Plodding Climate Talks Stepping up to Higher Level - ABC News

In one sign of the work facing them, only 170 words had been undisputed among the 1,300 on two pages of a key text on the "shared vision" of what the treaty nations want to accomplish. The disputed language was options proposed by various parties and placed within brackets.

Climate talks prepare to nibble at world-saving plans

At climate talks in Copenhagen a year ago, delegates were galvanised by the scientific arguments for reaching an agreement to cut emissions. Their failure to do so has dissipated momentum and dimmed ambitions. Few heads of government are planning to be at Cancún, and the talk is of diplomatic deal-making rather than planet-saving. The UN's new chief climate negotiator, Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica, has little of the campaigning zeal of her predecessor, Yvo de Boer. Instead she is calling for a "tapestry of compromise".