The public perception and the political reality of climate change are, to use an apt phrase, poles apart. On the one hand climate change has entered the mainstream political arena in a way that was inconceivable just four years ago.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both favour an 80 per cent cut in greenhouse gases by 2050 and even John McCain supports a 60 per cent reduction. So have the candidates for the US presidency a clear-cut idea about climate change? Not really.
Last January the League of Conservative Voters analysed transcripts of television interviews and debates with all the Democratic and Republican contenders for the White House. By January 25, the candidates had been asked 2,975 questions on a range of issues.
But only six of those mentioned the words "climate change" or "global warming". That is not much greater than the level of media interest in the candidates' positions on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). They were asked three questions on UFOs in the same study.
It is against this background of public awareness but lack of political pressure that delegates from up to 190 nations are meeting in Bangkok for the first round of UN talks on a sweeping new pact to fight climate change.
These, incredibly, are the first formal UN negotiations on a UN climate treaty since the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated from 1995-97. Bangkok's main task is to agree on a programme for the next two years. Time is of the essence.
The United Nations says that a new treaty needs to be in place by the end of 2009 to give national parliaments time to ratify before Kyoto runs out in 2012.
A major concern is that it took two years to negotiate Kyoto and then eight years to get it ratified. There may be a greater sense of urgency now than there was for Kyoto but the climate still is not right.
