CHARLIE ROSE: World leaders gathered in Copenhagen today in the most ambitious effort to address climate change since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. An agreement was announced at the end of today’s talks, but earlier reports indicate a limited accord with no deadline for a binding treaty. President Obama spoke to reporters shortly before returning to Washington, and here is what he said. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is going to be a first step. And there are going to be those who are going to look at the national commitments, tally them up and say, you know, the science dictates that even more needs to be done. The challenge here was that for a lot of countries, and particularly those emerging countries, that are still in different stages of development, this is going to be the first time in which even voluntarily they offered up mitigation targets. And I think that it was important to essentially get that shift in orientation moving. That’s what I think will end up being most significant about this accord. (END VIDEO CLIP) CHARLIE ROSE: Earlier, the president addressed this summit and said the world had waited long enough to confront the threat of climate change. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: The question then before us is no longer the nature of the challenge. The question is our capacity to meet it. For while the reality of climate change is not in doubt, I have to be honest, as the world watches us today, I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now. And it hangs in the balance. I believe we can act boldly and decisively in the face of a common threat. That’s why I come here today, not to talk, but to act. (END VIDEO CLIP) CHARLIE ROSE: Joining me now to talk about these issues is James Hansen of Columbia University. He has studied climate change for three decades. He is the author of a book called "Storms of My Grandchildren." Also here, Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute at Columbia in Washington. Eileen Claussen of the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, and David Farenthold of "The Washington Post." I’m pleased to have all of them here. So let me just go around and get your assessment of what has been accomplished and what not and what are the consequences. JAMES HANSEN: Well, nothing has been accomplished in terms of the kind of steps we need in order to deal with climate change. I’m very disappointed that we don’t have an international leader who will stand up and really tell us what the situation is and the kind of things we would need to do. Instead, what we basically have is developed countries who want to continue more or less business as usual, and developing countries who are willing to go along with that if the developed countries will give them some money. Unfortunately, our children and grandchildren are the losers in this proposition, because we’re continuing along with basically business as usual, just as we did with the Kyoto Protocol. JEFFREY SACHS: We have a broken process. That’s what we witnessed in Copenhagen, because there were two years to work on this. But nothing got done until the last few days. Then they ran out of time. So the rich countries did not deal honestly either with the level of their emissions, as Jim has just said, nor with the question of financing, financing for poor countries to be able to take sustainable energy as their challenge and also the need to help poor countries face the climate change that’s already occurring. Both of those issues, the extent of mitigating or reducing the emissions and also the financing were really knocked out with a serious way. The whole process was very formalistic. It wasn’t finding during these two-year stepping tones to real results. And so they came to Copenhagen without agreements, without anything but formalization. And even so, they couldn’t even produce a paper that the countries agreed on in a vague way. Only five countries agreed after all before the president left to return to Washington. This announced agreement at this stage was only the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa. Then they are going to give it to the other countries. Take it or leave it, the president will be on the airplane home. CHARLIE ROSE: Eileen, your assessment? EILEEN CLAUSSEN: Well, I mean, I’m not quite as gloomy as either Jim or Jeff. Not because I think this is going to solve the problem -- because of course it won’t. And because I agree with Jeff that the process has been really broken. I mean, and nobody negotiated anything for two years. And there we were in Copenhagen. But that said, a lot of countries actually put targets on the table. They’re not legally binding. And there is -- there are big questions about how big they are, and whether they will be verified. But we’ve actually never had that before. So I would say a little progress. Not what we need, but better than where we were. CHARLIE