A growing admiration for Mr de Boer:

Yvo de Boer, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said in a telephone interview with Reuters that 2050 emission targets would be an easy way for politicians to push the hard work of cutting emissions into the future because most of them would be dead by then.

Seems like a perfectly valid point to me. However, I would be more inclined to believe that most politicians only think about 5 or 10 years in advance, depending upon their potential term in office. Frankly, leaving the decision to do something about the future state of the planet to individuals who exist for short-term gain, seems a tad foolhardy.