United Nations climate change talks in Cancun commencing this month won’t yield concrete action to reduce carbon emissions. In fact, the premises underlying the UN climate change talks are flawed. Each high-water mark from the Kyoto Protocol to the “Bali Roadmap,” which ended in near collapse at discussions at Copenhagen last year, proved these summits to be public relations exercises for major CO2 emitters rather than forums seeking CO2 emission reductions. Moreover, posturing between the United States and China, the world’s second and first largest carbon polluters, may stall progress further. Dialogue is becoming increasingly difficult on a host of issues between the two countries – climate change will not be an exception.