ROSE: David? DAVID FARENTHOLD: I think Eileen’s right that there is two ways to look at this. One way is to look at sort of that it’s a success, that these countries, the United States, China, India, that they agreed to sign anything with global warming on the top of it, with climate change on the top of it. If you believed that they were so far apart, that they have actually --just signing the same piece of paper is a success. No matter what that piece of paper said. That is one way of looking at it. If you were expecting something higher, something more ambitious -- now the goal of sort of a Kyoto successor, a real legally binding treaty had been taken sort of off the table in the weeks past. But I think people came into this negotiation, perhaps ill-advisedly, thinking that this could produce something much more binding, much more of a landmark. And I think what you saw was that this is a negotiation. Who has power in a negotiation? The person who has the power, the threat to walk away. I think you saw a lot of these countries not accepting this as a deadline and sort of thinking that maybe they can push this into the future. And the longer they are obstinate, the longer they push back, the more advantages there could be in this for them. CHARLIE ROSE: Is this simply a problem, as Jim suggested, a real question of international leadership and there was no one prepared to do what was necessary at this time or over the last two years to make a difference? JEFFREY SACHS: It’s not a matter of walking away. No one can walk off this planet, not safely. And so I don’t really view it this way. If this is viewed as a negotiation and a cliffhanger, it’s the wrong model. We’re trying to figure out how to save ourselves, save the planet, save our children. And this didn’t do it. The whole process was broken. In terms of really looking seriously at what the risks are and what the steps could be to actually solve this. And then I’m concerned about the poorest countries, because when I travel frequently in villages in Africa or in India, they are already suffering from huge climate instability. And what was on the table in terms of helping them? Secretary of State Clinton came and said we will work towards a goal of -- in the year 2020 of mobilizing from a variety of sources, $100 billion for development needs. This is incredible, actually, to talk about a goal 10 years from there, no statement about what the United States is going to do, no mechanism, nothing clear whatsoever. And this is supposed to pass for a serious discussion about the state of the world. And it doesn’t. It doesn’t ... CHARLIE ROSE: So, what’s the problem? JAMES HANSEN: Well -- you know, if we’re going to solve the climate problem, we’ve got to mitigate the emissions. And it’s not right to say that we haven’t had goals before. We’ve had the Kyoto example. We had goals there. What did Kyoto do? Up until Kyoto, emissions were increasing 1.5 percent per year. After the Kyoto protocol, they increased 3 percent a year. So as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, then their use is going to continue and even increase. So we have to face that. And that’s what is not being done in the United States Congress, for example. They want to have a cap-and-trade system with offsets, which allows you to actually avoid making reductions. What we have to do is put a price on carbon. CHARLIE ROSE: I’m coming right to you, Eileen, go ahead. EILEEN CLAUSSEN: Yeah, I mean I, I really disagree with Jim on this whole issue of a cap-and-trade. If the offsets are real and verified, they are also reductions. So I think the challenge is not to say no offsets, it’s to make sure that the offsets you have are real. JAMES HANSEN: No, that’s not right. EILEEN CLAUSSEN: I’d also like -- well -- it is right, actually. JAMES HANSEN: No, we have to -- the goals, the requirements of the science are on the carbon dioxide. You cannot offset it. It is on the fossil fuel emissions. The lifetime of the CO2 that you put in the atmosphere from fossil fuel emissions is thousands of years. So you can’t offset it with something else. And in fact, everyone knows that those offsets are basically imaginary. They are preserving forests, for example. CHARLIE ROSE: I want to give you a chance to respond, Eileen. Go ahead, so -- so ... EILEEN CLAUSSEN: I agree we have to change our energy system. That’s the number one priority. So there is no disagreement there. But I think quite honestly, if you reduce methane, that’s a greenhouse gas too. It’s a shorter lifetime. It actually can make the difference in the short term. You could do offsets for methane, and I don’t think that means nothing. I mean, I think it means something. Actually, I would also like to go back and say something about what the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did. I mean, one of the difficulties with our system of government is that the executive branch actually doesn’t make decisions