Further delay to the closing plenary Nope. Another hour has been added on to the YouTube ticker. As a colleague said earlier, it’s the hope that kills you. Meanwhile, it looks as if a brief flurry of concern over the loss and damage fund may have calmed down now. Some campaigners were flagging that, at the last minute (although, as we know, there may be many more minutes to come), it looked as if the text was being picked apart, with developing countries walking back on the agreements they had made earlier. But both Fiona Harvey and Nina Lakhani have been digging in to find out what’s happening and it looks as if the snarl was around procedural issues. The fund is still alive and kicking. In theory the closing plenary should be starting now. In practice … In the US, meanwhile, they’re seeing the results of the major lake-effect snow event which has hit the Great Lakes region, with projected snowfalls of between 4-6 feet over a few days in some areas. According to our Weather Tracker column: “Lake-effect snow occurs when cold air blows across an unfrozen lake that is relatively warm, heating the cold air from below and creating heavy snow showers. These showers often form in narrow quasi-stationary bands, causing significant amounts of snow to fall over a small area. This current event is caused by cold air sourced from Canada, blowing cyclonically around low-pressure located above the Great Lakes, becoming a returning south-westerly or westerly flow depending on location.” The plenary has now been put back to 0000 EET. It remains to be seen if it will actually happen then. It may be useful to read my colleague Fiona Harvey’s report on the day so far. Deep divisions threatened to derail the world’s chances of limiting the climate crisis last night as negotiators struggled to keep nations working together to tackle global heating. In a day of high drama at the Cop27 UN climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, bitter conflict broke out between wealthy and poorer nations. Some of the world’s poorest countries denounced the rich for delaying action and refusing financial assistance to those suffering devastating extreme weather. Rich countries sought to argue that rapidly growing economies such as China and oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and other petro-states should contribute to rather than receive from funds to repair climate “loss and damage”. The UK fought hard throughout the day to keep alive a global vow made last year at Cop26 in Glasgow, of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Some nations – including Saudi Arabia, Brazil and at some points China – had threatened to unpick this commitment, weakening the temperature goal and removing the requirement made at Glasgow for countries to update their emissions-cutting plans each year. That unpicking was unacceptable to many developed and developing countries, which see the Glasgow commitments as a minimum that should be improved on, not rolled back. “What we are seeing is Glasgow minus, and we need to see Glasgow plus,” said one developed country negotiator. Alok Sharma, the UK’s president of Cop26, warned the Egyptian hosts that the fortnight-long conference would be a failure unless the 1.5C goal was kept alive. The Egyptian hosts came in for strong criticism over their methods of brokering a deal, by showing drafts of the final text to selected countries individually, rather than allowing them to work together. One veteran delegate called it “un-transparent, unpredictable and chaotic”. There was also a rare moment of unity, when the US and China unexpectedly patched up their diplomatic row and revived a joint partnership that will mean the world’s two biggest emitters, and biggest economies, cooperate on ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The hour is late and the Cop27 talks have veered close at times to what some feared to be complete collapse, but there is still the occasional sprinkling of optimism to be found around Sharm el-Sheikh. If it is kept in the final text, the progress on loss and damage, a central theme of the summit for developing countries, is an “historic step”, according to Maisa Rojas, Chile’s environment minister, although she noted much more needed to be done to keep the 1.5C goal viable. There are still grumbles – the opposition from Russia and Saudi Arabia to any mention of winding down the era of fossil fuels among them – but activists are hopeful of taking away something positive from Cop27. Meanwhile Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, was full of positivity. “The country pavilions are torn down and the water tanks empty, but the spirits are high. Climate-vulnerable nations and civil society are beaming at a big step forward on creating a loss and damage fund, more than a decade in the making.” Su said that the openness of the US to phasing out fossil fuels – the Americans are also believed to be largely on board with attempts to create a loss and damage facility – has added to the encouragement. “It shouldn’t feel this surreal, but it seems like for this fleeting moment politicians are listening to the people, not polluters,” she said. I’ve just been contacted by Alexander Lagaaij with the sad news that the closing plenary has now been put back to 2300 EET. Lagaaij, by the way, has a blog with photographs of the extraordinary journey he has been making on his bicycle. A nice mental detour from the long negotiations taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh. There are now reports that Russia and Saudi Arabia are saying that even mentioning “fossil fuels” in the text is an absolute red line, according to Leo Hickman, an ex-Guardian journalist who now runs the excellent Carbon Brief. Our correspondent Fiona Harvey has just had a brief conversation with the spokesperson for the Egyptian Cop presidency, Ahmed Abu Zeid. Things are “progressing”, apparently. Aruna Chandrasekhar of Carbon Brief is taking a closer look at the now-published draft text on the funding mechanism for loss and damage. She points out that the proposal “makes it clear that #LossAndDamageFinance would be housed both under the Paris Agreement and Convention”, which will be reassuring to many. There would be “new funding arrangements to complement and include sources, funds and initiatives under and outside the Convention and Agreement,” she adds. He notes: “They’ve thrown in an extra ‘particularly vulnerable’ which – as I’m sure is clear to everyone – is apparently different to ‘most vulnerable’.” The final plenary was originally due to start at 1900 EET, and was then pushed back to 2100 EET. It has since been pushed back again, to 2200 EET. US unlikely to block loss and damage fund UN climate summits work by consensus, which means any nation can block an agreement. In the closing plenary at Cop26 in Glasgow last year, India almost brought the Cop president Alok Sharma to tears by demanding that “phase out coal” was watered down to “phase down”. A potential flashpoint for the closing plenary at Cop27 is the establishment of a loss and damage fund, which would provide money for poorer nations to rebuild after climate disasters. The US has long opposed this, fearing that – as the world’s biggest polluter over time – it could face huge liabilities. But it looks unlikely that the US will block the loss and damage fund that is in the current draft text. A person close to the negotiations has just told my colleague Fiona Harvey: “The US is working to sign on [on loss and damage].” The New York Times is also reporting that the US is willing to accept the creation of a loss and damage fund, while a source told Reuters the US is working to find a way it can agree to the proposal.