When did saving the planet get so dull?

A first hand account of what it is like to cover the UN climate change negotiations.

Louise Gray, The Telegraph 7 Nov 09;

Time was when saving the planet meant overcoming a dastardly villain or just wearing a tight pair of pants over your trousers.

Not any more. If you want to save planet Earth from a temperature rise of two degrees C or more – which scientists agree is the biggest challenge facing the world right now – it means gathering in a soulless conference room to discuss more prosaic matters like greenhouse gas emissions and carbon budgets.

The men and women involved in this tedious negotiating process known as the UNFCCC or United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are undoubtedly worthy but they are not super humans – I wish they were. These are the faceless bureaucrats charged with thrashing out a global deal on climate change in time for Copenhagen in December. It is a huge task and don’t get me wrong, it is a deeply fascinating - if dangerously anoraky - process. It’s just that it is quite frankly impenetrable to most of the general public.

I have been charged with reporting on the latest rounds of negotiations from Barcelona this week. Ok, so as cities go it’s not a bad place to end up for a couple of days. But as usual in these negotiations, the talks are in a concrete hangar on the edge of town.

For the majority of the time delegates from 192 countries are locked in negotiations closed to the press. Everyone agrees that the best way to limit global warming is to reduce greenhouse gases, the question is how. Basically rich countries, that are historically responsible for most of the pollution, don’t want to cut dirty industry because it stops them being rich. Poor countries, who will be responsible for most of the pollution in the future, do not want to cut dirty industry because it will keep them poor.

Every so often you see flashes of colour from the multi-ethnic talks when a brightly coloured delegate from Bolivia (who send members of the indigenous community as observers) nip into the canteen for a coffee. The only photo opportunities are the constant stunts by people like Greenpeace who dress up as President Obama or Gordon Brown or even aliens to make a point and liven things up a bit.

But mostly the press rely on non-governmental organisations like WWF and Friends of the Earth, who follow every cough and spit of the talks, and briefings from national governments. Bingos – or business and industry NGOs - also provide less neutral briefings.

At the highest level you know it is like a high stakes poker game. Rich countries such as the US and UK employ the highest trained negotiators to play exactly the right cards without even raising an eyebrow. Poorer countries may have fewer resources but are quite willing to use dirty tricks, as demonstrated by the African nations who walked out in protest earlier this week.

Both sides throw the journalists titbits every so often and we try to interpret what is going on – after all it is going to be our taxes paying for these carbon cuts and our children who will suffer the consequences of global warming.

So saving the planet isn’t boring – Lord knows, someone’s got to do it - it’s just not easy.