about money, the Congress does. So when we have a Congress that has been very slow to deal with these issues, and in fact, in the Senate, almost at a standstill at the moment, it’s very hard for -- for the president or the secretary of state to go and promise money that they may not be able to deliver. JEFFREY SACHS: I think that’s right. (CROSSTALK) JEFFREY SACHS: ... all the good things go to the Senate to die these days. And I think this is a serious problem for our nation. But the fact of the matter is also, neither the president nor the secretary of state breathed a word about this issue to the American people during this entire year. Not one word. No plan. No guidance. No explanation, no suggestions. And this is not leadership. If you go the whole year and then two days before the end of a conference you announce an empty number, that’s not leadership. CHARLIE ROSE: David? DAVID FARENTHOLD: I was going to say, I think one thing we’re not understanding about this conference was that we -- there is actually sort of dueling moral frameworks here. CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly. DAVID FARENTHOLD: There is one that Dr. Hansen is talking about. The moral of the future, that we all face this threat in the future and we all need to take these drastic actions to prevent things from happening to our children and grandchildren. I think other countries come at it with a different moral framework, which is they look at the past. They say, you, America, you, the European Union, produced all these emissions over the years. We produced hardly any in that time. And now, you’re sort of wanting us to shoulder equal -- equal sort of responsibility to deal with the problem that mostly you created. They see it in that context. And I think what you have seen from this summit is that when push came to shove, they didn’t give up that moral framework. They didn’t jump on the bandwagon and say, what, you know what, we all face this common future, let’s face it together. They are hanging on to that idea that their responsibility should be less. JEFFREY SACHS: David, I think that this is really a seriously poor way of presenting it, if I could put it bluntly. And the reason is there is an international law that governs this. We signed a treaty, the U.N. framework convention on climate change in 1992. We ratified it in 1994. It’s the governing law of this country and the governing international law. And it has very specific requirements on all of this. To say that the poor countries didn’t jump on board and so forth is basically an American view that says, forget what we signed. Forget the international law. Forget the requirements. Forget article one, article two, article three. This is what is wrong. Nobody in this country even knows, by the way, that there is governing national law on this, because our Constitution makes our ratified treaties part of our national law. The president of the United States never explained we have obligations under the treaties. Poor countries are looking at us and saying, what are you talking about? We negotiated this. This is -- you can’t just say we’re all in this together. You signed agreements to cover the extra full costs, by the way, of taking the mitigation actions under the treaty. This is part of the law. But we want to -- we want to pretend that none of that exists. Wipe the slate clean. You can’t do that unless you are going to get anarchy, which is what we are heading towards, by the way. CHARLIE ROSE: Eileen, you share that? Do you agree with what Jeff just said? EILEEN CLAUSSEN: Well, in part. I mean, there is no question that the framework convention is the law, and it puts specific obligations on people. But it actually does put obligations on the developing world as well. Not as significant as ours, and we certainly haven’t done our part here. But if you want to solve the problem, there are things that they need to do as well. And that’s part of the law as well. CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Let’s get to the China-U.S. division here. Explain it to us. JAMES HANSEN: Well ... CHARLIE ROSE: The difference in what China wants to do, is prepared to do, and what the United States is prepared to do. JAMES HANSEN: Well, neither is prepared to do what is necessary. If you look at the physical constraints, the geophysics of the problem, what you see is that we’ve got so much carbon in oil, so much in gas, and so much in coal. And then there’s this potential of unconventional fossil fuels, tar sands and oil shale. In order to solve the problem, we know if we are going to continue to use the oil and gas, we’re going to run out of that sometime this century. But we’re going to have to phase out the coal and prohibit unconventional fossil fuels. But what are we doing? The United States just signed an agreement with Canada, with regard to a pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands to the United States. And China