I want, instead to discuss with you, what we will do next. I am worried about what stares us in the face. It is very clear after this conference that climate negotiations are in deep trouble — much more than ever before. The dogfight between the European Union, climate-fixers, and the US — climate-baiters — is out in the open. The rest of the world — climate-watchers — are happy to look on and cheer. It is also clear that, post-September 11, the US camp is even more determined to wreck the negotiations. Till last year, it was a civil sparring match. Now it is civil war — fight to the finish, no holds barred. The US had rejected the Kyoto Protocol. But now it has made it clear that it will work overtime to destroy it. The sorry Delhi conference is proof. All it ends up doing is to repeat the dead compromises made a month ago at the Johannesburg summit.

Then there is the EU. It wants the Kyoto Protocol to salve its conscience and for political survival — appease its green constituency back home. But it is not a monolith. Some members always found it difficult to meet Kyoto targets. These climate laggards wanted to sabotage the process, but not take blame. So they hid behind the US. Now the favourite whipping boy has slipped away. The EU stands exposed.

How ingenuously have they pushed developing countries against the protocol wall! Agree to legally binding commitments. Else, no discussions on finance. You large developing countries, you are responsible as well.

How else does one explain the brilliant EU stratagem to insist at this CoP, not on the need for ratification and effective implementation of the protocol but future commitments? Protocol hara-kiri, I call it.

Let’s move on to Russia, Canada and Australia. All key to the Kyoto’s magic number. But playing hard to get. Wooed and cajoled by both sides today, their price is going up by each day. My money is on the US winning. Game, set and match.

In this death-match, what will we developing countries do? My bet is we will be greedy and short-sighted. Our industry — I take my cue from the blinkered Indian industry — will argue the best policy is to take- the-money-and-run. If the US throws crumbs in the name of bilateral projects, peck it up. And if the EU gives cumbersome procedures and crumbs in the name of the clean development mechanism, take it as well. Money has no morality. And certainly our leaders have shown that they have the minds of beggars in these negotiations. Of course, in all this we will do nothing to push for more effective action. That would be asking us to actually care about climate change.

So who cares if we will be the losers? All of us. Let us be clear about this. The US strategy for energy intensity is a path straight to hell. Emissions will increase, even as the economy becomes somewhat more energy and emission efficient. Nobody denies this. Nobody also denies that climate change is real and frightening. That, for emissions to be stabilised at levels at which the impacts will be bearable, the world must make deep and urgent reductions in today’s emissions. The Kyoto targets do not even begin to address the problem of climate change.

What should you and I do? We do not jump out of the ring. No way. On the contrary. I believe it is time we gave up our genteel behaviour and started calling a spade a spade. It is amazing to me how in the last ten years civil voices — both NGO and governmental — have become soft and accommodating. We wanted to play the game so desperately we never realised that the game is playing us today.

It is time to regroup. Rework strategy. The first is to reject this Delhi declaration for the empty farce it is. Let us tell the CoP president T R Baalu, that we will not allow him to compromise. Not in our name. Tell Baalu, loudly, clearly and stridently that we reject his draft because it is weak and visionless. It will mortgage our present and future. Tell him that we demand more. Tell him that we are right. He is wrong. Shamelessly so.