Representatives of 190 countries have been playing a diplomatic poker game at the UN Climate Change Summit in Nairobi for the past week, with almost none of them prepared to spell out what they intend to do about global warming.
Developed countries who have taken on targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol are reluctant to enter into further commitments after it expires in 2012 without indications that developing countries such as China are prepared to climb on board.
Many of the 56 developed countries that have ratified the protocol are finding it difficult to achieve even the fairly minimal curbs on emissions required by Kyoto, and some of them - including Ireland - have fallen way behind in terms of meeting their commitments.
But China and other major players such as India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa are equally reluctant to sign up for cuts in emissions pending the outcome of a dialogue on how to deal with an issue that nearly everyone now accepts has become more urgent year by year.
Environment ministers, including Ireland's Dick Roche, will start arriving in Nairobi tomorrow for the "high-level segment" of the conference, which will be addressed by the British government's chief economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, author of the recent major report on climate change.
The Stern review has injected a fresh impetus into the proceedings. Its central conclusion - that it would be much more economical to start making deep cuts in emissions within the next 10 years than to try to fix the problem later on - is widely, though not universally, accepted here.
But there is frustration over the lack of progress. Japanese ambassador Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, described climate change as a deadly serious business and said if countries were unwilling to discuss the stabilisation of emissions at this summit, he wanted to know when they would do so.
"Our job starts by looking at a global long-term vision and whether it is aspirational or otherwise," Mr Nishimura told fellow delegates.
"I will go home unless we are willing to send a global message to the world that the UN is moving to achieve stabilisation of the climate," he added.
Green Party TD Eamon Ryan, who has spent the past week at the conference and is returning to Dublin today, was equally frustrated.
"The slow pace of progress is in direct contrast to the urgency with which this issue needs to be addressed," he said.
"These are the most important set of negotiations in the history of humanity - far surpassing Versailles," Mr Ryan said. He also noted that the US delegation had barely featured in the talks so far, possibly reeling from last week's "thumping" for President Bush in the mid-term elections.
Michael Zammit Cutajar, the Maltese ambassador expertly chairing the important "ad hoc working group" on what happens after 2012, has drafted the text of a possible deal and spent the weekend holding informal talks with key delegates in the hope of making some progress today.