The underlying dynamic of this Bali meeting is the ballet among the US, China and India.

The Bush Administration, which will sit at the US microphone for another 12 months, basically wants nothing serious to happen. But it is feeling isolated and a little bruised after the Major Economies conference where they were listened to with polite distance in public, and scoffed at in private.

China is increasingly worried about global warming. The lead article in People's Daily on November 16 featured the head of the China Meteorological Agency predicting a 10% decline in agricultural production under expected temperature increases. And the phrase "scientific development" is everywhere.

But it is doubtful that China will discuss issues seriously until the US takes a cap and starts down the road of serious greenhouse gas reductions. And the arena for that debate in the US has now shifted to the Congress, which really has the ball on this issue.

India, which for tactical reasons would like right now to gain favor with the US, appears poised to trumpet the traditional you-did-it-you-clean-it-up refrain that it has repeated in the past.

With temporary friends like these, the US may not have to raise its voice at all to get what it wants!

The opportunity at Bali is to build a procedural framework for the next two years, and to move forward with a framework for including deforestation in an eventual international system.

And the question of whether the logjam that is holding up substantive progress on climate change globally can be broken lies before a few hundred legislators in the US Congress, most of whom had scarcely spent more than a few minutes thinking about climate change until this year.

Meanwhile, the relentless clock of nature goes on ticking.