I suggest an alternative scenario; far from being out-manouevred the Europeans and Scandinavians will have the last laugh. I'm not sure about global warming having stopped since my neck of the woods recorded the highest temperature ever just two weeks ago. Fossil fuels are running out with crude oil evidently peaking in 2008. Cheap coal will only be plentiful for another 20 years with China's domestic output expected to peak by 2015 or earlier. Australia cannot supply enough to make up the shortfall. So just how smart is it to prolong dependence on fossil fuels?

Moreover I think it is unlikely that even half of the population of China and India will ever make it to the middle class in the sense of owning cars and air conditioned homes. But a frugal middle class is already the norm in Europe. We won't have to wait long because I think it will all become clear in the next five years.

Yes Tasy, the europeans should look back, & have a good laugh, at themsleves.

Hopefully they will get a good laugh at how the good sense of the third world saved them from the stupid position they had got themselves into, with the global warming scam.

Pity that third world was not strong enough to save them from the last scam, the Y2K bug.

With even more luck they will see how their lefty governments were prepared to exploit the scam to rip them off, massively.

This luck could just lead to a change for the better in europe. Could, but probably won't. They have let the bureaucrats get too much control, all ready.

The Chinese are very clever. They are making massive changes and advances in alternative power whilst the West does nothing. So when climate change really begins to bite where will we be going for the technology we need? Where do the solar panels on the roof that supply my power come from? China of course
Also the insistence that there should be mandatory inspections was telling the Chinese we do not trust them. That was a mistake. Don't expect the Chinese to sign anything if we are going to call them liars.
We need to follow the lead of China and get on with it without insisting we will do nothing until everyone else does.

what if the "US$200- 400 billion - per annum" compensation to developing nations were actually used to set up and reinstate a manufacturing industry in these western nations that neglected them for cheaper and inferior imports thus getting us in this fix?

From my usual source.

".....The only means by which the West was able to pursue its goal of gross ego self-fulfillment through unregulated and boundless self-indulgence was that of subordinating and exploiting the human resources of all of the rest of humankind and all of the natural resources of the entire Earth-world.However, the rest of humankind (especially in the East and the underdeveloped nation-states) is, rightly, no longer willing to be subordinated to and exploited by the West---and the natural resources of the Earth-world are, now, at the breaking point of depletion and pollution.

Paradoxically (and tragically)---even though the situation is thus and so, and rather than understanding and renouncing the fundamental wrongness and futility of the Western effort to achieve unregulated and boundless self-indulgence and thorough exploitation of the "other" and all the natural resources of the Earth-world--ALL the "tribes" on Earth are now intent on EQUALLY exercising the failed self-indulgence effort Western "tribes" have long been doing.

The cultural political, economic and social basis of the current WORLD-CRISIS is that EVERYBODY in the world is trying to live like Westerners did when Westerners were able to exploit all other nation-states and all of the Earth-worlds natural resources. Everybody in the world is now competing, in a dreadful situation of confrontation, for what has become a very limited reserve of human and natural resources---like dogs competing for the same chunk of meat.

That having been said, yes the Chinese have been able to take a really long view of things and have been doing the necessary strategic planning re accessing resources all over the world.

Chinese Civilization has been around for a very long time, and hence by cultural inheritance, have a long term perspective whereas we Westerners are really very much the adolescent kid on the block, and like all adolescents pig-ignorant about the things that really matter.

Even so it seems to me that China is one vast inter-connected disaster zone waiting to happen. With massive environmental and social problems etc etc and so on.

And they just as exploitative as the West ever was.

From another perspective yes we Westerners are vastly outnumbered by the people of Chinese and Indian origin---the always fearful specter of the "oriental hordes". Two Wongs dont make a white--the white Australia policy

And why should they treat us kindly or with respect if they achieve enough power? We never ever treated them with respect.

From the ordinary tribalistic (even a tribe of one billion or more) point of view, revenge for very real, centuries long, abuses and humiliations would be an entirely justifiable course of action for them to pursue.