By SETH BOREN­STEIN, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

GLAS­GOW, Scot­land (AP) — It was no deal or a lump of coal at Glas­gow cli­mate talks and for Pa­tri­cia Es­pinosa, the Unit­ed Na­tions’ cli­mate sec­re­tary, there was no choice.

“No deal was the worst pos­si­ble re­sult there. No­body wins,” Es­pinosa said in an in­ter­view with The As­so­ci­at­ed Press Sun­day, about 15 hours af­ter near­ly 200 na­tions agreed on what is now be­ing called the Glas­gow Cli­mate Pact.

The world got a cli­mate deal that out­side ex­perts said showed progress, but not suc­cess. It didn’t achieve any of the three U.N. goals: Pledges that would cut world car­bon diox­ide emis­sions by about half, $100 bil­lion in year­ly cli­mate aid from rich coun­tries to poor ones and half that mon­ey go­ing to help the de­vel­op­ing world adapt to the harms of a warm­ing world.

Even more dis­ap­point­ing, a big world econ­o­my — In­dia — which is al­ready see­ing droughts and ex­treme heat from glob­al warm­ing was the na­tion that wa­tered down the fi­nal Glas­gow deal.

“I am sat­is­fied,” Es­pinosa said. “I think this is a very pos­i­tive re­sult in the sense that it gives us a very clear guid­ance on what we need to do in the com­ing years.”

One cli­mate deal it­self won’t do the trick to lim­it warm­ing to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius (2.7 de­grees Fahren­heit) since pre-in­dus­tri­al times, the U.N.’s over­ar­ch­ing goal, Es­pinosa said. But she said it sets the stage, cre­at­ing a car­bon mar­ket, al­low­ing more mon­ey to flow from rich to poor na­tions, even if poor na­tions were un­sat­is­fied and said it isn’t enough.

“It doesn’t ful­ly sat­is­fy every­one,” she said. “But it brings us for­ward. It’s a good com­pro­mise.”

Com­pro­mise was es­sen­tial when a last-minute pro­pos­al al­most killed her pos­si­ble deal.

In­dia, the third-largest car­bon-pol­lut­ing coun­try whose de­vel­op­ment is coal-cen­tric said it couldn’t live with his­toric lan­guage call­ing for a phase out of coal and an end to fos­sil fu­el sub­si­dies. For many of the coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly small is­land na­tions fac­ing threats from ris­ing seas, end­ing coal was key in re­duc­ing green­house gas emis­sions and try­ing to keep warm­ing to a lev­el that would al­low their na­tions to live. Many coun­tries were telling Es­pinosa and con­fer­ence pres­i­dent Alok Shar­ma that the coal phase-out lan­guage “has to be in there.”

But no deal or a deal with­out In­dia was un­ac­cept­able.

A se­ries of small ne­go­ti­a­tions erupt­ed. Many on cam­era, which Es­pinosa said was im­por­tant for the world. Small is­land na­tions got con­sult­ed. They didn’t like it, but they like Es­pinosa, and U.S. cli­mate en­voy John Ker­ry said had no choice. In­dia would have pre­ferred no coal lan­guage at all, Es­pinosa said. In­stead, In­dia pro­posed “phased out” be­come “phase down” and coun­try af­ter coun­try said they hat­ed the idea, but ac­cept­ed it.

“I think it’s a clear ex­am­ple of a com­pro­mise,” Es­pinosa said.

Is it black­mail?

“Some peo­ple see it like this, but I would say this is re­al­ly the essence of mul­ti­lat­er­al ne­go­ti­a­tion,” the vet­er­an Mex­i­can diplo­mat said. “Every­body comes to the ta­ble with some spe­cif­ic con­cerns, puts it on the ta­ble and is par­tic­i­pat­ing in good faith.”

The way Es­pinosa sees it, the fact that In­dia had to make the change was be­cause the ne­go­ti­a­tions pushed and pushed In­dia to do more. If talks hadn’t been push­ing for more change, there wouldn’t have been the dra­ma, she said.

Still, it’s not what Es­pinosa want­ed.

“We would have pre­ferred a very clear state­ment about a phas­ing out of coal and (the) elim­i­na­tion of fos­sil fu­el sub­si­dies,” Es­pinosa said, but she un­der­stands In­dia’s needs.

And even the phrase “phase down” may mean more than what it seems Es­pinosa said: “When you say phase down you’re not say­ing what is the lim­it and there­fore ze­ro can be the lim­it.”

But some­how it wasn’t the most tense mo­ment of the two-week cli­mate ne­go­ti­a­tions for Es­pinosa. That came Fri­day, the os­ten­si­ble last day.

“I was wor­ried,” Es­pinosa said. “I was look­ing at the at the clock and I was think­ing, ’OK, how can we make this still work if the text does not re­ceive broad sup­port?”

In the end, a day lat­er, a hold-your-nose deal to many na­tions be­cause of the coal con­tro­ver­sy was struck.

Es­pinosa then asked her staff to run out and get some cel­e­bra­to­ry sushi and wine.

“We had this very short toast and they we had to leave, be­cause the premis­es were go­ing to shut down,” she laughed.