In Post-Copenhagen: More Questions than Answers Roger says:

On the US political right, I can find almost no reaction to Copenhagen, except for some minor musing on what it might mean for Senate consideration of cap-and-trade in the spring. I would expect to see some triumphalism at the perceived failure of the meeting, and I would doubt that there will be any positive takes (other than "we're happy that it failed"). . .

Richard Black of the BBC has an insightful post that explains that even at the most basic technical level, those participating in the international process don't even know what Copenhagen means:

It's hard to overstate the size of the mood change that's occurred over the last few months - even over the last two days. . .

Does Copenhagen, then, mark not the beginning of a new global climate regime but the end of the vision of global, negotiated climate governance?

Is it the end for the idea of global, negotiated governance on other environmental issues?

These are big questions that many never saw themselves having to ask in the Obama era.

I don't know if Eric Posner counts as an exemplar of "the US political right" that would satisfy Roger's criteria, but he's close enough for me. In The Copenhagen Debacle one point that he makes seems important.

The United States lacked credibility. The Senate has not passed a climate bill. Even if a bill does pass, the world understands that the American public has little enthusiasm for a climate treaty—a huge fraction of Americans do not even believe in anthropogenic climate change. Americans also hate foreign aid (which they stubbornly overestimate) and distrust international institutions—and a climate treaty will probably require a bunch of them. If the United States cannot credibly promise to reduce emissions by an adequate amount, then other countries have no reason to make politically costly commitments on their own side. President Obama’s personal commitment to climate mitigation cannot overcome this rational skepticism.

Posner also recommends Copenhagen as UN Politics, Not Climate Change Substance by Kenneth Anderson.

At bottom, the question is one of legitimacy and what it means to say that a climate change deal requires, in Secretary General Ban’s words, an “equitable global governance structure” to administer it, and the many, many, many things that apparently fall under its tent. . .

For some of Copenhagen’s participants who believe(d) both that climate change is the existential problem of now and the future, but who are (were) also committed to global governance as an activity of the world together, and so committed to the legitimacy that comes with the UN over any nation-state that might act unilaterally, or little conspiracies of the great powers foisting off their deals on the rest of the world ... for them, legitimacy, particularly via the sovereign equality of states, is a problem. Copenhagen just showed, for those who hadn’t thought this problem applied to them and their existentially important issues, that legitimacy means, among other things, that you’ve granted a “hold-up” to whomever you’ve ascribed legitimacy. Apparently that includes Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chavez. . .

It is perhaps difficult for the environmental climate change community to understand that, from the UN’s standpoint as a historical player (a standpoint that the UN itself is unable to articulate, however) climate change is not the defining issue and never was. The defining issue is the UN itself. Climate change policy is simply the latest, and particularly aggressive, vehicle that the international community hopes will drive forward toward UN global governance. If the history of UN causes, values, and agendas is any indication, climate change will be tossed aside if, and when, it too proves a bridge too far for global governance.

The wheel of politics turns at the UN — with the UN itself as the constant. Perhaps climate change and global warming will be the issue that alters the wheel of change and not-change, but so far there is little indication of that. None of this exhausts – far from it – the range of issues that swing in and out of fashion at the UN, particularly with respect to human development and global welfare. Not long ago, on account of the Asian tsunami, it was natural disaster. For a while it was pandemic disease. These are all important issues – let us have no misunderstanding – but they are also “flavors of the month” (as the NGO expression has it) among funders, at the UN, in the international community. They are also deserving of well-considered, well-funded answers.

As are the environmental issues that are not CO2, air pollution and water pollution, and many other environmental problems that cannot be captured in a global negotiation around the presumption that this percentage shift up or down in carbon emissions today will have one degree or a half degree or whatever degree at some far point down the road. The science behind the connection might be perfectly defensible, but it’s a purely notional idea, whatever the science behind it, so far as the negotiators are concerned. “I’ll give you half a degree z-decades from now and you give me $x-billions-today”? It would require remarkable faith in one’s discounting models to make deals like that — but its real-world significance is how much any future presumed degree shift translates into payments today to the developing world or, more precisely, to its rulers and their regimes: legitimacy, again. It is not entirely dissimilar from bank managers looking to single number indicators of risk from their derivatives and securitizations — the number is notional and anyway they don’t understand its derivation, but that doesn’t matter because it is merely a marker in negotiation.

If these fellows count as the right then I don't see triumphalism. They seem to make the point that failure was the only possible outcome, that once you think a little bit and get past the airy-fairy aspirational ideas there never was any chance that some binding deal would be struck that was adequate to the task, and that it doesn't matter anyway since the issue was not valued for its own merits, it was just the flavor of the month in the long march to global governance. In this view the failure is a setback for advocates of global governance and little else, but that won't deter them much. We can expect renewed pressure at the next opportunity.

In my view the problem is that governance is not a sensible approach to this or many other problems: it's a technology issue not a governance issue. Attempting to exploit technological issues to sneak in expanded government is bad faith. That the effort has been thwarted - at least for the moment - is largely irrelevant. The problems remain and possible useful solutions are unaffected.

We need more and better energy systems. Burning fossil fuels won't get us there. Development of the energy systems that we need will eliminate the CO2 issue though that is merely incidental. The CO2 issue is merely incidental. The whole "pollution" approach is nonsensical. CO2 is not a pollutant any more than water is a pollutant. Both can be deadly in excess, but that's doesn't make them pollutants.

For governments to become part of the solution rather than a major part of the problem they need to abandon the whole regulatory approach and refocus on the technology of improved energy systems. Those seeking to exploit this issue to expand government - in local terms the Democrats, the party of big government (or more accurately the other party of big government) - deserve a swift public spanking. The deluded activists who jumped on the regulatory bandwagon need to understand that the bandwagon is following the parade, not leading it, and that they are munging up the works and slowing progress toward the improved energy systems that would eliminate the issue. Their gaudy wagon is just blocking traffic. If they are sincerely concerned about the issue, they should jump off the wagon, push it to the shoulder of the road, and do something useful. All of the energy that they are expending in pursuit of their obsession is misdirected and unhelpful.