The US was seen till yesterday (Friday 14 December 2007) by most of the rest of the participants at the Bali conference as being impossibly obstructionist. The US delegation would not agree to anything other than a voluntary, number-free agreement. In other words, they were all set to wreck the Kyoto Protocol, and to drag everyone in the conference back to pre-Kyoto times, when there was only a tentative voluntary framework.

The frustrated delegates from the rest of the world were resisting this backward push, and beginning to swing towards the view that they should keep going forwards, leaving the US behind in isolation, if that's where it insisted on staying.

A PNG delegate put it stirringly, when he said that the delegates had wanted US leadership, they had asked for US leadership, but if the US would not give leadership, then they should 'get out of the way'.

But getting out of the way and being open to the charge of self-isolation is just what President Bush cannot afford to do. He has already become isolated from many US voters through his decision to invade Iraq, as the US mid-term election results clearly showed. At a time when rapidly growing numbers of the world's governments and citizens, including an increasing number of US citizens, are calling for decisive action on climate change, he cannot afford to be seen as isolating the US on this issue too.

So - it seems - at the last moment, in a highly charged final scene in Bali on the morning of 15th December (Saturday), the US agreed to sign up to a compromise text put forward by the Indonesian President.

Thus the Bali conference could be declared a success by its previously frustrated delegates - as Hilary Benn, British Secretary of State for the Environment quickly did. We have global consensus.! Bali has, despite all odds and gloomy predictions, worked!

But has it? If the final text has had to be weakened enough to persuade the US to comply, who has actually won? Has the rest of the world fially persuaded the US to join in a pilgrim's progress to a low-carbon world - or has a cynical US delegation tricked the rest of the world into playing by its milksop rules?

The US is no prodigal son. It has not learned hard lessons before returning home a deeper, wiser soul. Rather, it seems to have sulked brattishly until it was cajoled into joining in - to play the game it always wanted to play anyway: the game with no numbers.

In Iraq, similarly, the current administration's insistence on getting US troops to stay on may not be the painful yet noble sacrifice it has been made out to be, but actually is their desired goal: isn't hanging around where the oil is, with the perfect excuse to stay on, just what they always wanted anyway?

Leaving Bali with a feeble agreement: it is not clear that that is really such a bad deal for the US negotiators.  And is it really such a good deal for the rest of the world?

The real test of whether Bali was a genuine success or merely a failure in disguise will come later, not today. It will come during the course of the next few months: when we all see whether the flabby muscles of today's agreement are likely to be exercised with enough genuine commitment so that they can become the strong and well-defined muscles of a Copenhagen agreement in December 2009.

There is of course a ray of hope in that the US elections come midway during the 2-year Bali roadmap to Copenhagen. A new administration may be more positive towards climate change action - but there are no guarantees that a pro-green administration will be elected.

It is up to us, the citizens of the world, to join with the citizens of the US to show that a cooler, greener, fairer world is what we want - and that the governments that will work with us to bring this about are the governments to whom we will give our votes.