I understand the impulse to condemn the proposed COP26 agreement as inadequate given the scale of the crisis, but it really is a lot better than its critics are claiming.
The Paris Agreement and the progress it unlocked has, in the space of six years, pulled temperature projections down from circa 3C+ to 2.4C. The Glasgow Climate Pact (assuming it is not torpedoed at the last) effectively validates and builds on the Paris Agreement.
It creates a moment every year when governments will face intense public and geopolitical pressure to strengthen their decarbonisation plans.
It provides the most unequivocal signal yet that the transition to clean technologies will accelerate, building on the myriad initiatives over the past fortnight to make those signals real.
It names the problem - coal and fossil fuels - and makes clear an end to carbon intensive energy sources is urgently needed.
It does increase climate finance and adaptation funding and tacitly accepts that a lot more needs to be done on both fronts, including loss and damage.
It might just bring an end to at least some of the interminable rows over 'rulebooks' and technicalities and allow the focus to shift to real world decarbonisation.
Of course, it is also still deeply flawed, underpowered, and littered with injustices. It does not go nearly far enough, especially on climate finance and the pace of decarbonisation.
It will continue to be undermined every day by narrow national short term interests that would happily watch the rest of the world burn.
But the text that is hopefully about to be agreed does provide the clearest signal yet that the vast majority of the world is serious about the grand project to deliver net zero emissions over the next three to four decades.
And as such it holds out the hope that the temperature curve that will determine the shape of this century and beyond can be curved further downwards - hope that was in danger of being extinguished.
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