"The world has failed us,'' said Ecuador's President Rafael Correa.
''I have signed the executive decree for the liquidation of the Yasuni-ITT trust fund and with this, ended the initiative.''
What might have been a model for a system that helps poor countries avoid the need to ruin their environment in order to make ends meet has failed, because the rich countries would not support it.
In 2007, oil drillers found a reservoir of an estimated 846 million barrels of heavy crude in Yasuni National Park, in Ecuador's part of the Amazon.
But the park is home to two indigenous tribes and it is listed by Unesco as a world biosphere reserve. A single hectare of Yasuni contains more species of trees than all of North America.
Ecuador desperately needs money, and the oil meant money: an estimated $7.2 billion over the next decade. Nevertheless, Ecuadorians were horrified by the pollution, deforestation, and cultural destruction that the drilling would cause. And then Energy Minister Alberto Acosta had an idea.
What if Ecuador just left the oil in the ground? In return, Acosta hoped the rest of the world would come up with $3.6 billion (half of the forecast income from oil revenues) over the next decade, to be spent on non-polluting energy generation like hydro-electric and solar power schemes and on social programmes to help Ecuador's many poor.
The pay-off for the foreign contributors to this fund would come mainly from the fact the oil under Yasuni would never be burned, thereby preventing more than 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere.
The idea won the support of the United Nations Development Programme, which agreed to administer the Yasuni-ITT trust fund. It was set up in 2009, and the money started to come in.
Chile, Colombia, Turkey and Georgia gave token amounts. Brazil and Indonesia promised donations. Among developed countries, Spain, Belgium and France also promised donations, Italy wrote off $51 million of Ecuadorian debt, and Germany offered $50 million worth of technical assistance to the park.
And that was it. Not a penny from the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands or Scandinavia.
Individuals put in what they could afford (including Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore). But four years later, the pledges only amounted to $116 million. Actual cash deposits were only $13 million. So last week, Mr Correa pulled the plug.
''It was not charity we sought from the international community,'' Mr Correa said, ''but co-responsibility in the face of climate change.''
Maybe Mr Correa could have waited a bit longer, but the idea was always Mr Acosta's baby, and Mr Acosta ran for president against Mr Correa last February and lost.
It was also Mr Acosta who led the successful drive to make Ecuador the first country to include the ''rights of nature'' in its new constitution. Ecuadorian law now recognises the inalienable rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish. It gives people the right to petition on the behalf of ecosystems, and requires the government to take these rights seriously.
However, for the moment, it's just too great an intellectual and political leap to demote the property rights of actual voters (and campaign contributors) to a status below the right to survive and thrive of mere ecosystems - even though we all depend on these ecosystems to survive ourselves.
So we continue on our merry way to a global meltdown - and this just in from London: fracking is now more important than wind power!
When the Conservatives came into office three years ago, they pledged to be the ''greenest government ever'', but they have fallen in love with shale gas, CO2 emissions and all.
The British Government has announced a new tax regime for fracking described by the Chancellor, George Osborne, as ''the most generous for shale [gas] in the world''.
Not only that, but there will be ''no standard minimum separation distance'' between a fracking rig and people's houses.
Planners considering drilling applications ''should give great weight to the benefits of minerals extraction, including to the economy''. That means that they can drill wherever they want, including your front garden.
Whereas local people will now have a veto on the construction of any wind turbines in their neighbourhood.
Prime Minister David Cameron's office explained that ''it is very important that local voters are taken into account when it comes to wind farms''.
It's OK to ruin the planet, but God forbid that you should ruin the view.
Gwynne Dyer is an independent London journalist.
