If last year’s climate summit in Copenhagen ended in a bang – and not in a good way – the resumption of the talks has gone ahead with barely a whimper.
Negotiators have gathered together in Bonn this week for the first talks since Copenhagen. They will carry on until next Friday, hoping to make progress on some of the key sticking points that ensured the Copenhagen outcome came in for more blame than praise.
The main issues are the same as they were at Copenhagen: finance, greenhouse gas emissions cuts, ensuring that both developed and developing countries shoulder their share of the burden, as well as the boring mechanics of a treaty.
Within the talks themselves, little has changed since Copenhagen. There is a new person in charge – Yvo de Boer has been replaced by Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican official with long involvement in climate talks. Apart from that, it’s a spot the difference competition with no prizes.
Outside the closed world of the negotiations, however, things have been moving at a rapid pace.
Climategate has led to a resurgence in the mis-named “climate change scepticism”, giving a public voice to many who kept their opinions private for years. The furore was overblown, according to the investigations that have thus far reported into the matter, and the central science of climate change remains unchanged, experts say. But the public perception of climate change science has certainly been damaged.
Add to that the BP oil spill. It has focused attention on environmental issues in a way unknown for years, with pictures of oil pumping into the Gulf of Mexico dominating the television news headlines night after night for more than a month. The public mood has turned very hostile to BP, and the very idea of drilling for oil in the deep sea of the Gulf is now under threat and one of the world’s biggest oil companies is beating its breast over the sins of the industry.
Suddenly, environmental groups are finding themselves in the spotlight, and they are using that position to reinforce a broader message than preventing oil spills. They want to change the way the US sees energy.
The oil spill – the worst environmental disaster to hit America, according to President Barack Obama – could yet be the most important thing to happen to the public discourse on climate change. Obama has in the past week linked the incident to both the dangers of fossil fuels, and pledged to try and get the climate bill through – both statements well overdue, in the eyes of environmentalists.
Meanwhile, however, in the real world, the recession has grabbed all attention, and now the crisis in the Eurozone means European Union countries are far less interested in climate change than they are in the survival of the single currency. As finance is central to any progress on climate change negotiations, the recession could yet be the rock on which these talks founder.
