By FRANK JOR­DANS, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

GLAS­GOW, Scot­land (AP) — Ne­go­tia­tors at this year’s U.N. cli­mate talks in Glas­gow ap­peared to be back­ing away from a call to end all use of coal and phase out fos­sil fu­el sub­si­dies com­plete­ly, but gave poor coun­tries hope for more fi­nan­cial sup­port to cope with glob­al warm­ing.

The lat­est draft pro­pos­als from the meet­ing’s chair re­leased Fri­day call on coun­tries to ac­cel­er­ate “the phase­out of un­abat­ed coal pow­er and of in­ef­fi­cient sub­si­dies for fos­sil fu­els.”

A pre­vi­ous pro­pos­al Wednes­day had been stronger, call­ing on coun­tries to “ac­cel­er­ate the phas­ing out of coal and sub­si­dies for fos­sil fu­el.”

While the chair’s pro­pos­al is like­ly to un­der­go fur­ther ne­go­ti­a­tion at the talks, due to end Fri­day, the change in word­ing sug­gest­ed a shift away from un­con­di­tion­al de­mands that some fos­sil fu­el ex­port­ing na­tions have ob­ject­ed to.

There was a mixed re­sponse from ob­servers at the talks on how sig­nif­i­cant the ad­di­tion of the words “un­abat­ed” and “in­ef­fi­cient” was.

“Those qual­i­fiers com­plete­ly un­der­mine the in­ten­tion,” said Alex Rafalow­icz, di­rec­tor of the Fos­sil Fu­el Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty In­tia­tive, an en­vi­ron­men­tal cam­paign group.

“They’re loop­holes so large you could dri­ve a lor­ry through them,” he said, us­ing the British term for a truck.

He­len Mount­ford, a se­nior cli­mate ex­pert at the World Re­sources In­sti­tute, said al­low­ing coun­tries to de­ter­mine which sub­si­dies they con­sid­er in­ef­fi­cient would wa­ter down the agree­ment.

“It def­i­nite­ly weak­ens it,” she said.

Even so, the ex­plic­it ref­er­ence to end­ing at least some state sup­port for oil, gas and coal of­fered “a strong hook for phas­ing out fos­sil fu­els sub­si­dies, so its good to have it in there,” she said.

The ques­tion of how to ad­dress the con­tin­ued use of fos­sil fu­els re­spon­si­ble for much of glob­al warm­ing has been one of the key stick­ing points at the two-week talks.

Sci­en­tists agree it is nec­es­sary to end their use as soon as pos­si­ble to meet the 2015 Paris ac­cord’s am­bi­tious goal of cap­ping glob­al warm­ing at 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius (2.7 Fahren­heit). But ex­plic­it­ly in­clud­ing such a call in the over­ar­ch­ing de­c­la­ra­tion is po­lit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive, in­clud­ing for coun­tries, such as Sau­di Ara­bia, that fear oil and gas may be tar­get­ed next.

An­oth­er crunch is­sue is the ques­tion of fi­nan­cial aid for poor coun­tries to cope with cli­mate change. Rich na­tions failed to pro­vide them with $100 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly by 2020, as agreed, caus­ing con­sid­er­able anger among de­vel­op­ing coun­tries go­ing in­to the talks.

The lat­est draft re­flects those con­cerns, ex­press­ing “deep re­gret” that the $100 bil­lion goal hasn’t been met and urg­ing rich coun­tries to scale up their fund­ing.

It al­so adds word­ing that could cre­ate a fund to com­pen­sate coun­tries for se­ri­ous de­struc­tion re­sult­ing from cli­mate change. Rich na­tions such as the Unit­ed States, who have his­tor­i­cal­ly been the biggest source of hu­man-caused green­house gas emis­sions, are op­posed to any le­gal oblig­a­tion to pay for loss and dam­age suf­fered by poor coun­tries.

Ne­go­tia­tors from al­most 200 na­tions gath­ered in Glas­gow on Oct. 31 amid dire warn­ings from lead­ers, ac­tivists and sci­en­tists that not enough is be­ing done to curb glob­al warm­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the pro­posed de­ci­sion, coun­tries plan to ex­press “alarm and ut­most con­cern” that hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties have al­ready caused around 1.1C (2F) of glob­al warm­ing “and that im­pacts are al­ready be­ing felt in every re­gion.”

While the Paris ac­cord calls for lim­it­ing tem­per­a­ture to “well be­low” 2C (3.6F), ide­al­ly no more than 1.5C, by the end of the cen­tu­ry com­pared to pre-in­dus­tri­al times, the draft agree­ment notes that the low­er thresh­old “would sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the risks and im­pacts of cli­mate change” and re­solves to aim for that tar­get.

In do­ing so, it calls for the world to cut car­bon diox­ide emis­sion by 45% in 2030 com­pared with 2010 lev­els, and to add no ad­di­tion­al CO2 to the at­mos­phere by mid-cen­tu­ry. So far the world is not on track for that, and de­vel­oped coun­tries are ex­pect­ed to be asked to sub­mit more am­bi­tious tar­gets for cut­ting emis­sions next year.

U.N. Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press this week that the 1.5C-goal “is still in reach but on life sup­port.”

If ne­go­tia­tors are un­able to reach agree­ment by Fri­day’s of­fi­cial dead­line, it is like­ly the talks will go in­to over­time. This has hap­pened at many of the pre­vi­ous 25 meet­ings as con­sen­sus from all 197 coun­tries is re­quired to pass de­ci­sions.

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Seth Boren­stein and Karl Rit­ter con­tributed to this re­port.