Global Climate Deal at 'Critical Juncture'

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Dec. 17, 2009— -- As the global climate talks in Copenhagen reach a climax, there is a chorus of agreement from world leaders on the gravity of the global warming crisis, but a tangle of disagreement on how best to iron out an agreement .

The talks continued as President Obama headed to Denmark to address the summit Friday, the last day of the gathering.

Take, for example, the tensions at play when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- with negotiations stalled -- announced the U.S. would, after all, join an international relief fund aimed at providing $100 billion a year by the year 2020 to help the poorest and most vulnerable nations deal with the advancing impacts of global warming.

"We have now reached a critical juncture in these negotiations," Clinton declared forthrightly to an enormous hall here packed with journalists from around the world. "The United States is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year to address the climate change needs of developing countries."

But there was a condition -- part of a major sticking point that has spurred constant reports in the last days of this climate summit that there might be no agreement.

The U.S. would join in the fund, said Clinton, only if the global agreement included transparency in verifying every country's promised emissions cuts.

It was a clear reference to China, reported for days to be refusing to allow outside monitoring. One the other hand, there is the near total agreement on the gravity or the emergency at hand. It is a kind of agreement never seen before.

One after another, 130 heads of state and government, arriving in the final days of this summit, have taken the podium, each describing the same thing: a planet already degrading quickly under rapidly rising heat:

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared, "Nobody can honestly deny that without common action, rising sea levels can wipe whole nations from the map."Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, sober and dignified, said, "We face the nightmare of humanity becoming the species that dies out just as a parasite does as it devours its host."

"We cannot let down the world," he said, "we cannot let down our children. We are here, and we are responsible for the future of this world."