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This was the week that saw the heavyweights come to town.

The EU had said it, UN climate convention chief Yvo de Boer had said it: without something firm on the table from China and US, together responsible for about 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, it would be very difficult to reach agreement of any kind at the Copenhagen summit.

Unsurprising, then, that - within a 24-hour period - of commitments by both countries to constrain emissions, the latter saying the pledges "can unlock two of the last doors to a comprehensive agreement".

Depending on what impact the recession turns out to have had on US emissions, may turn out to be a cut of about 12% from current levels; and it's only a few percent down from 1990 levels, the commonly-used baseline.

I've raised the question of whether developing countries will regard this as satisfactory before; and it's also unclear whether the US will put anything forward on finance, the other key ingredient of any Copenhagen deal.

has received more plaudits than the US pledge, though , asking how willing China will be to see this plan independently verified - something that industrialised nations are liable to demand, in the end, as part of a legally-binding global climate treaty.

These two pronouncements were evidently facilitated by President Obama's recent visit to Beijing.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Washington this week, however, doesn't appear to have borne quite such meaty fruit.

The two governments on climate change, clean energy and energy security - but nothing formal on curbing emissions.

As India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh , China's announcement of a numerical pledge now leaves India as the only major greenhouse gas emitter not to put any firm numbers on the table:

"We've to think hard about our climate strategy now and look for flexibility... to avoid being isolated at Copenhagen."

Mr Ramesh is intending to put a carbon intensity pledge forward next week, ; though it'll be less ambitious than China's, as befits its lower per-capita GDP and emissions figures.

Chinese and US leaders didn't come forward with the travel plans that some had been hoping for.

Mr Obama will go to Copenhagen - but only en route to collect his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, meaning he'll not be there for the long and winding final hours when deals are done. And President Hu Jintao will not, as far as we know, be attending, leaving Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to lead China's delegation.

One explanation would be that both leaders are keeping their political powder dry for whenever and wherever a new treaty can be signed.

In the US itself, - the batch of e-mails and documents apparently stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the UK's University of East Anglia - appears to be emerging as an issue of some significance, at least in the Senate, where on capping and trading carbon emissions is being considered by a number of committees.

, a long-time "sceptic" and the ranking Republican senator on the crucial Environment and Public Works Committee, said:

"...lawmakers have an obligation to determine the extent to which the so-called 'consensus' of global warming, formed with billions of taxpayer dollars, was contrived in the biased minds of the world's leading climate scientists."

Mr Inhofe as not only lethal for the Boxer-Kerry bill, but at least highly toxic for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as it .

Climategate - which, among mainstream media, - has also surfaced , where the government is desperate to pass cap-and-trade legislation through the Senate before the Copenhagen conference begins.

The issue is proving thorny enough to have split the opposition Liberal party, some of whose senators have rebelled against leader Malcolm Turnbull's pledge to support the measure; and at passing the bill on Monday.

It could even lead to a general election, with Mr Turnbull warning that the party risks annihilation if the rebels hold sway:

"We would be wiped out... the vast majority of Australians want to see action on climate change."

As far as I've been able to ascertain, climate politics elsewhere remains unimpressed by allegations that the CRU documents undermine the very basis of the forthcoming negotiations; but it's a question that I will be asking when the Copenhagen talks open.

With the governments in Canberra and Washington DC now firmly signed up to chasing a deal in Copenhagen, some of the pressure that used to fall on the Howard and Bush administrations is now finding its way to Canada.

is uncannily similar to the US figure - a 20% cut from 2006 levels by 2020, equating to about 3% from 1990 levels - an indication of how keen the Canadian government is to avoid losing competitiveness against its southern neighbour.

Environmental groups say this is woefully inadequate and - with support from former UK International Development Secretary Clare Short - are urging that , should because its climate inaction threatens other member countries.

Whatever the chances are of that happening, the meeting will also be a chance to see what Commonwealth leaders make of on Friday for a $10bn fund to be established pretty much immediately to help developing countries constrain emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

This is the same size of pot that Yvo de Boer has been saying needs to be on the table at Copenhagen.

UN agencies recommend - and most parties appear to accept - that the eventual fund will need to disburse sums at least an order of magnitude bigger every year, but this is viewed as start-up money that can be deployed immediately - not only restraining emissions, but acting as a sign of good faith that industrialised governments are serious about a Copenhagen deal.

Amazon nations held a summit this week where all agreed this sort of money was essential to achieving a Copenhagen agreement.

But there was something of a mixed message from Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

A couple of weeks ago he pledged to cut Brazil's carbon emissions by 36% by 2020, principally through reducing deforestation; but this could only happen if Western countries made it happen:

"Let no gringo [foreigner] ask us to let an Amazonian starve to death under a tree... we want to preserve [the forests], but [other countries] have to pay for that preservation."

For the penultimate time, I type this phrase: if you think I've missed anything of significance that's happened over the last week, please post a comment.

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• - What's this?

A fair bit of the doubt and confusion surrounding next month's UN climate summit has suddenly cleared, with the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters - the US and China - on curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

As is set out in - the agreement made at the UN summit two years ago - the US pledge takes the form of an actual cut in emissions.

China - whose per-capita emissions are far lower - vows to reduce , the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of GDP, by 40-45% from 2005 levels by 2020.

This is ambitious - more ambitious than many observers had expected.

But it doesn't mean China's emissions will fall - in fact they are still likely to rise, with the rate at which economic growth rises outstripping the rate at which carbon intensity falls.

In fact, the target could be met in a number of ways.

One would be to use all energy more efficiently. Another would be to increase the proportion of energy deriving from low-carbon sources such as wind turbines and nuclear reactors.

A third would be to produce goods of higher value without changing the nature of energy production and use, raising GDP while leaving emissions unchanged.

In practice, the Chinese plan will probably include a mixture of those three elements. As , energy efficiency is being targeted - certainly in new developments - while investment in renewables is forging ahead.

The possibility had been raised - not least on this blog - that between Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao might prove crucial in allowing these pledges to be put forward, because the politics of the two countries on climate change are wrapped up in several important ways.

Firstly, as the two countries produce about two-fifths of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, they clearly hold the key more than any others to a deal that really will curb human-induced climate change; everyone else knows that these two governments have to be fully on board.

Secondly, as , the US is the country that developing nations have most in their sights when they talk about the duty of the rich to lead.

Conversely, China is the country that US senators have most in their sights when they talk about the need for all major emitters to take action.

A related point is that at some point in the future, China will become the main US rival for the title of the world's biggest economy, which brings issues of competitiveness into the mix.

Although details of the talks that Mr Obama and Mr Hu had during the former's recent visit to Beijing remain under wraps, one logical conclusion would be that the two leaders were able to agree on a formulation that would be mutually acceptable - and that here, we are seeing the fruits of that agreement.

China now becomes the latest major developing nation after Indonesia, Brazil and South Korea to pledge a target; and as we approach within touching distance of the Copenhagen summit, virtually all of the major cards are on the table on curbing emissions - though not on other issues such as finance and technology transfer.

Without emission pledges from the US and China, negotiations in Copenhagen would have lacked a large part of the underpinning vital if any kind of deal is to be struck.

But whether developing countries are impressed by the size of the US commitment is another matter.

China itself says it wants developed nations to cut carbon by 40% from 1990 levels by 2020 - and , is a lot less than that.

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• - What's this?

If you've spent the week following every change of direction in the political winds about the likely outcome of the forthcoming UN climate summit, you'll have seen more twisting than the average Chubby Checker song.

Extending borrowing from the arts and entertainment world: "To bind or not to bind" has been the week's big question - but seeing as we've discussed this elsewhere, I'll put it to one side for the moment - while "Hey Johnny - what are you disagreeing about?" "Whaddya got?" would be a popular pick for the most apt exchange.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate convention, at a news conference during the week.

The first:

"There is no doubt in my mind that (Copenhagen) will yield a success; almost every day now, we see new commitments and pledges from both industrialised and developing countries."

The second: that the list of countries putting emission targets forward:

"must of course include the United States."

For environment groups, for developing countries, and now for the UN's top climate official, the US holds the key more than any other country to the chances of signing off any kind of agreement in Copenhagen.

For years, under George W Bush, the US was cited as the main obstacle to further deals on limiting climate change.

Now, under a president who emanated change and engagement and all sorts of other radically different vibes during his election campaign, the US is widely seen just one year on as still the major obstacle to a further deal on limiting climate change.

As a non-US citizen, I can't help wondering how that feels inside the country; comments much appreciated.

It's still not clear whether the US will come forward with targets or money or any firm pledges by Copenhagen. that it was something that Barack Obama's administration wanted to do, without falling into the Kyoto trap of promising something that it would not be able to deliver.

"What we are looking at is whether we feel that we can put down a number that would be provisional in effect, contingent on getting our legislation done. Our inclination is to try to do that, but we want to be smart about it."

The US may have the will, but it won't have the bill - the Boxer-Kerry legislation, that is, seeking to impose caps on emissions economy-wide.

Senators that it won't come into the Senate before spring - at the earliest.

This timeline makes things very awkward for those who - like Mr de Boer - would like to have a new deal signed and sealed halfway through next year.

If issues such as healthcare reform delay the Boxer-Kerry bill beyond the spring, the US may still not have anything approved by all arms of its governments to put before the international community by the middle of the year.

And what sort of bill might the Senate eventually consider?

A bipartisan group of senators whether something radically downscaled in ambition would stand a better chance of progress - something that would cap only emissions from power plants and maybe heavy industry.

This would of course have a smaller effect on emissions. It would also lead to the Senate passing a very different bill from the one that went through the House of Representatives in July, meaning the process of reconciling them could take longer afterwards... and so on.

There's a chicken-and-egg-style aspect to all this. The lower expectations are for Copenhagen, the less pressure any senators will feel to push forward.

That's an issue emerging in Australia during the week, where lawmakers of debating legislation that would reduce emissions by 5-15% below 2000 levels by 2020.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is desperate to get the measure through the Senate. But it has been blocked once before; :

"Given how Copenhagen seems to be collapsing, there doesn't seem to be any real need to rush".

Following on from the recent upping of lobbying by religious groups, an unusual new player entered the arena during the week in Australia - the United Firefighters Union, that they were endangering lives and property if they held up the bill.

As with religious groups, I'm not sure how much influence the men with hoses will have - but if I were standing in the path of one of the forest fires , I think I'd listen to them.

Those in favour of a strong new deal received some succour during the week from pledges by Russia and South Korea on tackling emissions.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev of keeping emissions 25% lower in 2020 than they were in 1990 - strengthened from the previous figure of 10-15%.

The new target still permits a real-world rise in emissions as they're now about 37% below 1990 levels, having plunged when Communist-era industry collapsed in the early 1990s - but it's stronger than before.

More strikingly, South Korea - one of the most developed of the nations that are not quite developed enough to be asked to take on an actual cut in emissions - .

President Lee Myung-bak announced emissions will fall by about 4% between now and 2020 - a 30% reduction in the extent to which national emissions would grow without any restraining action.

There had been suggestions (including on this blog) that President Hu Jintao of China might reveal an analogous target during Barack Obama's visit - but nothing materialised, for reasons about which we can only speculate, but (speculating here) are presumably connected to the Obama administration's non-offering of targets on money and mitigation.

Still more heart will be taken from for a thousand-fold expansion in solar power over the next 12 years - a plan that will presumably mean building fewer coal-fired power stations.

Meanwhile, lots of the discourse around legally-binding agreements and politically binding deals and so on has gone on without much reference to the fact that some countries might simply not sign anything in Copenhagen that falls below their minimum expectations.

"We should not allow any country to turn a political failure into a media success," the Marshall Islands' UN Ambassador Phillip Muller said mid-week.

Would small-island developing states and the least developed nations of Africa withhold their signatures if they felt that only a fig leaf were being proffered in Copenhagen?

We don't really know the final negotiations positions of any countries and blocs, but it has to be a possibility, I suggest, that might concentrate minds in the west.

Also concentrating minds, perhaps, will be .

Remember that G8 pledge to hold warming to 2C? According to the Global Carbon Project, current emissions trends are taking the world in the direction of 5-6C: a world of rising sea levels, drought across much of the tropics and drastically declining agricultural yields.

Perhaps someone somewhere will think of having a global treaty to sort all that out. Oh - hang on a minute...

As always, if you think I've missed something important in this weekly round-up, please post a comment.

Update 2309: Because comments were posted quoting excerpts , and because there are potential legal issues connected with publishing this material, we have temporarily removed all comments until we can ensure that watertight oversight is in place.

