What really happened in Durban–and will it be enough to combat climate change?

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”—Dickens’s phrase might serve to sum up the reactions to what is now officially called the “Durban Platform for Enhanced Action” on climate change. This two-page document, reminiscent in its brevity of the Copenhagen Accord from 2007, purports to set the global community on a road to a global effort to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming.