GLASGOW, Scotland -- Going into overtime Friday night, negotiators at U.N. climate talks in Glasgow were still trying to find common ground on phasing out coal, on when nations need to update their emission-cutting pledges and on money.
Talks are at a "bit of a stalemate," and the United States, with support from the European Union, is holding back talks, said Lee White, the Gabonese minister for forests and climate change.
Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa, a longtime summit observer, said poorer nations are beyond disappointed with the way the United Kingdom presidency has come up with drafts and that the meetings become "a rich world" negotiation. He said poorer nations cannot accept what has been proposed.
As the talks approached midnight, rich nations had a much more optimistic view of events, indicating the split that might occur after new drafts appear today.
United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson, host of the meeting, said through a spokesperson that he believes "an ambitious outcome is in sight."
U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry said Friday night that climate talks were "working away," commenting after a late-night meeting with his Chinese counterpart and before a hallway chat with India's minister.
Kerry lamented policies among developed nations, including the United States, that lower the price of burning fossil fuels, a major contributor to rising global temperatures. Noting that the world's governments collectively spend trillions of dollars each year subsidizing fossil fuels, he added: "That's a definition of insanity. We're allowing to feed the very problem we're here to try to cure. It doesn't make sense."
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Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua told Kerry in the hallway: "I think the current draft is more close" in a conversation that AP reporters witnessed. When Kerry asked him if he felt better about it, Xie answered: "Yes, I feel better about it because Alok Sharma is a smart guy."
No agreement was ready by the 6 p.m. local time scheduled end of the conference.
"The negotiating culture is not to make the hard compromises until the meeting goes into extra innings, as we now have done," said longtime climate talks observer Alden Meyer of the European think tank E3G. "But the U.K. presidency is still going to have to make a lot of people somewhat unhappy to get the comprehensive agreement we need out of Glasgow."
Three sticking points were making people unhappy on Friday: cash, coal and timing.
A crunch issue is the question of financial aid for poor countries to cope with climate change. Rich nations failed to provide them with $100 billion annually by 2020, as agreed, causing considerable anger among developing countries going into the talks.
A Friday morning draft reflects those concerns, expressing "deep regret" that the $100 billion goal hasn't been met and urging rich countries to scale up their funding for poor nations to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change -- an issue with which developed countries are also grappling.
Johnson pushed richer nations late Friday to put more "cash on the table" to achieve a deal at the climate conference.
"That's what needs to happen in the next few hours," he said, but acknowledged that the talks were unlikely to raise everything that developing countries have requested in the near term.
"We won't clinch it all at COP, but we can start," he said.
Poorer nations say regret isn't enough.
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"Don't call them donor countries. They're polluters. They owe this money," said Saleemul Huq, a climate science and policy expert who is director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh.
The draft also proposes creating a loss-and-damage fund to help poor countries tap existing sources of aid when they face the devastating effects of climate change. But rich nations such as the United States, which have historically been the biggest source of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, are opposed to any legal obligation to compensate poor countries.
But White said rich countries, particularly the U.S. and the European Union, had said they weren't ready.
"They said we never agreed to that. It won't work. It's too complicated," he said.
The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development said wealthy countries offered up to $79.5 billion in climate finance in 2019. But $14 billion of it was from private capital. Most of the rest was publicly funded loans and grants. The majority of this aid, moreover, funds projects that cut carbon emissions rather than those focused on adaptation.
The proposal for creating this mechanism is like creating a bank account, said Adow of Power Shift Africa. "We don't need to push cash into the account now. It is just the opening of the account."
This was the "elephant in the room," said Lia Nicholson, lead negotiator for the alliance of small islands at the summit. She said developing nations and China had a "united position" on this, but the proposal hadn't met with "significant pushback" from rich countries.
"Small islands can't always be the ones who are asked to compromise our interest with the objectives of reaching consensus," she said.
One representative of a climate-threatened nation said she appreciated that there was movement on efforts to broaden financial support for vulnerable nations. Tina Stege, the climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, praised the push to double funding for adaptation.
"We have been saying that adaptation is not optional, and we are glad that this demand is reflected," Stege said. "This marks real progress, and we will not settle for anything less."
During Barack Obama's second term as U.S. president, Congress appropriated $2.8 billion a year for climate finance, not including money given to multilateral development banks. President Joe Biden has proposed to increase U.S. funding for climate to $11.4 billion a year by 2024.