Update 2 - 0930 GMT Monday 23 November: We have now re-opened comments on this post. However, legal considerations mean that we will not publish comments quoting from e-mails purporting to be those stolen from the University of East Anglia, nor comments linking to other sites quoting from that material.

Update 3 - 2116 GMT Monday 23 November: As lots of material apparently from the stolen batch of CRU e-mails is now in the public domain, we will not from now on be removing comments simply because they quote from these e-mails.

However, an important couple of caveats: a) the authenticity of most of the material has not to our knowledge been confirmed, and b) it would be easy when posting quotes to break inadvertently some of the - such as the one barring posting of contact details - which are still in operation and which will see comments being blocked.

In addition to and , those of you enraptured by this issue will probably have noticed Paul Hudson's post on his climate blog, and Martin Rosenbaum's post on his Freedom of Information blog. If not - enjoy. There's also a that you might want to plaster.

Again - there's nothing at all barring comments on the original blog topic...

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• - What's this?

A couple of weeks ago, the cat came well and truly out of the bag: there would not be a legally binding treaty at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen next month.

Or will there?

During his meeting on Tuesday with China's President Hu Jintao, appeared to indicate that some sort of comprehensive agreement was still possible.

Then, Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, speaking to a pre-summit meeting of environment ministers, developed nations to bring firm targets to Copenhagen - targets that should be binding.

All of this is very much at odds with statements from a number of European officials and ministers during and directly after , which were variations on the theme that a legally-binding deal was "unlikely", "extremely unlikely" or "impossible".

It certainly poses more questions. What does "legally binding" mean in this context? What does the alternative being bandied around - "politically binding" - mean?

And where does the formulation that President Obama used in his Beijing speech - "not a partial accord or a political declaration, but rather an accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations and one that has immediate operational effect" - fit in to the overall picture?

We are into a miasma of nuance here; but for different parties, all of the nuances are important, so it's worth having a look at what's being suggested, what might actually transpire, and who's likely to be happy or unhappy.

So let's go back to the Bali meeting nearly two years ago and the pledge, in the (BAP), to produce something new by Copenhagen.

The BAP doesn't actually prescribe a legally-binding treaty, although that's an interpretation and an outcome that's been accepted by most governments as desirable and necessary.

You could argue that something legally-binding is implied by the agreement that all developed countries must adopt "measurable, reportable and verifiable nationally appropriate mitigation commitments or actions, including quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives".

What is explicit is that a Copenhagen agreement must "achieve the ultimate objective of " - in other words, must stabilise "greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system".

In the broadest sense, then, there is acknowledgement by all governments that everything enacted before - the UN climate convention of 1992, the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 - could not achieve that goal, and something new was needed.

That "something else", according to BAP, would have to be bigger and bolder, encompassing emissions cuts by rich countries, curbs on the rate of growth of emissions by major developing countries, and finance and technology transfer to help poorer countries constrain their emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

It was described by UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband as the most complex set of international negotiations ever, on any issue.

Two principal factors now line up to prevent a full binding treaty emerging in Copenhagen. One is the sheer amount of negotiating needed in a tight period of time; the other is that the US has yet to put any commitments on the table and may not do so before the summit.

What a number of developing countries are still demanding - joined, apparently, by Mr Rasmussen - is something that is firmly binding even though it might not carry any formally legal weight, let alone the paraphernalia of a full treaty.

But how can that be?

Recall first that these treaties don't become binding on anyone until they've been ratified by enough countries to gain the status of international law. - and in the case of Copenhagen, we don't yet have an agreement on the legal form of any treaty, let alone what would trigger its adoption as law.

Secondly, one of the bases for the Copenhagen process has been that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed".

(A better phrase might be "nothing is binding until everything is binding, because certain things such as an agreement on (REDD) could conceivably emerge as a self-standing entity whatever the carnage around it.")

Are governments really going to grant binding status to something that includes main numbers on emissions targets and finance, but omits details that for some nations might turn out to be crucial? This has to be a consensus of 192 countries, not a majority vote.

Thirdly, what is there except international law that can bind countries to anything?

When it comes to the form and status of something that is not international law but is more than just a promise, I for one am out of ideas; if anyone has a clearer notion, I'd be very happy if you can spell it out for us in a comment.

