Health care reforms is hanging in the balance. This is not a good time to have to fly to Copenhagen to salvage even a minimal agreement to contain global warming. President Obama had to resort to some unusual diplomatic tactics: to crash private negotiations. The NYT provides details.

The deal eventually came together after a dramatic moment in which Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton burst into a meeting of the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders, according to senior administration officials. Mr. Obama said he did not want them negotiating in secret. The intrusion led to new talks that cemented central terms of the deal, American officials said. ... But Mr. Obama, who left before the conference considered the accord because of a major storm descending on Washington, noted that the agreement was merely a political statement and not a legally binding treaty and might not need ratification by the entire conference. Mr. Obama said before he left Copenhagen that he was confident that a final accord would be reached here. He looked weary and his eyes were bloodshot as he left the conference center for his motorcade to the airport.

and then the climate talks almost fully collpased while Obama returned to a snow storm in Washington.

U.N. Climate Talks ‘Take Note’ of Accord Backed by U.S.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN and JOHN M. BRODER
COPENHAGEN — With the swift bang of a gavel on Saturday morning, a prolonged fight between nations small and large over an international pact to limit climate risks that was forged the night before by the United States and four partners came to a somewhat murky end.

The chairman of the climate treaty talks declared that the parties would “take note” of the document, named the Copenhagen Accord, leaving open the question of whether this effort to curb greenhouse gases from the world’s major emitters would gain the full support of the 193 countries bound by the original, and largely failed, 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The culmination of two weeks of talks here, capping two years of negotiation, came roughly 24 hours after President Obama swept into a conference center full of exhausted negotiators in the final hours of a deadlocked effort to produce a binding agreement curbing the surging global flow of greenhouse gases.

By late Friday night, he and leaders from Brazil, India, South Africa and China produced a short, last-ditch sketch of a nonbinding emissions deal that was also aimed at aiding those most vulnerable to warming.

Other countries, including Britain, quickly sought its approval by the full assemblage of 193 countries. But after dawn on Saturday, a half dozen countries loudly intervened, challenging efforts to approve the accord. Another group, from Venezuela to Sudan, stridently fought the pact.

Robert C. Orr, the United Nations assistant secretary general for policy and planning, said the “wild roller coaster ride” through the night was partly due to the authority of more than 120 heads of state being superimposed on a process normally driven by ministers and diplomatic protocols.