OUT in the real world Russia is burning, Pakistan and China are grappling with floods and mudslides, and millions of people are starving after long droughts in Niger and the Sahel. The Arctic sea ice is reportedly melting at near record pace, land and sea temperature data show conclusively that the world is warming and 16 countries have experienced record temperatures already this year.

So what more do countries need to persuade them to act on climate change?A lot, it seems. In the parallel world of UN climate talks, where time is measured in endless debates about commas and full stops, negotiations have been going on for three years. But with only six days' formal talk now possible before a crunch political meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in November, the only progress being made is backwards.

This is what should happen the chair of the talks invites countries to make proposals, diplomats narrow these down and then the politicians turn up, haggle and make choices. But last week in Bonn, the text prepared by the chair based on what came out of the ill-fated meeting in Copenhagen back in December, just got bigger and bigger.

In a series of moves that would have been farcical if they were not so serious, China, the US, Bolivia and others, stuffed in more and more paragraphs to the text. Who started the tit-for-tat diplomacy does not matter; the fact is at least 40 pages of proposals will now have to be laboriously negotiated line by line at the next short preparatory meeting in China in October.

With so little time left for full negotiations before the politicians arrive, the talks now look to be in semi-crisis. The chances of a deal in Cancun were always slight, but now it's quite possible that the world won't get a legal agreement even next year in South Africa. You would almost think that some countries did not want an agreement, and you might be right.

But there is another line of thinking which says last week's steps backwards were progress. According to this thinking, what we are seeing is the welcome, overdue correction to last year's kamikaze global diplomacy which fatally destabilised the global talks and ended in the Copenhagen fiasco. This analysis would say the negotiations are back on track, the majority of world countries are involved as opposed to just a few, and, with a fair wind and a raised level of ambition by everyone, it could lead to a much more balanced agreement.

To understand this, you need to go back. If you remember, the US, aided and abetted by Britain and other rich countries, last year plotted to ditch the Kyoto treaty, which legally committed industrialised countries to emission cuts. In its place they sought to impose a new global agreement which would allow them to set their own targets and timetables, develop carbon markets, rework forestry rules, and spur green technology.

— The Guardian, London