“All this while the world is literally burning, on fire, and while the people living on the front lines are still bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.”

Back in the blue zone, the success – or failure – of the first week of COP is still a matter of live debate.

Another old man of the movement, US climate envoy John Kerry, told reporters he detected a great sense of urgency at the meeting compared to previous UN climate talks, but warned that the “the job is not done yet”.

The COP’s organisers have been relieved that outside analysts have projected that, if all the commitments so far made as part of the UN negotiations and in the so-called “Glasgow package” of side-deals that Britain has been pursuing for months in the lead-up to this meeting are kept, warming will peak at less than 2 degrees this century.

Before the COP, that figure was 2.7 degrees, and before the Paris talks it was 6 degrees, COP president Alok Sharma reminded a press conference.

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Echoing the message of the protesters outside the wire, Mr Sharma said he did not believe “populations would accept it” if leaders returned from the meeting at the end of next week and their pledges and agreements did not bring those projections down to 1.5 degrees, nor demonstrate how such new ambitions might be met.

Delegates and negotiators have focused on hammering out the fine print of what is hoped will become a document some are already calling the “Glasgow pact”.

Though Mr Sharma would not say what the sticking points were in tens of different negotiating tracks, there is no secret that some states, like China, do not want 1.5 degrees locked in as the target. Others are resisting calls from blocs of nations such as the so-called High Ambition Coalition – a caucus of both small island states and powerhouses such as the United States – to make the reporting of new reductions targets annual rather than a five-yearly responsibility for signatories of the Paris Agreement.

The arduous work of negotiating so-called article 6 – the rules governing a future global carbon market – grinds on, as it has now for six years.

Without proper transparency, the positive projections celebrated this week could retreat into fantasy.

In the coming days, ministers will begin to return to the blue zone to check on the progress of their negotiators.

Mr Sharma is already demanding more from them, issuing a statement to the teams saying he expected work to start early and move quickly on Monday, and that he did not want COP to bleed on into its second weekend as it has in the past.

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