The global warming brigades from around the world gathered last week at a United Nations climate change conference in Lima to save the planet. The nations from across the planet were supposed to link hands and all would agree to slash their green house gas emissions.

Instead the conference was a complete dud.

That might be putting it charitably. The BBC described the final agreement as "a weak and ineffectual compromise" while green groups complain that it actually "weakens international climate rules." It turns out most of the nations of the world see the climate change issue as merely a shake down opportunity to leverage more aid money from American taxpayers.

That's especially true of the planet's fastest growing greenhouse gas emitters -- China and India. They made it abundantly clear they aren't much interested in reducing their reliance on cheap and abundant fossil fuels and they fiercely resisted any enforceable targets to do so. What they do want is the U.S. And European nations to write them a $100 billion check.

China and India's political leaders were sounding last week like Cuba Gooding, in "Jerry McGuire": "Show me the money."

The big "breakthrough" was that Europe and the U.S. agreed to provide China, India, South America and Africa with a "loss and damage" slush fund to compensate them for any property losses from rising ocean waters and temperatures. Evidently, it's all America's fault for using so much energy.

In less than one month, Barack Obama's "epic deal" with China president Xi Jinping to reduce greenhouse gas emission standards has been exposed as a sham. It was always a self-delusion to believe that China would do anything to slow down its economic development plans -- which rely heavily on cheap and abundant fossil fuels.

Su Wei, China’s lead climate negotiator admitted in Lima: “we do not have any clear road map of meeting [emissions] target for 2020.” 

Well, isn't that reassuring.

China and India spent the entire week demanding that the U.S. pony up a promised $100 billion to pay poor nations to reduce their emissions. When the U.S. Offered $10 billion, U.N. Climate change spokesman, Christiana Figueres, dismissed this as “a very, very small sum.” She says it will take trillions of dollars of commitments to decarbonize the planet. And guess who she has in mind to pay that price tag?

The lesson of Lima is that the rest of the world is not going to cut its carbon emissions. Period. China and India, with two billion people, have nearly doubled their carbon emissions over the last decade with no end in sight and this has negated any progress in the U.S. And Europe. See chart.

Mr. Obama has agreed to an historic climate change deal with... himself. America will give up jobs and money (eventually trillions) and pay higher energy prices and in exchange the rest of the world will do nothing. 

In the climate change racket, we are being played for fools.

 - Stephen Moore is a Fox News contributor. He serves as chief economist at the Heritage Foundation.