Energy from oil proves more popular than Green

It's notable that it was the USA that gave us this fright. The special relationship is proving tricky right now. The UK has been getting it in the neck from President Obama over a calamity on an altogether greater scale than Robert Green's - the inability of 'British Petroleum' as the President would have it - to keep crude oil off the beaches of the Gulf Coast.

Much is made in the US press of the apparent ineffectiveness of BP boss Tony Hayward - unhelpfully, a Brit - and of course the BP shareholder dividend. The fact that BP employs more people from the US than it does from the UK, and that only 40% of the company's shareholders are from the UK, with another 40% from the US, is conveniently overlooked. As is the role played by a couple of big US companies in the operations of the Deepwater Horizon rig.

Needless to say, there is much political posturing going on. Obama needs a 'butt to kick', and whilst we might like to think any less British sounding oil company would have been a better fall guy all round, needs must and the President will make do with BP.

There are two themes emerging. Despite the rhetoric from the politicians, the American public seem to be waking up, slowly, to the idea that perhaps things aren't as straightforward as they are led to believe. The US economy, and indeed US way of life, has an insatiable need for oil, and therefore a vested interest in encouraging oil companies with the skills, resources and commercial appetite to go looking for oil in difficult places. So it's not in the US national interest that BP is hung out to dry, whilst the world's oil companies look on in horror.

Secondly, an early knee jerk reaction by the Obama administration was to impose a drilling moratorium. Bizarrely, this move has the potential to trigger an event greater environmental catastrophe.

In Bonn last week, climate negotiators reported a renewed sense of optimism that discussions were back on track after the acrimonious fall out following the failed talks in Copenhagen. However, a deal is heavily dependent on US legislation to curb its own emissions, and that still looks some way off.

Despite taking a back seat to banking and health reform, a workable climate change bill has been slowly working its way through the complex US law making process - stitched together with a delicate set of compromises necessary to get the required Republican support, including offshore drilling.

The drilling moratorium risks bringing everything down like a house of cards. This is especially worrying, because one of the few positive outcomes from Copenhagen was a commitment from industrialised countries to raise $100bn a year from 2020 to help the most vulnerable countries adapt to climate change. A sizeable share of the US portion of this is expected to come from the establishment of a US carbon market - something that is dependent on climate change legislation.

It's tempting to overplay the football metaphors, but the US administration needs to make sure it doesn't score an own goal here. The sight of pelicans covered in crude oil is heart-rending, and kicking a 'foreign' oil company is no doubt tempting for US politicians facing mid-term elections - and a US President with a high profile green agenda. But, paradoxically, for the communities on the Gulf coast, the oil industry - and in particular offshore drilling - is part of the economic lifeblood.

And a global climate change treaty needs US climate change legislation - and all the compromises that that inevitably entails.