Pessimism is contagious as the European Union fails to call the shots in the agenda on climate change for the rest of the world. This concerns both the short-cut to banning fossil fuels, including the most polluting of them, coal, and the failure to use market mechanisms to secure a soft transition to a low-carbon economy in economically sound and socially acceptable pattern. Emissions trading exchanges have suffered a fiasco, lacking global span and integrated global pollution control.