Sarkozy's big idea to save the world from global warming: another conference

Hu and Obama may have stolen the headlines but Nicolas Sarkozy tried to steal the limelight with a moment of rhetoric
Hu Jintao and Barack Obama got the main headlines from the UN climate change summit, but spare a moment for Nicolas Sarkozy. Even on a day of high rhetoric, nobody quite matched Sarkozy's intensity in chastising world leaders for failure to deal with the potential catastrophe that lies ahead.
"We are on the road to failure," he said. "Time is not on our side."
So what's his big idea to stop global warming, or in Sarkozy's own words, "transcend the role playing, the empty speeches, the petty diplomatic games" that have deadlocked negotiations?
Another summit, in November, just before the Copenhagen negotiations of the major developed countries that between them produce 80% of the world's emissions. And the creation of a new international organisation to deal with climate change. That will stop the speechifiers in their tracks. And the creation of a new international environmental organisation — which presumably would get rid of the bureaucratic infighting. Sarkozy such a new world body was needed to monitor any agreement that would come out of Copenhagen."
From the diplomats huddled within the shrine to modernist architecture that is the UN, there was little immediate enthusiasm for Sarkozy's big idea. But nobody was willing to publicly reject the notion either. Denmark's Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said simply: "We haven't discussed the Sarkozy proposal in detail." But it is now widely conceded that world leaders will need to apply themselves directly if there is going to be a meaningful agreement at Copenhagen. The question is whether they will want to do it Sarkozy's way.