is burning more and more coal. And all countries around the world are burning more and more coal. Unless we address those things with a framework that will eliminate those, we cannot solve the problem. CHARLIE ROSE: OK, but how do you -- how do you address the point that Jeff made and everybody talks about, the difference between the developing world and the developed world? JAMES HANSEN: Well, both of them have to recognize that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, we’ll just keep using more. But it’s in the interests of China as well as the United States to move on to the world, the cleaner world beyond fossil fuels. So we need to begin to put a price on those carbon emissions so that the competition, the energy efficiency, renewable energies, nuclear power, those things that don’t produce pollution can take over and become our energy sources. But as long as we subsidize in fossil fuels and don’t make them pay for the damage they do to human health and the environment and the future for our children and grandchildren, then we’re just going to continue to use those. They have to face that fundamental fact. CHARLIE ROSE: I’m hearing all the same old arguments I have been hearing about climate change for a long time. JEFFREY SACHS: We’re 17 years after signing the agreement to do something about it. Seventeen years. The Senate hasn’t voted one thing in those 17 years. The United States has not done anything in those 17 years. This is really the problem. It’s not the new arguments, it’s just that the atmosphere gets -- continues to get filled with greenhouse gases. And Eileen said it correctly, the treaty signed in 1992 puts obligations on all parties. It also puts financial obligations on just one group of parties, to cover the full extra costs for the other parties. And it also puts obligations on just one group of countries that would be the high income countries to cover the adaptation needs of the vulnerable countries. It’s absolutely explicit. It’s all agreed. It’s the law. We absolutely refuse to read the words clear as can be, to honor them, to explain them and to live up to them. And the rest of the world is saying, what are we talking about? You keep telling us to apply what we’ve agreed, but then you yourself ignore the clearest words possible. That’s where we really are right now. That’s why there is a breakdown in the world. Because we want to have it our way, only our way. We want to make up what the targets need to be. We want to make up what the financing needs to be. We want to say it our way. They agreed with five countries, got on the airplane and flew home. This is not going to solve the problem. CHARLIE ROSE: So, what is going to happen now, David? DAVID FARENTHOLD: Well, we originally -- the thought had been that we would wait until -- we would wait six months or a year, and the same group would come together again and somehow miraculously make an agreement with us, you know, and get over these problems that have stymied them now. I believe in the agreement that was signed today, that sort of deadline, the next six months, the next year is off the table and we are just going to try to do it, you know, try to do the best we can for the next couple of years. I think there is a deadline to have something in place by 2016. But that sense of OK, there is a next step and here is what it’s going to be; and here is when it is going to be, it was a little bit -- made a little bit fuzzier by this agreement that was signed today. I assume that we will be talking -- the different countries will be talking about these same issues. But as you said, the arguments are clear, nobody is coming up with new arguments here. The sense of a deadline or an urgency that would bring people, you know, to put those arguments aside or drop their negotiating positions, I’m not sure that today’s agreement really creates that, if it didn’t exist in their minds already. JEFFREY SACHS: I think what David is saying is very important and very weird in a way, because the presumption coming into these two weeks was that we would have a kind of political agreement and then negotiate a final text. They have even dropped that, the idea of a final text. The idea that in Copenhagen in the middle of next year or in Mexico City at the end of the year, there would be the culmination of this process. Now we are in a kind of disarray. Maybe in the next few days, something could be clarified, but I think that they’ve probably unraveled the process in a much worse way than we imagined right now. I think they have abandoned what was the process and have replaced it with nothing. And that could be the most worrisome outcome of all. EILEEN CLAUSSEN: It’s not entirely clear, because as I understand it, the plenary with some number of heads of state is still meeting. So I think we don’t know whether there will be a decision taken about when you might actually get a legally binding treaty. But I think the more