Environment

After the devastating failure to reach an agreement at Copenhagen last year, negotiators are patting themselves on the back - not for real achievements in tackling climate change but simply for keeping the talks going for another year. There has once again been no agreement by the rich countries to legally binding emissions cuts that would reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Cuts in the budget for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have been announced that could fundamentally change our natural areas.

Among plans being considered are the privatisation of nature reserves and the Forestry Commission, a reduction of grants to the body that manages Britain's canals, and cuts so severe that Natural England, the country's main conservation organisation, could lose a third of its staff.

Try a search on Google or Yahoo for the terms "oil spill" or "oil disaster" and you will see a sponsored link at the top of the page referring you to BP's website. The disgraced oil giant paid an undisclosed amount for the privilege. Following the link shows you photographs of people who appear very happy to be victims of the spill, and since the pictures of the clean-up are entirely oil free perhaps that is no surprise.

Some weren't impressed. "I think one of the risks associated with his rhetoric on the spill is that it hardens the divide between the Democratic Party and the business community," said David Rothkopf, a former commerce department official under Bill Clinton. "And that's something that while it seems to be in the spirit of the moment now, could have serious ramifications come election time."

But business and government appear to be working together as well as ever, aside from the rhetoric.

Green guru Jonathon Porritt recently lambasted the politically correct for ignoring the demographic elephant in the living room - "exponential population growth". Is he right?

When Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, our rising numbers were seen as the primary threat to the planet's future. Only strict birth control could prevent doomsday. Some demographers said we should require a licence to have children, as you would for a dog.

This drive to make money means that anything that increases costs, such as reducing pollution, will be resisted by those in charge. Investment in energy reduction or improved processes may have a long term logic, but in the short term they risk reducing a company's ability to compete for profit.

The negotiations in the run-up to the 7-18 December Copenhagen Summit confirmed that northern states and their corporations won't get their act together. Nor will southern elites in high-emission countries, especially South Africa.

Imagine a United Nations conference on the environment. It brings together representatives of every major economy, with NGOs and scientists. In the run up to the conference the participants have been locked in negotiations for over three months. There has been deadlock on almost every key point of the agreement. The president of the world's most powerful economy prevaricates about even attending. Afterwards proclamations from government leaders everywhere are issued claiming that the event marks a new beginning for the planet.

First, they have changed the debate about wind power. It's not true that onshore wind development is stalled in this country. There has been a 500 percent increase in onshore wind power in Britain in the last five years.

But it is true that among environmentalists many people took the NIMBY opposition to wind farms seriously. Now the balance has shifted decisively.