A fourth issue is that some countries are very unhappy about signing up to anything that is not legally binding. A number of developing nations including Sudan (chair of the G77/China bloc), Grenada and Barbados have been making noises about not agreeing to anything that is not legally binding.

Their position is that we had the politically-binding agreement in Bali. In a sense, we had it in Rio; this is supposed to be the time for delivery on those fine words.

And it not just small developing countries; a number of European delegates have said that no deal is better than a bad deal, and presumably if they do not see the requisite amount of "binding" in the text, they will not sign, whatever embarrassment that might cause the Danish hosts.

The runes on this story appear to shift their shape daily. Experienced negotiators and observers suggest the fog is unlikely to clear before the final Copenhagen dawn on December 18th.

To the outside observer, it might seem a strange old way to try and solve a problem that as a serious and urgent threat to humanity's prospects.

But if there's one thing that governments appear to consider truly binding in this process, it's the requirement to obfuscate and procrastinate right down to the wire.

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• - What's this?

Here in London, we've reached that time of year when the Sun rises after you do and sets comfortably before you leave the office. And the hours in between are filled with grey, malevolent drizzle.

Have the week's diplomatic moves shed more light than the Sun is currently doing here on the likelihood of reaching a climate deal at the UN talks next month?

It's been a relatively quiet week; but if the latest moves mean anything, a deal is further away than ever.

While European delegates to the preparatory conference in Barcelona that ended a week ago were saying variations on the "deal is unlikely but possible" theme, now the "unlikely" bit of it has hardened.

Now it's emerged that at a "COP 15.5" - a follow-up summit in the middle of next year.

As this had previously been raised as a possibility and then discarded, the logical conclusion from its resurrection is that the chances of a substantial agreement next month have slipped from slim to infinitesimally tiny.

Finance ministers from G20 countries in the Scottish town of St Andrews. On their to-do list was an item marked "decide what we're going to do about financing a climate deal".

makes it clear that this item is still on the to-do list. They "recognised the need to increase significantly and urgently the scale and predictability of finance" and "that finance will play an important role in the delivery of the outcome at Copenhagen".

But on new ideas on how to raise money and manage it - and of new commitments - there was nothing.

Eleven of the countries likely to be recipients of adaptation funding if and when any materialises on Monday and Tuesday for a mini-summit.

It marked the first meeting of a new grouping - the V11, V standing for "vulnerable".

Their declaration broke little new ground in calling for tough targets on emissions (aiming for 350ppm CO2e rather than the 450ppm that other blocs find acceptable) and for a substantial increase in funds on the table (1.5% of developed countries' GDP).

They did, though, vow to move towards carbon-neutrality - partly, it seems, as a way of shaming richer nations who have not made such pledges.

that it will take to Copenhagen a target of curbing the rate of emissions growth by about 40% by 2020 - the majority to be achieved through cutting Amazonian deforestation by 80%.

And as if by magic, that the deforestation rate has indeed slowed by about 45% in the last year.

This is exactly the sort of commitment that industrialised nations say they want to see from the major developing countries - it's explicitly asked for in the - and the more developing countries produce such figures, the more pressure there will be on richer nations to step up their own commitments.

Denmark, host of next month's UN summit, heads of state and government from every UN country, in what it sees as an "upgrading" of the talks' importance.

About 40 have indicated they will come - to declare publicly during the week.

Whether President Obama is among them , he said in an interview with Reuters. If his presence can secure a deal, he'll go - if not, he won't.

What is still missing is any sign of whether the US will put any numbers on the table for cutting emissions or providing finance.

In one sense, this is a surprise.

Progress of the Boxer-Kerry bill this week, with leading Democrat senators saying debate is likely to be delayed until January.

That confirms that if the President goes to Copenhagen, he will do so without an express mandate from the Senate.

From that perspective, Mr Obama's situation is not going to change between now and mid-December; so why can't the decision be made now, and made public - which would surely induce more leaders to get their plane tickets to the Danish capital?

Here's a thesis - a suspicion, a possibility. Could it be that the decision is tied much more to the and the forthcoming by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington.

to work for more progress on a new treaty; but that appears to signify little but more words.

What could signify something more substantial is his meeting with China's President Hu Jintao.

In September, at the UN special session on climate change in New York, to curb the growth of China's greenhouse gas emissions by a significant - but as yet unspecified - amount.

