The U.S. delegates to the Bali environmental meeting have taken it upon themselves to fight the good fight for developing nations, demanding that language calling for tougher sanctions in those nature be blunted. So sayeth the delegates:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | US sets terms for climate talks

Any new climate goals had to “take into account the legitimate right of the major developing economies and indeed all countries to grow their economies, develop on a sustainable basis, and have access to secure energy sources”.

Ah, yes. The legitimate right of developing economies to grow. How positively altruistic of them!

Unless of course you consider that most of the “development” happening in those “developing nations” tends to be United States corporations deflowering poor countries. If you consider all the corporations spoiling natural resources at will, polluting the air with abandon, and hiring educated workers from elsewhere to steal the natural wealth of those nations while providing the people who live there with nothing more than coffers of gold for the top 1%, well that would be different. If you were to consider such things (and I don’t recommend you do), then that altruism would surely start to look a whole lot more like still more opportunism, wouldn’t it?