Climate change negotiations should be put on ice. This morning Australian time, the sun will set on the UN climate change negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, with very few expected deliverables.
But any outcome will be hailed as a success after governments across the world deliberately downplayed expectations.
Lead US negotiator Todd Stern said this week negotiators shouldn't ''get hung up'' about having an agreement to take to the Durban, South Africa, talks this time next year. Governments cannot even agree about what they are seeking to agree about.
On a macro level, developed countries want a new non-binding emissions reduction agreement without treaty status that includes most countries. And they want it at the expense of the second emissions reduction period under the Kyoto Protocol that's set to expire at the end of 2012. It's a position principally advocated by Australia, Canada, Russia and the protocol's sponsor, Japan.
Broadly, developing countries want the reverse: a continued Kyoto that doesn't bind them.
And then there are China and the US which, pardon the Cancun pun, have been caught in a Mexican stand-off since the 1997 Bali conference over whether China should accept obligations.
At one point this week there were reports China would, but they were quickly corrected. Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh experienced a similar lapse after saying to a climate change activist-filled room that all countries, including India, should ''take on binding commitments under appropriate legal forms''. But he's since backed away.
On a micro level the problems get worse. Accepting a universal standard of measuring, reporting and verification so a tonne of reduced carbon is the same in Washington, New Delhi and Beijing also remains contentious.
India won't agree to it until penalties exist for breaching commitments. But penalties will require an adjudicator with punitive teeth. Only one equivalent body now operates through the World Trade Organisation's dispute settlement regime. Governments won't agree to another one.
And the $US30 billion ($30.5bn) climate change adaptation fund financed from rich countries for poor ones is on shaky ground. Governments are now badging already committed foreign aid as ''climate aid'', and the US is including export credits as part of its offering. The real test will come when rich countries are asked to commit 1.5 per cent of their gross domestic product into a similarly designed $US100bn-a-year fund to operate from 2020.
The stagnation of negotiations concludes a horror year for securing an international agreement.
Former executive secretary of the UN's climate change body Yvo de Boer resigned from his post after he realised Copenhagen's collapse would ensure having his name inked on a new treaty was beyond his tenure.
And public confidence in aspects of the science took a dent after the leaking of the climategate emails and the expose that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on occasion has relied on green activist claims in its scientific reports.
On the back of these problems governments couldn't even agree there was a broad scientific view on temperature increases in a pre-Cancun negotiating text.
But a big bombshell has been the movement of a climate change known back into the unknown column. Four years ago the IPCC concluded deforestation was responsible for one-fifth of global emissions, primarily sourced from developing countries.
But reported research by an environmental consultancy to the World Bank has found the figure is probably 8 per cent and possibly as low as 5 per cent. And it excludes offsets from stored carbon resulting from regrowth.
If the research is correct, sustainably managed deforestation could become a lead contributor to emissions cuts and will lead developing countries to reject many deforestation obligations.
Ironically, text to stop deforestation has been one of the few areas of progress in Cancun.
Faced with so many uncertainties, it's time governments reassessed seeking a new agreement.
It's universally accepted that individual countries should find their own ways to cut emissions.
Focusing on that principle, there is far more goodwill between countries on how to help each other reach their nationally set objectives than turning them into codified, binding commitments.
Until governments are prepared to admit these realities, flying negotiators, the media and activists across the world to negotiations for the un-negotiable is a waste of time, energy and carbon emissions.
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