The Copenhagen agreement stiffed poor countries.

During the conference, some African nations staged a symbolic but important walkout. Their message was clear: We are being marginalized in the decisions about an issue that disproportionately affects our communities. They also wanted to protest that discrepancy of the large industrial states pushing for cutbacks from the developing world that they were not willing to make themselves.

The undemocratic nature of the conference was marked in the manner in which a final agreement was ultimately forged. The United States and China, the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, fashioned (along with a handful of other big nations) an agreement in near secret to rescue the conference from being a complete failure.

That accord, however, increased rather than reduced the growing tension between the states that produce 70 percent of the emissions and those states that bear 70 percent of the fallout from those emissions.

Africa, more than any other region, faces a bleak and perhaps fatal future as a consequence of climate change. Global warming could cause temperature rises in Africa that would be double the rest of the world, according to a recent British government report. This would reduce rainfall, leading to a dramatic drop in crop yields. Malaria, dengue fever and cholera would increase, and huge populations would either die or be forced to flee. As many as 182 million in sub-Saharan Africa could die of climate-change-related diseases by the end of the 21st century, according to the group Christian Aid.

What is surprising, given this nightmarish scenario, is not that African countries walked out, but that they came back.

With little real commitment being offered by the large states, nearly all of the small ones were on the same page calling for more transparency in the negotiations and more verifiable and binding terms. In the end, however, they had little to bargain with. After a wild round of shouting and denunciations, virtually all of the 188 countries that did not have a role in forging the final agreement begrudgingly agreed to sign on to it.

Rather than leave completely empty-handed and essentially blow up years of work, states conceded to the reality of power politics. They agreed to take one itsy bitsy wee step forward, when they had hoped for huge strides.

In the end, the three-page, 12-paragraph agreement calls for a voluntary commitment of $100 billion to developing nations over the next 10 years to address the impact of global warming in their areas. States are "required" to list individual targets and steps that will be taken to cut pollution activities. But hard targets, such as those created by the Kyoto Protocol, are weak or nonexistent.

Every big and potentially big polluter acted in raw, short-term financial self-interest. Meanwhile, here on planet Earth, climate change continues, and countries without clout are going to get the most clobbered.

Clarence Lusane is an associate professor in the School of International Service at American University and author of many books, including, most recently, "Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice: Foreign Policy, Race and the New American Century." He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.