Negotiators at the Madrid conference kept on trying to hammer out an agreement more than 40 hours past the planned deadline, but no further cooperation came on resolving details of targets and timetables. Singled out as being particularly unhelpful by representatives from other nations was the delegation from the U.S., one of the world's largest polluters. U.S. President Donald Trump has signaled that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris Agreement at the first available opportunity, which is Nov., 2020. U.S. negotiators in particular resisted committing to a plan of compensation for poor countries that suffered economically as a result of climate catastrophes. Australia, Brazil, China, and Saudi Arabia also came in for criticism from representatives of other countries.

Discussions about another of the most contentious issues–how to govern a global carbon trading system–proved so problematic that about the only thing agreed on was to put it on the agenda for next year.

It was in 2015 that leaders of nearly 200 countries signed on to the Paris Agreement, committing to a path of change in behavior with regarding to carbon emissions. The original target of keeping emissions to only a 2-degree Fahrenheit rise above preindustrial levels at the very least and, preferably, a rise of only 1.5 degrees.

A report by the U.N. just last month projected that emissions must fall by 7.6 percent each year starting next year in order to meet the targets set out in the Paris accord. Already, global temperatures have risen 1 degree Celsius since 2015, when leaders pledged to limit global warming to a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Current models project that by the end of the century, that rise would be 3 degrees Celsius.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who had warned of dire consequences if significant action was not agreed to, said that he was disappointed with the results, saying that the world's largest nations were still not taking a leadership role in the fight against global warming.