What happened? This year, negotiators were supposed to be finishing the “rule book” for the Paris Agreement while preparing for next year’s COP, when countries are supposed to announce more ambitious promises under that treaty. But problems arose on both issues.

Read: Dozens of states want to keep America’s broken climate promise

First, on the rule book: The Paris Agreement sketches the possibility of trading carbon pollution across borders, and diplomats cannot agree on exactly how to structure it. Some countries—notably Brazil—want to use “banked” credits from the previous international climate regime, the Kyoto Protocol, under the Paris treaty. But most other countries regard this, rightly, as a loophole. (And experts are doubtful that Kyoto’s carbon-trading mechanism really prevented that many emissions: There are rumors of elaborate gamesmanship of its accounting rules.)

Simultaneously, the United States and other big polluters fought off specific terms for “loss and damage” compensation, the amount of money they owe poorer countries who didn’t contribute much to climate change but are now swept up in its whirlwind.

Second, on the ambition: It is not clear that China and India, two of the world’s most carbon-intensive economies, will announce broader climate promises at next year’s COP. These two countries hold the future of the world in their hands. And right now, they are handling that duty by waiting to see if the United States—which remains the world’s largest carbon polluter on a per-person basis—intends to get serious about climate change again. For better or worse, China and India will soon get a giant hint about American intentions: Immediately before the next COP begins, voters will either ratify or reject President Donald Trump’s carbonist stance in the 2020 election.

Read: Trump isn’t a climate denier. He’s worse.

How bad is all of this? It’s worth separating out two different issues—the relatively arcane question of carbon markets, which I will stop talking about after this paragraph, and the larger direction of climate diplomacy. On the first issue, the Harvard economist Robert Stavins is generally a fan of carbon markets, yet he says that no deal is better than a bad deal: Far better that countries work out good accounting rules privately than be required to honor a globally binding loophole that benefits Brazil. Bentley Allan, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who is much more skeptical of carbon markets, agrees with him.

“It’s easy for bad actors to veto this stuff and make everything feel hopeless when there’s no need for that,” he told me. “The narrative that the COP is a failure because they hadn’t agreed to anything under [the carbon-trading rules] is ridiculous.”

Okay, but what about the larger direction of climate diplomacy?