Cancun climate negotiations received ten seconds of combined media coverage from the three major U.S. news networks, according to a recent report.

“I’m trying to check [the 2010 data] again and again,” Drexel University professor Robert Brulle told the Daily Climate. “It’s so little, it’s stunning.”

Delegates from 193 nations met in Mexico last December to address the planet’s rapidly rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Negotiations, while deeply flawed, resulted in plans to compensate developing nations for preserving rainforests, among other advancements.

Media coverage from the top three American networks – CBS, ABC and NBC – consisted of one 10-second news clip, Brulle told Daily Climate.

Last year’s 2009 Copenhagen climate talks resulted in 32 stories equivalent to 98 minutes of airtime, he said.

This decline parallels a swift drop in mainstream climate change coverage across the world, the Daily Climate report concluded. Overall English reporting on the issue, it said, declined 30 percent from last year.

The Globe and Mail’s coverage dropped even lower than the global average – a 51 percent decline since 2009, according to the report.

Intense media reporting on Copenhagen talks – which were attended by President Barack Obama – and 2009’s “climategate” scandal may provide some explanation.

Environmental groups last December awarded Canada three “Fossil of the Day” awards at Cancun talks. The awards went to countries the groups believed were disrupting and undermining action on climate change.

Click here to read a recent Tyee series on the Canadian government's attempts to overturn U.S. climate changes laws.

Geoff Dembicki reports for the Tyee.