Could he unveil some numbers during Mr Obama's visit, either publicly or privately? Will Mr Singh be specific about India's plans when he meets the US president?

Politically, big pledges from China and India could influence the Senate's decision on the Boxer-Kerry bill... and if Mr Obama thinks the pledges (whether made privately or publicly) are big enough to ensure the bill's passage, perhaps he will then feel able to make a commitment on behalf of the US at or before Copenhagen in the absence of an explicit Senate backing.

All conjecture, of course... we'll see by the time this countdown clock reaches zero how accurate my crystal ball has been.

As well as Mr Obama's Asian tour, something to look out for next week is the "pre-COP" - the gathering of environment ministers in Copenhagen to discuss the summit.

These meetings don't have anything like formal negotiating status but they do provide a chance to put a finger in the air and see if it smells of progress.

I'll do my best to bring some soundings during the week. In the meantime, if I've missed out anything significant, please post a comment.

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• - What's this?

Most of those concerned with climate have had their eyes on Barcelona this week, where delegates from 192 countries plus hundreds of observers, campaigners, lobbyists - and journalists - convened for the final session of preparatory talks .

, there's been a deal of tension between rich and poor - with the developing world accusing the developed world of forgetting about its needs, as rich nations refuse to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to stave off "dangerous" climate change (their view).

How much of the rancour turns out to be real and how much synthesized as a political bargaining tool we will find out in Copenhagen - although perhaps not until the last few days of that meeting.

What's certain is that unless the US comes forward with a pledge on reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, there will be no deal of any kind, legally binding or politically binding (whatever those phrases may mean precisely).

If the US does produce a figure, it can realistically be in no other ballpark than a 17-20% reduction from 2005 levels by 2020 - that's roughly what President Obama pledged before the election, and roughly what would produce.

In a news conference here, US negotiator Jonathan Pershing reckoned this would put the US way ahead of the EU on ambition - the US would cut emissions faster that Europe over the next 11 years.

The reason is that the EU has already cut emissions markedly between 1990 - the baseline that everyone else uses - and today.

And against that baseline, the US pledge will only be about 4% - paltry beside the EU's 20-30% and Japan's 25%.

Mr Pershing may not want the administration to which he belongs to shoulder the burden of making cuts that the Bush government did not... but from the perspective of a developing country many miles away, the US is the US is the US, whoever is in charge at various times.

Is there a formula that everyone could live with? Will the EU consider 4% "comparable" to its own efforts?

Would developing countries accept a US pledge as binding in the absence of Senate legislation - given that on the Kyoto Protocol, ?

Could money and technology bridge the gap?

Is it, indeed, bridgeable?

Mr Pershing said it's not yet been decided whether the US will put forward a target in Copenhagen and one reason for the non-decision - if non-decision it is, rather than a decision that's been taken and is being kept under wraps - is presumably the sticky passage envisaged for the Boxer-Kerry bill.

Republican senators on the influential Environment and Public Works Committee decided to boycott discussions on the bill this week, saying that a full analysis of its financial costs and benefits was needed first.

So committee chair - and bill sponsor - without debate - a procedure that's apparently rarely used.

However, in a sign that not everything is going swimmingly well, senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham towards a bill that can get the 60 votes necessary to pass legislation in the full Senate.

It's likely to include more support for nuclear power and perhaps for the oil and gas industry, while maintaining the cap-and-trade programme that is the current bill's centerpiece.

What this means for prospects of passing climate legislation isn't clear - perhaps not to anyone. But it doesn't exactly sound like a fast track - particularly as the further legislation evolves from the text that the House of Representatives passed in June, the harder it will be to reconcile the two.

A high-level European delegation was in Washington this week and although was received with applause on the Democrat side, there was reportedly silence on the other side of the house - another indication that not all US lawmakers are convinced that their president is on the right track on climate change.

Other potentially significant moves this week include - a meeting expressly charged at the last G20 summit in Pittsburgh with putting a new offer of climate finance on the table.

Campaigners are urging them to phase out fossil fuel subsidies as soon as possible. To do so was a pledge made by governments at the G20 summit - it's also an agreed aim under the UN climate convention, which dates all the way back to 1992.

At the time of writing, the finance ministers' meeting is under way but nothing has yet emerged - you can follow my colleague Andrew Walker's reports on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News website and we'll look at it again next week.

