BELÉM, Brazil — The U.S. snubbed the talks. Petro-states and fossil-fuel-hungry emerging economies got most of what they wanted. And Europeans struggled to show they were prepared to lead the effort to squelch global warming.
Two weeks of climate negotiations hardly ended in triumph Saturday, following a U.N. summit whose final days included a fire that interrupted discussions about how to stop burning the planet.
But they did end, with a deal that even critical delegates said shows that a divided, leaderless collection of nearly 200 nations can make some progress toward the goal of averting heat waves, deepening droughts and increasingly destructive storms.
The delegates shoved the hardest decisions off onto future summits, however. Those included debates about accelerating previous pledges to switch away from fossil fuels, and about reducing trade barriers that hinder the flow of clean energy technologies.