important point here is that unless the U.S. takes some action, legislatively, preferably, because you can do some things under the Clean Air Act, but it’s not as fast or as clean or, I think, as ambitious, but unless we actually pass some legislation, it is pretty clear that nothing else will happen globally. Because we won’t be in a position to negotiate anything. CHARLIE ROSE: And you expect that to happen or not? EILEEN CLAUSSEN: Well, I think it’s possible. If the administration really engages in a serious way. If we can try to cobble together 60 votes in the Senate, which is enormously challenging, as everybody knows. CHARLIE ROSE: The president in a campaign in 2008 campaigned across this country talking about change and yes, we can. And it’s time to move forward on education, time to move forward to fix the economy and time to move forward on climate change. And now you’re saying what? JAMES HANSEN: I think we’re all disappointed that he has not taken an initiative on this. He hasn’t said much of anything, in a sense, analogous to what happened with health care. He’s letting the Senate, he’s letting the Congress discuss it without providing guidance as to what he is willing to accept. But I think that’s -- that is what has been missing. We need - - we need some leadership on this. JEFFREY SACHS: Maybe ... CHARLIE ROSE: And in fact the president is the only bully pulpit that can provide it. JAMES HANSEN: I think that’s right. JEFFREY SACHS: It may turn out to be too late, because now, of course, even the Senate consideration of legislation is put off until next spring ... CHARLIE ROSE: The House cap-and-trade bill. JEFFREY SACHS: Exactly. And now we hear all the murmuring that that is too close to the November election. And so it could be that they don’t take this up next year. I do believe that there is another good option, and that is the Environmental Protection Agency route. And I, at this point think that that would be as strong as this very weak and in a way messed up cap-and- trade legislation that the lobbyists have already sunk their teeth into. So if the Environmental Protection Agency really went after it and said you can’t have power plants like this, and automobiles are going to have to go through generational change to electric vehicles on a clean grid and so forth, we could do this under the Clean Air Act, and I think that maybe the way we’re going to go. JAMES HANSEN: You know, there was one thing positive in Copenhagen. And that was Al Gore and John Kerry each said something which I took as very positive. Al Gore said it would be better to have a price on carbon than to have a cap-and-trade. And that’s the first time he has really said that very clearly, although he, I know, talking privately to him, that he believes that. CHARLIE ROSE: Does -- everybody believes in a carbon tax rather than cap-and-trade? JAMES HANSEN: The carbon tax but it’s ... EILEEN CLAUSSEN: Well ... JAMES HANSEN: ... I prefer to call it a non-tax, because if you give the money back to the public as a dividend or as a payroll tax deduction, then there is no net tax. And so that’s been the problem, that people call it a tax, and then people -- that is a death sign. CHARLIE ROSE: Eileen, you were going to say? EILEEN CLAUSSEN: Yeah, I mean, first of all, a cap-and-trade system does put a price on carbon. I mean, that’s -- that is also true... JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, it is a tax, it’s a tax. Cap-and-trade is really cap-and-tax. EILEEN CLAUSSEN: Well, it depends on what you do with some of the proceeds from the auction. It’s not as black and white as you say. JAMES HANSEN: Right. And what are they doing with them? They are giving them to the polluters. EILEEN CLAUSSEN: And the other thing I would say is that, I mean, maybe this is because I’m in Washington and I deal with this all the time. But the odds of the Senate and the -- in this case would have to be the House as well, passing either a carbon tax or a cap-and-dividend are probably less than 20 percent. I would say close to zero. JAMES HANSEN: I think if we had a good decision of that, I think it’s possible. We may finally get the kind of discussions in Congress that we need to have. So I think there is a chance that it could happen. And John Kerry said it wasn’t clear that maybe the cap-and-trade wasn’t the best way. So I think there is a good chance we can have a discussion this next spring. DAVID FARENTHOLD: Charlie, I was going to add one more thing in here. I think, what you have seen in the last couple of months in the Senate is that this sense of sort of the impending crisis or climate change has not in many cases changed what motivates senators, what makes senators act. Senators act because of politics ... CHARLIE ROSE: Right. DAVID FARENTHOLD: ... because of self-interest, because of interests of their states, and this has not been absorbed as a crisis in a way that changes that for some of them. What we