What’s the difference between an agreement, a deal and an accord?

An agreement implied that everyone is happy with the outcome, as in: “Are we all in agreement? Yes? Good!”

A deal is generally something that not everyone is necessarily happy with, but it’s the best optimum solution to satisfy an objective, as in: “OK, here’s the deal…”

An accord is neither an agreement, nor a deal, but an acknowledgement, for example: “OK, so we all acknowledge that we’re all unhappy about this proposal, but we’re in accord that it’ll do for now, because we don’t have to agree, or sign anything.”

After two years of negotiations to try and find a new treaty to replace Kyoto – 192 countries, 120 heads of state; plus however many lawyers, officials, climate change experts and the rest – have failed to reach an agreement, couldn’t reach a deal, and instead have settled on an accord.

But while this may have delivered some degree of self-satisfaction to most of those involved in the UN climate change theatre in Copenhagen, the post-performance reviews have been far from favourable.

The main criticisms are that the accord is full of holes, almost inevitable when you patch up something hastily at the last minute. There is no agreement to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2C – which was a main aim of the conference. There are, in fact, no legally binding agreements whatsoever, but at least that made it safe to be in accord about anything, for example that a 2C rise should be probably be recognised as the critical threshold for any kind of climate stability. Crucially, not one nation is forced to make specific cuts.

An accord isn’t an agreement, so you don’t need to overcomplicate things and get everyone involved. Such as a section of the G77 block who were told by President Obama that an accord had been reached – as he announced it on TV.

It’s difficult to be enthusiastic about any small positives that might happen as a result of this summit. There were promises of financial aid – $billions to help developing countries. China did agree to set emissions targets for the first time – even if they will inevitably be totally inadequate (and remember this is an accord, so there’s no legally-binding agreement). But in the end, the accord was reached to do nothing more than prevent Copenhagen being called a shambles and a failure – oops! Even that didn’t work. Other comments to emerge over the weekend, including: ‘Brokenhagen’, ‘disaster’, ‘anger’, ‘condemned’, ‘disgusting’, ‘a suicide-pact for Africa’. The scale of the failure of COP15 should not be underestimated. Success was imperative, not optional.

Shakespeare wrote a line for Marcellus in Hamlet: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” – spoken after he’d just seen a ghost. You can’t help wondering whether we’re now staring into the faces of ghosts. The consequences of the failure of COP15 in Copenhagen will undoubtedly hang around to haunt our future.