The pledge by Secretary of State Clinton is a piece of substantive news, and is important. More broadly, President Obama, supported by efforts this kind from the U. S. Secretaries in attendance can shift the landscape to one that recognizes the legitimate and immediate concerns of developing nations that climate change is already impacting their economies and basic human livliehoods in direct ways.
The overall problem that this COP has highlighted is, however, very simple: the negotiations, while taking fairly predictable paths in a purely political sense, are not yet in tune with the language that really matters - the language and the timetable of nature.