have seen in the last two weeks, is that the same applies to countries. There are some countries here who have absorbed the idea that climate change is this threat and it requires them to act in some way that is not in their self-interest perhaps right away. It would be in their interest in the short -- in the medium and long-term. Not all countries think that way. A lot of countries still respond to self-interest, to economic gain, and they still view this not as a global cause, but as a negotiation, as something where they by staking out the most extreme position, they can get the most for themselves. JEFFREY SACHS: Which countries ... (CROSSTALK) CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly, my question. Go ahead. DAVID FARENTHOLD: I would think about -- think about China in this case. The way that China has conducted itself during this last week. You have seen a lot of expressions of outrage from them, at various things the U.S. government has said. Today there were reports that the premier had -- was so angered by President Obama’s speech, which didn’t mention China by name even, but referred to their -- their concerns about monitoring, that he retired to his hotel room for a few hours and sent subordinates in his place, although he and Obama did meet later. I think their tone and their sort of stubbornness about some of these issues shows that they view this not in the same way that Europe does and perhaps not in the same way that President Obama does, as a global cause where the most important thing is for us all to act together. I think they are still seeing this as a matter of preserving their own self-interest. JEFFREY SACHS: I find it an odd perspective, I have to say. CHARLIE ROSE: But it’s true, though. You don’t doubt that, do you, Jeff? JEFFREY SACHS: No, because I think that they’re actually ... CHARLIE ROSE: They articulate that themselves. JEFFREY SACHS: I think they are actually doing a lot more than we are doing. CHARLIE ROSE: Fair enough. I mean ... JEFFREY SACHS: No, no, but that’s -- I think that you leave an impression that we’re the tough ones and they are the laggers. And I think ... CHARLIE ROSE: But are they doing more on emission standards or are they doing more on the search for alternative energy sources? JEFFREY SACHS: What they are doing is making a faster transition from a very high carbon economy to a lower carbon economy than we are. CHARLIE ROSE: But are they making the kinds of changes you think they ought to make in terms of one measurement, one metric emission standards? JEFFREY SACHS: Yes. I do think so. Yes. CHARLIE ROSE: So, you think they are going as far as they ought to go on emission standards today. JEFFREY SACHS: They’re going farther than we are going, so that is what I was saying, that that kind of view, that we are taking it seriously, they’re not, I think actually is upside down. I think they’re going farther and faster than the United States of America. JAMES HANSEN: And that is to our great disadvantage. (CROSSTALK) JEFFREY SACHS: ... taking it seriously. CHARLIE ROSE: OK. We’ll come back. David, sorry. JAMES HANSEN: It would be to our advantage. You know, we’ve given up our leadership in some of these technologies, or we’re in the process. China is going to pass us if we don’t get off -- get off the dime. DAVID FARENTHOLD: It’s not that I don’t think that they are acting on the subject. I think they are doing a lot on the subject. But I think from their perspective, why agree to do something, why tie your hands in any way if you don’t have to? If they see this as an opportunity, they’re going to follow it. But I think what you have seen in the last week is an unwillingness by them to sort of commit to the same kind of commitments that other countries have, even if they’re going to do it anyway. They just don’t want to have their hands tied. CHARLIE ROSE: A willingness to commit to the same kind of things that the United States is willing to commit to? DAVID FARENTHOLD: Well, they were -- at the beginning of this, before the negotiations even started, they talked about a carbon sort of a goal, where they would continue to let their economy grow, but their emissions would not grow as much as they would have. They made that, which is -- which -- a lot of folks said that was the sort of change they would have made anyway. And these are the things that were already in place. They are not committing to anything beyond what they sort of want to do. And I think they realize their position in these negotiations allows them to a little bit of freedom, to be -- to sort of be stubborn and not to -- not to make agreements. They sort of hold one of the strongest bargaining positions, and you saw them hold on to that this whole time. (CROSSTALK) JEFFREY SACHS: I think this is really, really wrong on all counts. First, they are moving faster on nuclear, on wind, on solar, on electric vehicles. They’re the ones that are jumping ahead in these