It is reported that as many as 20,000 politicians, officials, international functionaries, journalists and activists attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, better known as the Bali Conference. That is a very great number of Neros assembled in one place complete with their fiddles.

I cannot understand why the outcome of this conference has been “hailed by governments as a success.” Which governments? And in what way can “a deal to start negotiations to adopt a new climate pact” be counted a success? Anyone can declare an intention to do something – but will it be done? Such deals are fundamentally meaningless. James Connaughton, Chairman of the White House Council on environmental quality, speaking for the greatest Nero of them all, is quoted as saying triumphantly, “We now have one of the broadest negotiating agendas ever on climate change.” Well, hurrah, then, we have agreed an agenda. And Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, is quoted as saying that Bali represented “an important basis for a good result.” Well, hurrah again, Bali achieved the basis of a good result. Not therefore a good result. In other words (words!) Bali was a draftsman’s paradise, as such conferences usually are, where the purpose always in the end becomes to stitch up a luxuriant fig leaf to cover complete nakedness.

Shakespeare said it all about such windy, grandiloquent, useless conferences when he wrote the dialogue between two noblemen, Glendower and Hotspur, in the play Henry IV, Part One:

Glendower: “I can call spirits from the vasty deep!”

Hotspur: “Why, so can I, or so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them?”

Indeed. What we have seen at Bali is not a new thing. Throughout history rulers have believed (or pretended to believe) that the announcement of good intentions is the equivalent to the solution of problems. What is perhaps new in our age is that this tendency has hardened and crystallized into a way of life for multitudes of experts, advisers, consultants and other important people who live and work and find their motivation in a sphere remote from the real world.

There exists in the world today two entirely separate spheres of activity. One is the sphere of rhetoric, impressive prepared speeches, mutual backslapping, declarations of good intent, and agreed communiqu