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With a historic, planetwide pact on the line, hundreds of diplomats in Paris are preparing to extend the U.N. climate change conference into Saturday.


The deadline to reach consensus on a climate deal was supposed to be midnight Friday. But conference leader Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, 

 there wouldn't be a finished text — let alone full approval — until Saturday morning.


The goal is for all of the nearly 200 countries involved — wealthy, developing and in between — to collectively lower greenhouse gas emissions, limit the extent of climate change and cope with the climate shifts that can't be avoided.

After two weeks of negotiation, the latest climate-accord draft, released Thursday, suggests agreement on a number of issues, such as:


There's $100 billion on the table, NPR's Chris Joyce 

, promised by 2020 — which developing countries say is a start.



But sticking points remain. For one thing, developed countries want to verify how that money is spent, which has been "a tough negotiating issue," Chris says.

Delegates are also clashing over whether some emerging economies — such as China and India — should be contributing money along with wealthier nations, The Associated Press reports, and the latest draft doesn't discuss whether vulnerable countries will be compensated for damage caused by unavoidable climate change.


And as NPR's Ari Shapiro reported this week, small island states have been pushing for the agreement to set a bolder target: holding an increase in global warming to 

. But the latest draft commits to "well below 2 degrees," and "to pursue efforts" to hold the increase to 1.5 degrees.
But the move toward consensus is visible in the various drafts the conference has released. Many disputed sections, marked in brackets, have been resolved — sometimes by dropping numbers or timelines in favor of broader statements. For example, one section of a draft 

By Thursday night, when the latest draft was released, that had become:

Overall, the newest draft (which you can read below) has only 50 brackets remaining.

The delay of an extra day hasn't alarmed activists and analysts, according to the AP.

"We would rather they take their time and were patient with the right deal than rush it and get a breakdown," Sam Barratt of advocacy group Avaaz told the wire service. "Getting 200 countries to agree on anything is tough."

An up or down vote is expected Saturday, according to the AP. And Chris Joyce says a deal seems close.

"I really don't think that the developing world, for one, is going to walk away from the huge amount of money that could be transferred here from the wealthy countries to the less developed countries," Chris says.

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Climate

Delegates from nearly 200 countries will continue to talk past the original Friday night deadline, and hope to have an agreement Saturday. Conflicts over money and oversight remain as sticking points.

Paris climate change negotiations to enter an extra day

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