As we approach year-end, I have been reflecting on the meaning of the failed Copenhagen conference on climate change.

My interest is more than passing – for the past few weeks I have been preparing the detailed syllabus for a graduate seminar in Science, Technology (S&T), and International Policy (IP), which I will be teaching next term at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre.

One of the central themes of the course is the need to bridge the near complete disconnect between the worlds of S&T and IP. This is necessary because science and technology are profoundly implicated in the majority of the principal threats and challenges facing international policy managers and decision-makers in the globalization age.

Nowhere has the gulf separating these two solitudes been more clearly revealed than earlier this month in Copenhagen, where COP 15 dissolved in a fiasco of damage control and forced face-saving.

Despite the best efforts of conference organizers to salvage something from the ashes of the event, no amount of spin could obscure the vacuity of the results, which amount to an almost inaudible whimper. Absent entirely from the “Take Note” agreement are verifiable emission cuts targets, numbers, dates, and deadlines. Nor is there any reference to a strategy or a time frame for the conversion of this vague statement into a detailed and binding treaty.

By any reasonable measure, Copenhagen radically underachieved on even the most modest of conceivable expectations. Without high-level political commitment, direction, and drive from the largest greenhouse gas emitters, the process drifted aimlessly. The negotiations were disparate and unfocussed, and the outcomes, for those looking for fundamental change, were appalling.

Early on, the event descended into a circus of infotainment and it never recovered. The void created by the lack of any real news relating to substantial progress on the issues was filled by the mass media who, with little better to do, reported on whatever sideshows happened to be running whenever it came time to file.

Dashing the hopes of millions and defying the benefit of years of planning, the Copenhagen Accord amounted to an empty vessel at a time when the need for freight is acute.

The ramifications for global governance are little short of depressing. Based on this experience, the prospects for effective international collaboration towards the design of a brighter collective future are slender.

And for Canada? Things did not pan out as might have been hoped. Instead, the disconnect between this country’s long established reputation as a progressive and engaged participant in international negotiations, and the present, distant reality was on prominent display. This very public departure from past performance was noticed, not least by the NGO community. Their representatives dished out dollops of scorn and ridicule upon a country that, not long ago, placed a premium on international environmental stewardship and partnership with civil society.

Lest we forget, Canada once led the world by initiating action on environmental treaties designed to help protect the ozone layer, reduce acid rain, and clean up the Great Lakes. Canada was the motivating force behind the organization of the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development, which, building upon the foundations set out in the Earth Charter, produced Agenda 21, the Biodiversity Convention, the Statement of Forestry principles, and – yes – the first Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The difference between then and now is so stark as to be shocking.

Jean Charest was Canada’s federal Environment Minister at the time of the Rio Conference. He was also at Copenhagen, this time as Québec premier. Like most delegates, he arrived in the Danish capital with a full agenda. Like all of them, he left with little to show for his efforts.

Who knows how he must have felt.

I, however, do know how I feel.

Sadness, mainly. And shame.

Both for Canada and for the world.

Let’s hope that this miserable failure can at minimum serve as a learning experience in the year ahead, and that massive multilateral meltdowns of this nature will not be repeated.

And if the climate change science is at least indicative, and barring any short-term breakthroughs in bio-remedies, the world and its leaders are going to have to learn very, very quickly.