A couple of weeks ago the Copenhagen negotiations which open today seemed doomed to fail. Now things seem a little less catastrophic. The decision by Barack Obama to attend the closing days of the summit reflects not just his desire to participate in the negotiations but also his belief that something might come of these talks. While virtually every other leader in the world was prepared to attend regardless, Obama, burnt by the public embarrassment of his failure to bring the Olympics to Chicago, was only willing to attend if he felt the conference would produce tangible results. This is pathetic but it's behind us now. There will always be fans who couldn't care less about the muddy games in February and only turn up when their team is in the final but as long as they make some noise in the stadium we'll forgive them. Without America these negotiations were going nowhere. With America present there is at least some hope. Of course the real problem is that whatever is decided at Copenhagen there will be no legal framework to enforce those decisions for at least another six months. And even after six months when all the negotiators meet again in Mexico there is no guarantee that a treaty will be signed. However by then we will at least have an idea of the nations which are obstructing progress. Let us give America, Canada and Saudi Arabia just a little more time to get their house in order and if they don't then maybe it is time for a boycott. Not something facile à la Freedom Fries but more along the lines of the apartheid-era boycott of South Africa. Opponents of boycotts and trade embargoes say that they are unjust measures which punish the entirety of a nation for the sins of its ruling class. This argument has a certain logic when you are speaking about poor nations like Iraq or Cuba but the countries threatening to derail the Copenhagen negotiations are far from poor. A boycott would shame them more than it would actually hurt them financially. And since if these negotiations fail the whole world will be hurting financially anyway a dose of shame is probably the best we can do.