Well, it went to the wire, but finally a deal was done. In the early hours of a Baku Sunday morning after hurried texts and walkouts and the closest of close flirtations with collapse, developing countries will be providing climate fiancé of $300bn a year by 2035.

Someone once said top me that a good negotiation is when neither side is happy, and this fits the bill: The Baku Finance Goal (BFG) left rich countries feeling they had gone the extra mile and more and stretched themselves to the sum grudgingly, but poorer nations were still unhappy. Bear in mind the current contribution is around $100bn a year.

The funding, a mixture of grants and loans might be large and from generally heavily indebted Western nations, but others, such as India's Chandni Raina called it a “paltry sum," and there was some annoyance that the richer countries had to be dragged to the line to make the offer at all.

Will it address the challenge? That is the $300bn question, and on current trends is unlikely, but there is. As always. Another story here. The re-election of Donald Trump, whose views on climate change are somewhat changeable, means there might be no other time at which a deal could be struck. Indeed, the deal was signed in a way to be ‘Trump-proof’ and immune to domestic US politics.

And then the whole underpinning of the concept is a little odd, in those poorer nations, likely to be the most affected by climate change, have created 75 per cent of the growth in emissions in the past decade. So effectively the rich nations are paying poorer nations not to self-harm, not that in a connected world that changes things, but it is reminiscent of a scene in Blazing Saddles where the hero puts a gun to his own head and vows to pull the trigger if they try and kill him.

The elephant stomping quietly about the room is China, still defined by the UN as a ‘developing nation’ and so excused any emissions obligations, but still expected to play a leading geo-political role.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband was on hand to cheer the deal, saying that it was a step forward, and put a nationalistic shine on the announcement, proclaiming that it “will drive forward the clean energy transition which is essential for jobs and growth in Britain”.

Is it fair? Fairness is a very difficult and complex concept, and not everyone sees it the same way. Indeed, complexity is an understatement, may be full of contradictions is better, for example COP was hosted in Azerbaijan, whose president, Ilham Aliyev, described oil and gas as a "gift from God". Things are complex, messy and ultimately, probably it is the only way they can be.

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