A conference will open in the Maldives next week of countries considered especially vulnerable to climate change. Governments invited include Bangladesh, Costa Rica, and a number of Caribbean and Pacific island states.

What they'll come up with is likely to include demands for reducing greenhouse gas emissions further and faster than is currently envisaged under the UN process.

The UN texts, the advice from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and some of the developed country targets are loosely aimed at keeping the rise in global average temperatures within 2C since pre-industrial times.

The equations are inexact but that may roughly translate to keeping greenhouse gas concentrations below the equivalent of 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide.

For the small island developing states (SIDS), that's too much. They want a maximum of 350ppm adopted as the benchmark.

Although on the surface politicians - especially from Europe - are trimming expectations for Copenhagen, behind the scenes they are also encouraging campaigners to step up the pressure in the intervening weeks.

This week, we've had aliens wandering round asking "Where are the leaders?" and barrages of alarm clocks indicating the shortness of time before the summit... and we also have what are .

Anna Keenan and Sara Svensson have vowed to go without food until the Copenhagen summit at least - perhaps beyond, if there is no agreement that meets their satisfaction.

"We're undertaking the hunger strike because we're not seeing much action from governments and we really need it," she told me.

Can their action affect governments and persuade them to amend their positions in the four weeks between now and the start of the Copenhagen talks? Should it?

As always, if you think I've missed any significant developments this week or interesting ones coming up, please post a comment.

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• - What's this?

At the UN climate negotiations in Barcelona.

It's a story that's been coming for the last few months; , the first cards of the blame game are being played.

Remember the , and the road that stretched from there to Copenhagen?

The last-night exhaustion and the tears, the drama of the US being asked to step aside if it wouldn't lead? The glittering promise held out by ministers of a new deal this December - a treaty that would legally bind most countries to do something about curbing their carbon emissions, and fund those about to be beset by effects of climate change?

As October's preparatory conference in Bangkok ended, a complete treaty by the end of the year was already being dismissed in some quarters - even by insiders - as a step too far, given the fundamental divisions that had endured even as governments sought to agree their common vision for the treaty.

There might now only be a framework of an agreement, it was said - but it would have some firm numbers in it, and it would be legally binding.

In the last two weeks, this has unravelled a step further, with politicians and negotiators and officials - and now the UK's Climate Secretary Ed Miliband - acknowledging that achieving anything legally binding is probably too big an ask.

For the developing countries, it's obvious who to blame: the US and the EU.

The US should commit to steep carbon cuts, as envisaged in the , they say; the EU should press harder and lean more heavily on its allies in Washington DC.

For those beleaguered Western governments, one answer is to point the finger back at developing countries.

China should pledge more impressive curbs than it has so far, on Wednesday - .

Developing countries are demanding levels of financial compensation - such as 1% of the industrialised world's GDP - that they know to be unrealistic, said officials here.

Campaign groups, too, are pointing the finger at the US, which they accuse of caving in to corporate lobbying.

Russia and Canada are accused in some circles of less than full commitment to the process - partly from a desire to expand exploitation of oil and gas reserves in places that are now made inaccessible by ice or made unaffordable by the harsh economics of their extraction.

There have been harsh words for Saudi Arabia. The accused the Gulf state of putting its oil interests before the needs of the poor countries with which it's allied in the , obstructing parts of the negotiations that it found inconvenient.

Wednesday saw a series of events mounted in various developing country capitals to raise the issue, and on Thursday the Saudi delegation was handed a letter outside the talks here saying that "the position of the Saudi Arabian government in the negotiations risks preventing the necessary deal from being made".

For some of the youth caucus, the issue is simple, with the "school report card" they prepared giving pass marks to every bloc from the developing world and failing every industrialised country.

The African countries that would probably concur.

Simplistic? Certainly, according to other developing country delegates who - off the record, of course - found the African action unconstructive - an episode of what Australians term "spitting the dummy".

To some extent, all the blaming and shaming is a political game - another part of the diplomatic manoeuvring which governments use to secure not just a deal they say they need, but the variant of the deal that works best for them.

Does anybody in the Obama administration really expect China to pledge cuts in greenhouse gas emissions when the US has put no numbers on the table at all for 2020?

Does the G77/China bloc really expect the Obama administration to put firm numbers on the table when it only has as much power compared to the Senate as the US political system allows?

