The 27th United Nations Conference of the Parties - or COP27 for short - was supposed to finish in Egypt on Friday, but the need to secure an acceptable agreement kept delegates for the 190-odd competing nations negotiating deep into the weekend.
From the poorer nations' perspective, climate change is a consequence of behaviour by rich nations, yet the poorer nations must put much more of their wealth into new energy systems and other measures.
The rich nations have long pledged to assist the developing world, but what's eventually given falls short, and often comes with strings.
The election of the Albanese government has been widely seen as a plus for action on climate change, and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has called, while in Egypt, for "the strongest possible action" to limit global warming to the benchmark 1.5 degrees.
But as Mr Bowen well knows, a huge amount of this country's export earnings come from coal - the most demonised mineral on the planet - and there is no easy way to square that circle. Otherwise we would have done it long ago.
Mr Bowen understands, too, that Australia's performance at COP27 is being put under a microscope by climate action advocates, for whom the guilt of western nations is so entrenched that it almost goes without saying.
Although Australia has been a leading exporter of coal since colonial days, our gas export industry is relatively new, and another major money spinner for all involved.
Most of our energy exports do go to other developed nations, and as long as we continue to sell coal, gas and (to a limited degree) oil to them, we will find ourselves an obvious target of criticism.
One way to counter this criticism is to accelerate the innovation needed to build a power grid capable of running continually without coal and gas.
An economy crippled by skyrocketing power costs helps nobody, least of all the poorer nations who want Australia and other developed nations to help with the grants and loans that will help our neighbours meet their climate challenges.
As we have said before, energy storage - more than power generation - is the big technological challenge. We will need something well beyond current battery technology before our climate pledges are backed up with real engineering change.
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