The U.N. Climate Conference has left behind a terrible stench. But it doesn’t come from the 400 jets that flew world leaders to that exercise in retributive multilateral egalitarianism last weekend. Carbon dioxide is an odorless gas, so even though do-gooding pols pumped thousands of tons of it into the atmosphere, the rank smell they left in their wake is not a physical one perceived by the olfactory senses.

The miasma rising into the sunny winter skies over Egypt’s luxe resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, and which is now spreading around the globe, is the noisome odor of willful unseriousness, humbug, and hypocrisy.