Hey, anything much happen at the ‘ol FDL blog today while I was busy? Harydyharhar I’m kidding.

But while clearly healthcare is the Top Story of the day, the month, the year, it’s not in fact the only Big Story out there. Indeed, it could be argued that in the long run climate change, which has also been in the news lately, is even more important than healthcare reform, desperately important as that is. Won’t matter if we have single payer or not if we end up making the planet uninhabitable for our sort of bipeds, you know.

Which raises the question of whether or not Copenhagen did us any good, especially after the absurd ratfucking involving hacked emails and a whole bunch of lying. Opinions differ. Here is the glass half empty position, with the glass being half full of pollution — Kevin Grandia:

World leaders failed to deliver a legally binding deal in Copenhagen that will begin to reduce the world’s greenhouse gas emissions that are the cause of climate change.

It’s that simple.

While we can point to the attempted happy face that politicians are trying to put on the so-called “Copenhagen Accord” that came out of this two-year negotiating process, the bottom line is that what has been delivered here is a promise to do something later on down the road.

Richard Littlemore is also not camping happily: “here is, finally, a Copenhagen Accord – a deal that is so unfair, so unambitious and so devoid of commitment that the countries of the world could agree only to ‘take note’ of its existence.”

Conversely and on the other hand, Andrew White & Daniel Weiss see a glass full of hope:

The international negotiations on climate change wrapped up Dec. 19 in Copenhagen. The conference achieved an interim agreement, known as the Copenhagen Accord, which could put the major polluting nations on a pathway to reducing global warming pollution, and it continues to set the expectation for U.S. domestic action on climate change.

Much work remains, but there were also numerous notable achievements and meaningful insights into how the United States can gain from leading the world toward a new international clean-energy agreement.

So who’s right? Hell, I don’t know. Both Grist and DeSmogBlog are excellent resources that I read regularly. I am inclined to the grimmer point of view, as I am by nature a grouchy bastard, but read them both. (And this).

I will venture two conclusions, though. First, I do not blame Obama for the results of the talks. I find this account of what happened quite convincing, an assessment that I hope does not cause too much upset to the preconceptions of certain of our wonkish friends. And I say this despite the testimony of the Cuban Foreign Minister, though that is certainly comical. And since I’m feeling Christmasy and generous, I will give this fellow kudos for conceding that “I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen.”

But the more important conclusion, by far, is that whatever about international agreements, the most important political fight of our lives — and the lives of our children — is going to be over climate change. And that fight will, and must, take place next year. Because despite all the anti-science horseshit being flung about, 2010 may very well be the last chance America will ever have to do something meaningful about the gravest threat our nation, and humanity, has ever faced. Hell, it may even be too late now….

If you thought healthcare was and is nasty, say hi to the fight over climate change legislation. Here, though, polite compromise and the hope for gradual progressive improvement just won’t be enough. The science says so. Hence: now or never! Gird your loins, or whatever it else you need girded, because if we don’t win this next year, game over man. Game over.