The "noble behavior" of Germany and Europe on climate change is "inviting freeloaders."

German government adviser Kai Konrad says: "It's a mistake to believe our noble behavior will so greatly impress others in these talks that it will move them to make concessions in return."

At an international level, we can expect that our one-sided measures to avoid emitting climate-damaging CO2 actually serve to suppress reductions other countries might otherwise make. On balance, our well-intentioned behavior is expensive for us and does nothing to protect the climate....

Everything we know suggests that Central Europe will suffer comparatively little from global warming. Berlin will simply have the temperatures that Rome does today. The adjustments we will have to make are quite manageable....

The amount we're spending in an attempt to reduce CO2 would be better invested in education and health in the regions that are under threat. Our goal should be to improve economic conditions in developing countries, because that in turn strengthens those countries' ability to adapt to climate change.

NOTE: Adapt to climate change. This is where we are heading. That's the inconvenient truth right now. The change will come, and we will need to adapt as actual changed conditions force us to adapt. We've been told the problem with adapting as the change occurs is that it will happen too quickly. Climate is always changing, but the problem with man-made climate change is that it comes too fast.

Why can't we slow the pace of change by changing what we do before the real-world change happens? It would require radical sacrifices and readjustments before we feel the pressure of the actual changes in the climate. People have trouble adapting quickly, which is supposed to be why we must act now, but it's also why we're not adapting to the predictions. The only thing we will adapt to is the climate change as it arrives. If it arrives quickly, it will challenge our capacity to adapt quickly, but we will do what we must, which will vary from place to place.

That's what Konrad is recognizing, even as he gives some sympathy to the people in the parts of the world who will suffer the most. They are also the "freeloaders" who won't make "concessions" to the first-world countries like Germany that might have nobly embraced sacrifice early on.

NOTE: In the comments, please don't rehash the question of whether global warming is a hoax, whether the predictions of climate change are correct, and so forth. Assume for the purposes of this discussion that the predictions are correct, that Berlin will become like Rome — and Madison like Mobile, Alabama — by midcentury. This post isolates a specific set of ideas that requires this assumption and the other — oft-discussed — topic will be a distraction.