There's an old expression that I have heard comes from Texas: "No matter what we're talking about, honey, we're talking about money."  

That's certainly true about most of what we've been talking about in Copenhagen -- even the negotiations around forestry (it's largely about using carbon markets and emissions offsets as a last chance opportunity to save the great forests of the world).  

A few inconvenient truths about money and property underlie most of the topics on the tongues of negotiators and business people alike -- and even the nonprofits and protesters:  

· It is going to take a LOT of money to address climate change – far more than even the yearly $100 billion Gordon Brown, Barack Obama, Wen Jiabao, and other heads of state are discussing in Copenhagen.
 
· Developing countries assert publicly that the developed countries must foot the bill through financial aid and gifts of technology -- and this claim is backed by a core principal of the original global agreement (PDF) on climate that was signed by the U.S. and all major countries at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
 
· Getting that money and technology is what developing countries are demanding in exchange for taking on new obligations on monitoring, transparency, etc.

· There is no way, politically, that developed country governments can come up with all that money and technology in the form of aid.  Carbon markets and spending by large emitters on offsets (such as carbon sequestration through REDD) won't close that gap to within even $50 billion per year, and at least until the later in the next decade.  

· There is no way the owners of most of the existing and forthcoming technology -- private sector companies – will give it away to developing countries… unless their governments force them to do so (highly unlikely) or buy IP from them to give to other governments (likely to be rare).  

· Few of the Copenhagen negotiators understand economics, investment, and business well, or the contributions business can make to solve the problem, or the policy frameworks that would best encourage business to play this role.
 
· All of the above were big issues as far back as the first Conference of the Parties negotiations that I attended, COP-1 in Berlin, in 1995.  

This is not a pretty picture for those who wanted a global agreement at Copenhagen.  These truths are largely the reason that a complete, detailed world climate agreement could not be reached there.  

There is hope, however.  The climate negotiating process is basically an effort between countries and other non-government players to solve one of the most complicated puzzles that society has ever faced.  The process will require a number of agreements, and refinements to agreements, to be negotiated over many years to come.  We may even find that we need new types of international agreements and new international legal frameworks that, for example, could allow voluntary private sector agreements to connect legally and formally to intergovernmental treaties.