CLIMATE TALKS...AND TALKS...AND TALKS...

An apocryphal anecdote goes that one of the Kings of France (a Louis, but which I must have slept through) was sitting alone before his fireplace when a coal burst out of the fire and landed on his waistcoat, setting it aflame.  He rang for a servant to come extinguish the blaze, but the servant was slow in responding,so he sat and burned to death.  I think of that anecdote when I read once again, and again, that climate change talks are stalled, usually because both China and the U.S., the two biggest players in what other nations characterize as a ping-pong match, are maintaining positions they each have held for 20 years.  Presumably they feel that the other gains a competitive advantage if they relax their position. Meanwhile, the Earth, containing both nations, burns.
They each are faced with the classic choice between a short-term loss which could lead to long-term survival and a short-term stalemate which could lead to disaster for all.  The expectation of short-term gain is at best unrealistic for each.  Or is it?  Logicians worked out centuries ago a strategy for getting past such impasses.  It's called "the Pope's mule".  Using it, a previously unused, possibly even not too relevant, issue (the "mule") is used to break the impasse.  Think of it as a medieval version of "thinking outside the box."
The mule in this case could be to forget about emission reduction targets as such and concentrate on targets for massive investment in green and other carbon reducing technologies.  At a time of world recession, such investment would serve for each nation the double purposes of job creation and retooling the economy for competitiveness in the 21st century.  Each nation would be challenging the other to build a bigger and better economy than what they now have, and in the process, to build technologies to overcome the emissions generated by use of outdated technologies.  The competition would be to see who is really better at innovation.  Truly workable new technologies would then achieve the goals previously considered damaging or unachievable in the present impasse.  Would it work?  Who can be sure?  But in the meantime, that coal keeps burning.