‘Four minutes to midnight’, ‘possible we will not get an agreement’, ‘uphill struggle’, ’3 days to shape the future of humanity’ – all good copy for the media to keep the tension high. But actually par for the course at this stage in international climate change negotiations, as repeated conferences over the last 10 years that I’ve attended regularly show. The demandeurs – in this case the developing countries who want £100bn or more per year from the rich countries to tide them over adaptation to climate change, plus bigger emission cuts (at least 30%) by the developed world – keep their cards close to their chest right up to the last moment (almost certainly the 24 hours after the last scheduled day) in order to maximize their gains. But this time there are complications. The US, the world’s biggest polluter, can’t commit to a copper-bottomed emissions cut offer until the details are ratified by a vote on their Climate Change Bill still stuck in the Senate till at least January-February. The G77 (the developing countries led by China) won’t commit to cuts till the US dies first. Nor will they agree to a date when they themselves start cutting emissions if it inhibits their growth. An then there’s fraught disagreement about whether to stick to a legally binding Kyoto Protocol format or a looser series of voluntary agreements.

Now there’s another, potentially quite serious, spanner that’s been thrown into the works. One large group within the G77 (which contains several divergent interests among its 132 members) covering much of Latin America and Africa is arguing that the rich countries’ aim to keep the rise in average global temperatures below 2C above pre-industrial levels, which equates broadly to no more than 450 ppm (carbon parts per million) in the atmosphere, is too high for them to accept. They object on two grounds. One is that even if the 450 ppm ceiling were not breached, it would still according to the scientists only provide a 50:50 chance that the temperature would not rise above 2C and unleash a dangerous and unpredictable degree of turmoil. Their other objection is that the 2C rise in global temperatures is an average figure, and that while the North may experience less than 2C, much of the South will suffer 3C. That is why they are now demanding that the total average rise across the world should be no more than 1.5C, and Bolivia, one of the leaders of this group, is insisting on no more than 1C.
The most likely overall conclusion of the conference remains a broad political deal between the big continental blocs – the US and China, the EU and India – which after the Senate vote in Washington early next year (though that cannot be taken for granted) then leads to a reconvened conference to fill in the details and make it, or most of it, legally binding. Even then, the idea that the world has finally been saved from itself is absurd. This is not the end of the negotiations necessary, not even the beginning of the end. It is just an early stage in continuous negotiations that will proceed endlessly for most of this century, and which will get harder and harder as the initial easier carbon-cutting reforms are utilised and exhausted. Hold on for a very bumpy life-long roller coaster!

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