Drowned rats

World leaders are scurrying to the Copenhagen airport like rats fleeing a sinking ship. You’d think they were all in the Maldives right now or something, and they could see the water closing in over their heads (if you’ll permit me to mix a couple metaphors).

I hope there are two main takeaways from this fiasco:

1. We coordinated, we organized, we messaged, we demonstrated, we protested. It ultimately fell short, but we came together in unprecedented numbers and forged a global coalition. That’s a victory in and of itself. Let’s redouble our efforts. Only the most massive global public outcry the world has ever seen is going to push our bought-and-paid for politicians to take real action.

2. Like Naomi Klein just told the folks at the Fresh Air Center, it’s time to “take the kid gloves off with Obama.” As an American who gave not just my vote but my time and money to Candidate Obama, I feel betrayed by President Obama. He has sold us down the river on too many important issues, but none more important than global warming since all the others will be irrelevant in the face of runaway climate change.

Two years of planning, two weeks of negotiations, and all we got was a worse than half-assed deal cobbled together in the last two hours. You could say I’m feeling kinda down. Down, but not out. Obama, Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown – these people were never going to save us anyway. We will save ourselves.

This post originally appeared on Greenpeace International's Climate Rescue Weblog.