ANALYSIS:Given the faltering response to reducing carbon emissions from European countries, others are sure to find it even harder to make cuts, writes Frank McDonald
THE SMILING Polish faces on television news clips from the European Council in Brussels last Friday said it all. EU leaders had finally adopted the long-awaited climate change and energy package, which reiterates Europe's commitment to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.
The devil was in the detail, however. Instead of full auctioning of carbon permits, many will be given away free of charge to some of the EU's most energy-intensive industries, while countries such as Poland will be able to continue fuelling their power stations with coal and even dirtier lignite.
No wonder the Poles were smiling. German chancellor Angela Merkel, who used to spend a lot of time at G8 summits trying to persuade George Bush to take climate change seriously, was equally pleased that major industries in Europe's largest economy would be able to buy carbon credits abroad.
She was worried that the cost of cutting emissions at home would drive business from Germany to countries with more liberal climate change policies (a phenomenon known as "carbon leakage"), saying she "could not support the destruction of German jobs through an ill-advised climate policy".
As for Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, he was touting in Brussels on behalf of car manufacturers and other big industries in his country, suggesting that cutting emissions in these hard times would be madness - on the same day that Rome suffered its worst flooding from the Tiber since 1870.
What happened in Brussels shows that "stepping up to the plate" is not an easy task for any country, particularly in these recessionary times. And if the EU - which was justifiably proud of its leadership role in UN climate talks since 1995 - couldn't do it, others are likely to find it even harder to make cuts.
Take Canada, for example. It portrays itself as an environmentally-conscious country, compared to its big neighbour to the south, with initiatives such as the "hydrogen highway" that will serve the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010. But Canada also has a dark and dirty secret - the tar sands of Alberta.
In Poznan, when the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition put up graphic pictures of the colossal environmental damage being done by the extraction of oil from these sands, generating emissions of 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, the Canadian delegation insisted that they were removed by the UN organisers.
As a result of this act of censorship, Canada won last Wednesday's "Fossil of the Day" award, presented by the Climate Action Network at a light-hearted ceremony with a serious message. Now running at UN climate change conferences since 1999, the uncoveted awards "blame and shame" all perceived offenders.
On the last day of the Poznan talks, "Fossil of the Year" awards went to Russia, the EU and the so-called Umbrella Group, consisting of Japan, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, while a special award for having done most to obstruct progress over the past eight years went to chief US negotiator Harlan Watson.
But Dr Watson is now yesterday's man. After Barack Obama takes over as president on January 20th, the US will have a fresh team of negotiators with a different agenda. And based on the pledges Obama has made about tackling global warming, there is optimism that their arrival will inject a new impetus into the talks.
Whether the series of meetings scheduled for next year under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will lead to an international agreement in Copenhagen next December is still an open question. The only certainty, based on Europe's faltering response, is that the road less travelled will be harder for everyone.