Is new climate deal still far away?

It is difficult to say whether there's some actual progress with climate change talks, and the moment when countries could actually agree upon new climate deal still remains a mystery, impossible one to predict. The differences between developed and developing countries still present huge obstacle, and issues like climate change funding for developing nations, emissions targets and mechanisms for transferring clean technologies still haven't been resolved.

Even the question of how to measure and verify the emission cuts still hasn't found the adequate answer, this is an issue that sparked very lively debate in Copenhagen between China and United States, and in the end resulted in Chinese delegation rejecting proposals for a system of international emissions verification which, Chinese said, would violate its sovereignty.

The gaps between major players still remain huge, and whether they'll be able to work together still remains to be seen. Basically, they all agree that climate change deal should be agreed but each of them has its own demands which doesn't make other parties happy.

This was best summoned up by the US climate envoy Todd Stern who said that "different people mean different things", and with so many different people and different things it is difficult to come to a global accord and satisfy all parties.

I'm just hoping we want witness yet another too little, too late scenario like this was the case with Copenhagen.