Thus the Financial Times today. “France’s environment minister has criticized the sluggish pace of UN climate negotiations, saying they are so unwieldy they threaten efforts to seal a global warming deal in Paris this year,” elaborates the newspaper. “The procedure isn’t really suited to what we need for climate change,” Ms. Royal declared. “If you tried to run a business like that, it would have gone bust long ago.” Negotiators from close to two-hundred countries of the United Nations have been working on the draft text of the Paris agreement since last December. The draft grew to more than eighty pages at a meeting in Geneva in February. Negotiators are to gather together once again in Bonn next week. Ms. Royal now argues that negotiators actually need to meet day after day rather than so many months apart. Otherwise, Paris may end up like Copenhagen in 2009. But the article points out that scientists are already dubious about the Paris climate talks. Whatever is agreed will most likely fail to be enough to ward off the threat of climate change. Apparently, limiting global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times is a pipedream. Put differently, Ms. Royal is barking up the wrong tree. Were the crucial gathering to take place elsewhere than Paris, chances are that she would have been quiet at present. It is all a question of national pride, no doubt. Associating the French capital with failure of international proportions would be a most painful blow to France. Quelle horreur!