A change in human nature?

There's plenty to criticize about last week's global climate summit in Copenhagen-- including the uncertain science and the absence of any real agreements. But Colin Blakemore at The Guardian sees something higher and deeper in the very idea of the summit: a possible evolution in human nature.

However things turn out, Copenhagen deserves a different sort of credit, perhaps even more significant than a step towards saving the planet. Copenhagen may mark a turning point in human nature, when the global village acquired a global mind.

What we have just witnessed is delegates from 192 countries talking about making sacrifices, slowing their development, constraining their industry, taxing their citizens, in a collective bid to stifle climate change. Those nations included virtually every race, every religion, every style of government – from monarchy to dictatorship, from constitutional democracy to communism.

For the past 5,000 years, agreements between nations have been determined by military or economic power, by political ideology or religious dogma. What Copenhagen has established, even if the final agreement fudges and procrastinates, is that a new force is at work in international diplomacy. A force that does not speak in terms of faith and conviction, that is not even absolutely certain about what it has to say. That force is science.