The good news is, it was a tough finish with lots of stress and arguing but they got there in the end. The bad news is that there's still a lot more hard work ahead to forge an actual agreement, which will then have to be implemented. It will take a lot of time and a lot more hard work, including cries from industry and the GOP, but it has to be done. The Guardian:
Two weeks of talks — the last 60 hours of which was a single marathon negotiating session, with officials holed up in a conference centre through three nights with scarcely a break — ended with a surprise decision struck during a tea break just before dawn on Sunday.
A small huddle of key ministers were ordered to meet for 20 minutes and thrash out their differences. With tempers rising and the talks minutes from being abandoned, the chair, South African foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, ordered China, India, the US, Britain, France, Sweden, Gambia, Brazil and Poland to meet in a small group or "huddle". Surrounded by nearly 100 delegates on the floor of the hall, they talked quietly among themselves to try to reach a new form of words acceptable to all.
The agreement – dubbed the "Durban platform" – is different from the other partial deals that have been struck during the past two decades, with developing countries, including China, the world's biggest emitter, agreeing to be legally bound to curb their greenhouse gases. Previously, poorer nations have insisted that they should not bear any legal obligations for tackling climate change, whereas rich nations – which over more than a century have produced most of the carbon currently in the atmosphere – should.
