The anger, frustration and then triumph of reaching a deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions was experienced for the first time 27 years ago in Kyoto in Japan.
Early in the morning on 11 December 1997, John Prescott, the then UK environment secretary who died last week, burst into the corridor where half the waiting journalists had fallen asleep, to announce that the rich developed countries had agreed to cut emissions for the first time. He was both elated and exhausted.
It is a scene that has been repeated many times since, each incremental advance in trying to save the planet from the direst effects of climate change being heralded as a victory by sleep-deprived delegates.
The largely untold story of Kyoto, and many conferences since, is the malign influence exerted by negotiators for the fossil-fuel lobby, whose job is to delay, prevaricate and obstruct.
The efforts of probably the cleverest and nastiest of these men, a New York lawyer called Don Pearlman, is being told by the Royal Shakespeare Company in a play, Kyoto, which is transferring to London from Stratford next month.
Until his death in 2005, Pearlman was brilliantly effective in frustrating progress at every climate talks. His legacy remains that the agreements reached are never enough for purists but heralded by pragmatists as better than nothing.