technologies. CHARLIE ROSE: How about coal? JEFFREY SACHS: They are a coal economy trying to get out of coal. EILEEN CLAUSSEN: But they’re also burning more coal. JEFFREY SACHS: And so, they start almost entirely coal, and they are making very large investments right now in these alternative low-carbon sources. CHARLIE ROSE: Right. JEFFREY SACHS: So that is the first point. Second, under the law, the law of the international land and the law of our land, there is a difference between China, which is about one fifth the per-capita income level of the United States and the rich countries, the United States and Europe. That’s -- there is a difference. So to say that they’re not operating in good faith -- they say you’re not honoring the treaty that you signed, ratified, and have done nothing about. And that’s -- I think that is an important perspective that Americans need to understand of how we’re viewed from the rest of the world. CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Fair enough. But here is what I hear you saying before -- I hear you saying, Jeffrey Sachs says, look, we didn’t get any kind of serious agreement in Copenhagen. And the blame is with the United States and President Obama’s leadership. JEFFREY SACHS: No. What I’m saying ... CHARLIE ROSE: Are you saying that? JEFFREY SACHS: I’m saying, first of all, the process was absolutely broken. That’s number one. Second, I would put the blame in the Senate, where it has not acted since ratifying the treaty in 1994. The United States Senate is the barrier. Third, I think that President Obama tactically and strategically could have pushed harder in this country, not in the last day in Copenhagen, but during this year. CHARLIE ROSE: OK, but let me repeat the question. If the United States had had a different attitude, could they have had an agreement in Copenhagen? JEFFREY SACHS: If, first of all, two years ago, if we had had a government which we didn’t have then, that was -- that even recognized this problem, of course we would have saved our time. George Bush wasted the world’s time for eight years, so let’s remember that fact. Then President Obama came in, this year, did not really speak to this with a plan to the American people or to the world, and then expected something to happen in Copenhagen which did not happen. So yes, I think at least our best shot would have been a plan of action presented to the world for negotiation, to the U.S. people for negotiation, rather than saying to the Senate, try something. CHARLIE ROSE: And you think a deal could have been made? Go ahead. EILEEN CLAUSSEN: I agree that we were in a -- we had eight years of denial, which certainly put us out of the picture. I think the president’s style clearly is not to write a bill, which is what has happened on health care, and it’s unlikely to be the way he proceeds on this issue. He’s -- as somebody said before, I mean, he’s sort of leaving it up to the Congress. And that’s difficult, because the Senate hasn’t really moved. But I think it’s also worth pointing out that other countries weren’t willing to negotiate anything either. Now, I don’t expect that they would have put their best offer forward, because we didn’t have anything to put on the table either. It was a provisional target and so on. But the reality is that nobody really negotiated for two years. I mean, the document at the end before Copenhagen was 200 pages, where everybody’s initial negotiating positions were still there in brackets. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That’s correct. EILEEN CLAUSSEN: So you can blame the U.S., but you know, you also really have to blame everybody. JEFFREY SACHS: It is a broken process in which ... EILEEN CLAUSSEN: Yes. JEFFREY SACHS: ... in which the largest economy in the world did not lead. CHARLIE ROSE: When is it going to be too late? JAMES HANSEN: Well, we’re getting very close to passing tipping points. But I think for one point of optimism, I think that what is really needed -- I don’t think this process with 200 countries is going to work. But it’s really between the United States and China. CHARLIE ROSE: That’s the G-2 deal. JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, it’s really a G-2 deal, because Europe would go along with us and Japan would go along with us. But we do have to get both countries to agree you’ve got to put a price on carbon. And it’s to China’s benefit to do that. Because they don’t want to go down a path where they become dependent on an addiction to fossil fuels the way we have been. CHARLIE ROSE: And they don’t want to go down the path in which the economic growth, which they believe is the best hope they have to eliminate social tensions within their own society. JEFFREY SACHS: Absolutely. EILEEN CLAUSSEN: Yes. CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you all. Copenhagen is about to be history. And we will continue to look at the developing stories. Back in a moment. Stay with us.