A fable for Copenhagen

“A fox, caught in a trap, escaped by tearing off his bushy tail.

After that, the other animals mocked him, making him feel so ashamed that his life was a burden to him. He therefore worked out a plan to make all the other foxes the same as him, so that in their common loss he might better conceal his own deprivation.

He called a meeting of foxes. A good many came to it, and he gave a speech, advising them all to cut off their tails. He said that they would not only look much better without them, but that they would get rid of the weight of the brush, which was a very great inconvenience.

But one of them interrupted his speech.

“If you had not lost your own tail, my friend,” that fox said, “you would not be giving us this advice.”

Aesop 6th century BC

Let us hope that the alpha-male US fox, at the forthcoming meeting of all the foxes in Copenhagen in December 2009, remembers this fable, and understands its meaning, when listening to the pleas of all those foxes from Continental Europe who have already cut off their own tails, and now beg those that are yet not disfigured to mutilate themselves likewise.

If the big US fox is insufficiently smart to heed the fable, one can rest assured that the smarter foxes from India and the People’s Republic of China will prove to be adept at retaining their brushes so that they can mock and humiliate the now incredibly shrinking, debrushed US fox.”

Charles K. Rowley, “The Fox Who Had Lost His Tail”, Charles Rowley’s Blog (6 December 2009).


Charles K. Rowley is Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Director of the Program in Economics, Politics and the Law at the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy and General Director of The Locke Institute. Professor Rowley received his doctorate from the University of Nottingham in 1964.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference is scheduled to begin tomorrow, 7 December, in Copenhagen, Denmark, for two weeks of talks aimed at concluding an agreement that would enter into force after the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. The meeting will bring together 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, 1,200 limos and 140 private jets. The extraordinary carbon footprint of the meeting (roughly, Morocco’s annual carbon emissions) is likely to be its most lasting legacy to the world.

In his most foolish promise, President Obama has said he will pledge the United States to lower its emissions of carbon to a level 85 per cent below those of 2005. This would bring the level of American emissions to those of 1910, which, given the much higher expected level of population in 2050, means the per capita U.S. emissions would be about those of 1875. As Professor Rowley mentions, the U.S., like the fox who lost his tail, is trying to convince other countries to follow its imprudent lead and cut their emissions in like manner. No doubt the President knows it is better to look stupid among a group than all alone.

In their wisest decision, while pledging some cuts, China and India and other developing countries have chosen not to follow the U.S. in draconian cutbacks in their energy use. Even more wisely, they are waiting for Western commitments to boost development aid linked to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and for specific steps to transfer clean energy technologies to developing countries for free.

The President is pushing hard for an agreement in Copenhagen. Even with his pledge for the U.S. to do the impossible and the sense of urgency he tries to convey about the need for an agreement, a legally binding treaty will not emerge from the talkfest. Too many matters remain in disagreement, not the least of which is how to monitor and enforce any international climate treaty. At best, the President may get a “political agreement” that kicks any attempt to get a real agreement to next year.

Even then, the recent leaking of vast numbers of e-mails and other documents relating to the temperature profile of the earth have now called into question the quality of the data underlying the claims of climate change. Any international agreement on climate change may have to await a much more careful reassessment of the earth’s climate history, and this may well take decades.

If one were to place blame for the failure of the climate change talks, it would be on the United Nations Secretariat. Throughout the many years the problem of climate change has been on the agenda of the international community the work of the Secretariat has been inconsistent with that of an “neutral broker”. It has used its influence to move the debate about climate change in the direction of those with an political agenda to push and a willingness to hide and distort the data on which critically important decisions must be made.

Simply stated: The United Nations is supposed to be a neutral facilitator, not a decision-making body. Serious discussions and important negotiations cannot be carried out when those charged with providing an honest appraisal of facts fail to do so and, worse, set a tone and direction in favor of one side over another. In the case of the climate change discussions, the UN became a cheerleader for man-caused global warming before all the facts were in. Even if in the end it proves to be right in its conclusions, the UN nonetheless failed in its main task of providing an unbiased forum for international discussions of contentious issues.