyone entering or exiting camp -- and these were not the usual cursory pat down. In my case (not an extreme one): in addition to searching all bags and pockets they were uncommonly interested in the linings of my trousers; and they dismantled my mobile phone and took the battery out ("in case there's a razor blade concealed inside"). From me they took nothing but others were less fortunate. The innumerable items confiscated included: plywood, wheelie bins, a track for wheelchair access, a puncture repair kit, carpet, a board game and part of a windmill. And, of course, childrens' crayons. (They're a graffiti hazard, don't you know?)

Arguably the most visible and unarguably the most audible police presence is the helicopter. Upon arrival, I asked the copper who was searching me – time for such conversations was not rationed -- why the chopper was in the air. "It's because an incident is going on. Don't worry, it costs a fortune to keep it up there, it'll only be sent up when there's something going on." In fact, it was airborne about one minute in every three; deafening, menacing, watching. Even at night it hovered above us, and would sometimes swoop low – perhaps in case its clatter at normal altitude hadn't yet woken a few of those below.

So we may return to the question: why apply these tactics? The resources involved, in terms of manpower, equipment and fuel, are colossal. In conversation with a senior police officer, I listened to his point of view. "Don't get us wrong: we know very well that 99% of the people in the camp are completely non-violent. It's the other 1% we're concerned about." A machete, he claimed, had been found in nearby undergrowth. During my days there, I saw nothing to suggest a potentially violent "1%" – and, unlike the officer, I was observing campers up close. The machete story is a smear. Chances are it is a fiction, or planted, or belonged to a nearby villager. Activists, being ecologically aware, know full well that to approach Kingsnorth does not require hacking paths through jungle. But let's assume for a moment that he is right. There are around 1,000 people at the Camp. If that same officer were responsible for policing a village of 1,000 people, and was informed that 10 were potentially violent, would he call up a fleet of fully-manned vans from the North Wales Heddlu, alongside similar convoys from the West Mids, South Yorks, the Met, Essex, Kent and all? Rumour has it that 27 forces were involved! Would he call in a helicopter, and riot police? Or would he think "me oh my what an English idyll – a pity, perhaps, about one or two delinquents at closing time on a Friday night, but a token presence should deal with that"?

Perhaps there is a better reason: the police tactic is all about defending Kingsnorth. After all, the Camp's clearly and openly stated aim is to shut it down. But this explanation has no more traction than does the "violent 1%." Participants show no sign of going anywhere near Kingsnorth until Saturday, so why police the Camp, which is situated many miles away, all week long? To the possible rejoinder that an absence of police attention would encourage activists to approach the power station sooner than declared, there is an obvious reply. With the same police numbers deployed to harass the Camp, the power station could be thrice encircled: it could be sealed off by land, sea, air and any other conceivable avenue of approach, and with enough spare policepower to boot (no pun intended) that the Heddlu and the Brummies could be sent back home. Just think of all the trouble and tension that could be spared, not to mention police overspend.

The only possible reason for this level of intimidation – apart, perhaps, from an interest in giving riot cops some live training -- is that the police force is hell bent on hounding and intimidating the movement against climate chaos. This does not represent a departure from recent trends in policing – as witnessed in London at the anti-Bush protest (with its use of agent provocateurs) and the 'Circle Line Party.' Yet it is an escalation.

The question that remains is: who authorised this strategy? Downing Street, one would suppose, but we should be told.