Last year when we met, the U.S. had recently blocked all progress at a major climate meeting in Buenos Aires. The negotiation sessions had achieved nothing and delegates went home frustrated. We suggested watching international events as the Kyoto Protocol came into force, carbon trading began, and the U.S. was left outside of the regime.

Well, carbon as a commodity is trading. The price spiked about five to six months ago at $30 a ton. It’s now trading at round $21 a ton. More importantly, in December in Montreal, the U.S. "Maginot Line" of obstructionism on climate negotiations began to crumble. The conference produced an agreement by the parties to the Kyoto Protocol to continue implementation of the Protocol and to move forward with discussions about a second future commitment period.

The U.S. turns out to have been wrong when it said that Europe would not implement the Kyoto Protocol and would welcome any excuse to ditch the agreement. The U.S. turns out to have been wrong when it guessed that China and India would block any discussions of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the future.

What happened at Montreal was far short of what is really needed to address the buildup of greenhouse gases. Those agreements notwithstanding, the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will continue to accelerate. Nevertheless, what happened there was certainly preferable to inaction.

In the coming year, watch the increasing isolation of the United States as other countries conclude that the climate skeptics are losing traction — even in U.S. politics — and that the discussions about global response have to go ahead regardless of American participation or sanction. Global public opinion, like American pubic opinion, has been influenced by the unprecedented drought in Brazil, the melting Arctic ice, the recent hurricane season, and a torrent of scientific findings. And watch an increasingly aggressive China. China’s 11th five-year plan actually includes measures for energy efficiency and fuel switching that significantly reduce their carbon intensity, although they would describe their plans in terms of energy security. As China faces environmental issues at home and competes for resources abroad, I believe we will see an increased willingness on the part of the Chinese to enter into discussions of future climate regimes.