The story takes quite a turn now, characters transform, swap roles, and time ticks ever closer to the point of no return.

The lay of the land changed dramatically between 1997 and 2007. First of all, America got knocked off its perch as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

The other big shift was that the president of America was due to change.

So there was hope in the air, the obstacles that Kyoto faced would not be the ones we were facing now. Maybe the world would finally get that all-encompassing, legally binding treaty that so many people were agitating for.

That hope only increased when Obama was elected in 2008. Obama had said during his campaigning that climate change was one of his Top Three issues.

And it doesn’t look like this was all lies. Al Gore told his supporters in the Climate Project that within one month of Obama taking office, “we had 80 billion to fight the climate crisis. The largest energy bill in American history took the position you have been advocating.” However this energy bill was postponed when run past the senate - who decided to prioritise the healthcare reforms instead.

Coming to Copenhagen with no climate bill in action, left America in a very weak negotiating position.

Meanwhile the rest of the world wasn’t making as much progress as they hoped either. As time till the conference drew closer and the original goals looked less and less likely, the Executive Secretary (Yvo de Boer) outlined a new set of measures for success in Copenhagen.

Campaigners tried to wind down expectations for the conference, but it doesn’t look like it had much of an effect. Copenhagen was a big deal; there were tens of thousands of people marching in the streets of Copenhagen demanding a binding global treaty and the administration officials could barely cope with the amount of credentialing and crowd control needed.

Then the negotiations actually began and all hell broke loose. Countries disagreed on everything from finance…

to targets…

thresholds…

and the treaty…

It all seemed to be unravelling when a very bizarre drama unfolded.

China had been obstructing various aspects of the negotiations and Obama was very keen to speak to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao face-to-face. So he ah… crashed the developing nations strategy session.

The agreement that came out of all of this was called ‘The Copenhagen Accord’

The accord was signed by everyone except for Venezuela, Sudan, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Since an agreement couldn’t enter into legal force without every country’s signature, it was publicised that everyone ‘took note’ of the accord.

There have been many different views on whether Copenhagen was a complete disaster, a big step forward or just green wash. But if you want an idea of how effective those pledges would be…

*projection made by Climate Interactive - recounted in ‘Eaarth’ by Bill McKibben

And one more thing! The last interesting thing to come of Copenhagen was the formation of a new dynamic. If the Kyoto debacle could be summed up as America vs. the rest of the world, then the defining tension post-Copenhagen is probably America vs. China.

The final part of this trilogy will take us right up to the present day. Have things improved since 2009? Or is it all downhill from here? Tune in next week to find out!