da: The New York Times
Imagine that the climate conference in Copenhagen was not a gathering of nations. Imagine a gathering of delegates from the many ages of a single nation. The fault lines would not be India and China vs. the global rich, but rather China 1800 vs. China 1978 vs. China 2100.
It would be a negotiation not between different lands but between different historical facts, different levels of survival — a contest, in fact, between rival ideas of obligation possessing societies at different moments in their quest to modernize.
What we have instead is one side of the negotiating table with Western powers at the postmodern edge of modernization. Across from them are developing countries that lag decades, even centuries, behind in terms of affluence, nutrition, literacy and urbanization. They are striving to catch up, and less enthusiastic about…