There is also a degree of back-covering - getting a bit of retaliation in first, as critics sharpen their knives in the bloody abattoir of national parliamentary politics.

Who is really to blame? Everybody will have their own list; so can guidance be sought in this affair's guiding treatise, the ?

Perhaps it's worth noting one paragraph...

"The global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible co-operation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions."

...which surely implies that it's up to all parties to achieve the treaty they say they want.

Looks like it's not going to be this year, though... perhaps next?

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At the UN climate negotiations in Barcelona.

It looks like the is shaping up to be another final-night, early-hours, last few seconds kind of affair.

On the surface, what we're witnessing here is a stand-off between a pair of adversaries whose positions are both rock solid and un-reconcilable.

Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese diplomat who leads the negotiating team from the , is adamant that developed nations have to pledge to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% (from 1990 levels) by 2020; otherwise there can be no deal.

"Anything less than 40% means Africa's land mass is offered destruction as the only alternative," he said.

And "destruction" included people's livelihoods as well as forests and other ecosystems, he said.

The "at least 40%" demand has raised some eyebrows because it's a deeper cut than the 25-40% figure recommended by the (IPCC) in order to keep the rise in the average global temperature since pre-industrial times below 2C.

But later, Sweden's chief negotiator Anders Turesson expressed some sympathy for the G77 position.

"It's not unreasonable. We say 30% (the EU target in case of a global deal) is within the span of the IPCC in order to meet a 2C target, but we do also recognise that 2C will provide serious consequences for some countries."

But developed nations - the EU, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Canada - have already set out their targets; with or without a big US pledge, it amounts to a lot less than 40%.

So on the surface, no deal is possible in Copenhagen in December, nor in the mooted "child of Copenhagen" conference some time next year that is looking increasingly necessary - nor in any other session thereafter until one side or other drops down from exhaustion.

The same divide appears to be evident when it comes to finance - richer countries paying poorer ones either to help them develop along low-carbon lines, or to help them adapt to impacts of climate change.

Last week, the EU . A global pot of 100bn euros per year would be needed by 2020; between a quarter and a half of that would come from the public finances of developed nations, and the EU would pay its fair share.

The EU stopped short of declaring explicitly what that would be; but here, the European Commission's chief negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger clarified that it would be between 5bn and 15bn euros per year - dependent on other developed countries paying their "fair shares" too.

Again, on the surface this is not enough to secure a deal, with various demanding that richer nations contribute 0.5-1% of their GDP, and from public funds too.

Asked how these apparently unbridgeable divides could be bridged, Mr Turesson said it would be wrong to think that final negotiating positions would emerge here in Barcelona, nor in the first week of Copenhagen.

Only when ministers - and possibly heads of government - arrived towards the end of the Copenhagen talks would we really know, he said - and very likely not until the last day, or probably the last night, or the unscheduled early morning beyond the last night.

Later, in a news conference with lead negotiators from the EU, the subject of came up - a 20% cut from 2006 levels (or 3% from 1990 levels) by 2020, which the government has declared to be "non-negotiable".

"Negotiators often say things are 'non-negotiable'," said Mr Runge-Metzger. "But if it is really that, why are they here negotiating?"

I asked Mr Di-Aping whether he was sure that no deal was better for the nations he represents than a deal under which developed countries cut their emissions by, say, 30%. He replied by emphasising the arguments lying behind the G77's 40% demand.

I'm sure he wasn't giving away his final negotiating position either, and why would he?

He's probably waiting until the final night in Copenhagen too.

So there are two questions running round my mind.

One is whether it's worth holding the first nine days of that conference. Maybe the thousands of delegates, ministers, aides, campaigners, journalists, caterers and everyone else should spend their time listening to music or watching football with a beer or two before piling in solely for the final night when they'd all be happy and relaxed and thinking of nothing but the good of the planet and its inhabitants.

(Scurrilous I know - and also flawed, because in reality negotiators do have a lot of groundwork to do, including formatting a new draft text that can be used as a basis for the final discussions - but tempting nevertheless.)

The other question is whether this is really the best way to reach a deal that is supposed to have such far-reaching consequences.

After nearly two years of talking, you might think it wouldn't need to come down to another final-night, early-hours, last few seconds kind of affair.

If so, it's looking increasingly likely that you'd be wrong.

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