Kerry defended the United States for its positions on key financial issues, including U.S. opposition to a separate fund for historic losses and damages from climate change, as well as ensuring environmental integrity and clear baselines for carbon trading.
Although developing countries wanted wealthy ones to acknowledge an obligation to make up the shortfall in the $100 billion pledge from past years, the United States and other developed countries have been reluctant.
"The U.S. pushed back quite strongly on that idea," said Joe Thwaites, who studies the debt numbers for World Resources Institute.
Wealthy countries compromised by pledging enough by 2025 to close the gap.
That Friday draft also called on countries to accelerate "the phase-out of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels."
PHASING OUT
A previous draft Wednesday had been stronger, calling on countries to "accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuel."
But he defended the latest draft language of the conference's agreement, which was softened from more absolutist language a day earlier and now calls for phasing out "unabated" coal power and "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies. Many activists view that as giving an escape hatch to fossil fuel-producing nations.
Kerry said it was more subtle than that and would leave a door open for the development of technologies that capture carbon dioxide before it reaches the air.
"Unabated coal. We're not talking about all. We're not talking about eliminating. We're talking about the capacity for capture if you can do it," he said.
But there was a mixed response from activists and observers on how significant the addition of the words "unabated" and "inefficient" was.
Richie Merzian, a former Australian climate negotiator who directs the climate and energy program at the Australia Institute think tank, said the additional caveats were "enough that you can run a coal train through it."
Countries like Australia and India, the world's third-biggest emitter, have resisted calls to phase out coal anytime soon.
Scientists agree it is necessary to end the use of fossil fuels as soon as possible to meet the 2015 Paris accord's ambitious goal of capping global warming at 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. But explicitly including such a call in the overarching declaration is politically sensitive, including for countries, such as Saudi Arabia, that fear oil and gas may be targeted next.
Another issue from Friday morning's draft concerns when nations have to return with new emission-cutting targets, which they were supposed to submit before the Glasgow talks. Because the pledges weren't enough, the draft calls on the nations to submit another tougher target by the end of 2022, but some nations, such as Saudi Arabia, are balking about this, said World Resources Institute's David Waskow.
In 2015, there was a debate in Paris about whether targets should be updated every five or 10 years so going to one year after Glasgow is a big deal, said Environmental Defense Fund Vice President Kelley Kizzier, a former EU negotiator.
Negotiators from almost 200 nations gathered in Glasgow on Oct. 31 amid dire warnings from leaders, activists and scientists that not enough is being done to curb global warming.
According to the proposed decision, countries plan to express "alarm and utmost concern" that human activities have already caused around 2 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming "and that impacts are already being felt in every region."
While the Paris accord calls for limiting temperature to "well below" 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, ideally no more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, by the end of the century compared with pre-industrial times, the draft agreement notes that the lower threshold "would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change" and resolves to aim for that target.
In doing so, it calls for the world to cut carbon dioxide emission by 45% in 2030 compared with 2010 levels, and to add no additional carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by midcentury. So far the world is not on track for that.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told The Associated Press this week that the 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit-goal "is still in reach but on life support."
The annual meetings, first held in 1995 and skipped last year because of the pandemic, are designed to get all countries to gradually ratchet up their efforts to curb global warming.
But for many vulnerable nations the process has been far too slow.
"We need to deliver and take action now," said Seve Paeniu, the finance minister of the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. "It's a matter of life and survival for many of us."
On Friday, campaigners and civil society groups took their action inside the summit venue, marching through the main hallway while cheering and chanting slogans such as, "This is what democracy looks like!" and "Power to the people!"
Representatives of Indigenous people, farmers, youths, women, trade unions, disabled people, academics and environmental groups held a "people's plenary" in one of the main halls.
"This is the real atmosphere of people fighting for their needs," said Katarzyna Niemier, 21, a climate activist from Poland.
Information for this article was contributed by Frank Jordans, Aniruddha Ghosal, Seth Borenstein, Ellen Knickmeyer, Philipp Jenne and Karl Ritter of The Associated Press; and by Michael Birnbaum, Steven Mufson, Sarah Kaplan, Brady Dennis, Karla Adam and Dino Grandoni of The Washington Post.
