Determined to bring down the climate summit, the most important world meeting in history, the agents of dissolution and dissent are hard at work.   We suspect we know who they are, but we don’t know for sure. They might be politicians, they might be Big Oil, they might be oil exporters.  Real dissenters are welcome and necessary, but not the corporate ones. They are  trying to spread stories designed to break up the summit in Copenhagen and destroy the hard work already done so no climate deal is reached. It’s much bigger than “hackergate” (the illegally obtained and blown-way-out-of-proportion emails) now.  The dissension campaign is working on mainstream media, including the UK newspaper the Guardian.  It has fallen prey nearly completely to the dismal cynicism that a leaked plan by the US and the UK called the Danish Text is undermining the climate conference and on the brink of destroying it, already. Who leaked the text? Is it even real?  Andrew Revkin of the New York Times calls the Danish text a floating “trial balloon” and now it’s causing serious dissension in the ranks.

True, the text says the U.S. wants to basically ditch the Kyoto Protocol. But like the Tora Bora story, we knew this a long time ago.  The Kyoto Protocol has not worked as advertised, either. We do need a replacement for it.

The Guardian — Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak – has the whole story and they have made it as pessimistic as possible.

Repeat after me:  “All is not lost, and there is no reason to be completely depressed about this yet.”  Of course, we can all choose to be cynics and choose to think the worst.  It’s a hard habit to break. Maybe James Hansen will parachute in (with Al Gore?) and save the day.

Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN’s negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol — so says the depressing Guardian. They have taken the leaked information at face value and obviously have not been suspicious of this or its timing at all.  (I have read part of it, too. Where is the horrible part?  I can’t find it.)

How does anyone who reads this newspaper (and other similar news sources) prevent themselves from jumping off a bridge every day?  There is something (small) to be said for braindead, Tiger-Woods-obsessed media — it’s less likely to result in people committing suicide.

The media needs to remember, we can handle the truth. Just don’t make it sound far worse than it actually is.

• Read the ‘Danish text’
• In pictures: Copenhagen day two