Norman Geras points us to an article by Mark Lynas, who describes himself in his Guardian mini-biography as “a freelance writer working full-time on climate change”.

The problem here is not Lynas’ self-promotion, but rather the content of a Grauniad article in which the author damns China for the failure of the recent UN climate summit in Copenhagen. Far be it from me to defend China (on this of all days, especially!), but I have to say that the Lynas thesis is codswallop. What we are presented with in the guise of a journalistic opinion piece is an extended press release on behalf of the government of the Maldive Islands, whose thoughts on climate change you may be familiar with through such crass media stunts as holding a cabinet meeting underwater.

In propagating the line of his Maldives masters, Lynas is also excusing the failure of western governments to offer anything meaningful at COP15. In certain cases one may understand the considerable difficulties involved, and by way of example I would cite Barack Obama’s strained relationship with Congress. Understanding and sympathy are all well and good, but it is quite unacceptable to ignore first world failure and deflect all criticism toward China.

In his Guardian article Lynas makes a big show of his being “in the room” when China was allegedly holding the rest of the planet to ransom. Lynas may well have been in a privileged position, thanks to his degree of embeddedness with Maldivian political forces, but there were many people in the room at the time, and no doubt as many interpretations as to what occurred (a clusterfuck). From the various analyses that have emerged since COP15, it would seem that China deserves a good deal of blame for the summit failure. That said, by no means is China the only sinner in what British energy secretary Ed Miliband rightly described as a “farce”.