Deals in international negotiations often go right to the wire before there is finally a breakthrough. This happened in the Rio summit in 1992 and to a lesser extent Kyoto. The EU also has many summits where the deadline has long since passed and the deal is done in the early hours of the morning. This means that there is still hope of a deal until the conference finally closes. This is because some countries are almost certainly keeping some concessions they are willing to make in reserve. They want others to act first as they are unsure they will act at all. So for example we know that the EU may well up its offer to a 30% reduction by 2020 but this is almost certain not to happen without the US giving something more away, while the US won't move until China gives a new concession.

Normally in such deals there is only one big sticking point, here we have at least three seperate issues on which there is deadlock. The possibility of long term finance for an adaptation fund to help developing nations (and to a lesser extend accusations that short term funding committed is not enough). Secondly there is emissions targets, the U.S. and China have been deadlocked on who should blink first for years. And finally whether Kyoto should be the basis of a deal. Added to this there are other smaller problems such as monitoring and a late comprehensive deal seems unlikely.

Leaders need there to be an agreement of some sort, so many have gone to this conference they cant just let it fail and come out with nothing as it would damage their reputation. For some like Gordon Brown this is a last chance to show themselves as statesmen to their electorate, this forces them into action. Leaders can react to changes in the situation much quicker than their negotiators so they can hammer out a deal together, find compromises by finding other incentives or compensations that are not purely environmental. That so many leaders will be at the conference makes a deal much more likely.

Some leaders such as the Russian premier Demitri Medvedev have argued that just meeting other leaders is enough to make it worth going.

There are other alternative drafts if the Danes dont get theirs out. However this equally means that if the Danish draft is disliked the G77 will switch to attempting to persuade others to use theirs instead. The Danes therefore have a fine balancing act to cross in order to actually get even an acceptable draft on the table.

Quite simply, if there is no draft there is no deal as there is no basis for leaders to negotiate from. Although the Danes are known to be working on a draft text it is not yet out, the longer it takes before it exists the less likely a deal as the less time leaders have to influence the text to get it to everyone's satisfaction.

There being certain areas out of the leaders control like congress that are stopping a deal does not necessarily mean a deal can't be made, The US could pencil in a provisional set of targets and then try to get it passed congress. To make things more secure this could be made whereby if congress did not pass the reductions the US would pay the vast majority of the adaptation fund while the EU and Japan make deeper emissions cuts so balancing the cost - Not likely to happen, but there are ways around the stalemates.

There is no sign of leaders being able to break the deadlock. This is partially because some issues are out of their control, although Senator John Kerry assured the conference that the Senate would pass a climate change bill he cant specify what would be in it so the US cant commit to major reductions even if Obama wished to make concessions. Most of the problems however either come from a lack of trust - nations won't believe that the other will make concessions later, or from a lack of leadership to resolve the crisis.