A fair representation of the global-warmist contingent? Eh, probably not. But that question never troubled the left when they went hunting for offensive signs at tea-party rallies. Let’s just say for now that the jury’s out.

Or is it? Via Omri Ceren, the excruciating Sullivan-esque lyricism spilling from AGW wise man George Monbiot these days sounds more red than green:

This is the moment at which we turn and face ourselves. Here, in the plastic corridors and crowded stalls, among impenetrable texts and withering procedures, humankind decides what it is and what it will become. It chooses whether to continue living as it has done, until it must make a wasteland of its home, or to stop and redefine itself. This is about much more than climate change. This is about us…

The angry men know that this golden age has gone; but they cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around, accusing those who would impede them of communism, fascism, religiosity, misanthropy, but knowing at heart that these restrictions are driven by something far more repulsive to the unrestrained man: the decencies we owe to other human beings…

But somehow this first great global battle between expanders and restrainers must be won and then the battles that lie beyond it – rising consumption, corporate power, economic growth – must begin. If governments don’t show some resolve on climate change, the expanders will seize on the restrainers’ weakness. They will attack – using the same tactics of denial, obfuscation and appeals to self-interest – the other measures that protect people from each other, or which prevent the world’s ecosystems from being destroyed. There is no end to this fight, no line these people will not cross. They too are aware that this a battle to redefine humanity, and they wish to redefine it as a species even more rapacious than it is today.

Money line: “I lead a mostly peaceful life, but my dreams are haunted by giant aurochs.” Meanwhile, today at the conference, the “expanders” offered to launch a fund that would raise $100 billion a year for the “restrainers,” which is more than all current aid to poor nations annually. Who’ll be footing the bill is as yet unclear, but I’m guessing the fact that skepticism about man-made global warming has now reached 50 percent among likely voters isn’t going to spare Americans from paying our “fair share.”

Rest easy, though. The only man who can save the world will be there soon.

Update: I think the jury’s coming in.

President Chavez brought the house down.

When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.

When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.