December 10th, 2009
By Naomi Klein

In the U.S. plenty of bloggers have pointed to the irony of Barack Obama collecting the Peace Prize while he launches a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

Here in Copenhagen, the Nobel — which was awarded in part because of Obama’s reengagement with the climate change negotiations — carries a special set of ironies.

The figure U.S. negotiators are floating for how much Washington will contribute to an international climate change fund is a paltry $1.4-billion.Meanwhile, the cost of the “surge” in Afghanistan is estimated at $30-40-billion. Yesterday I interviewed Kumi Naidoo, the new director of Greenpeace International, and he made this point forcefully.