Alok Sharma, President of the COP26 summit, bottom right, and Patricia Espinosa, UNFCCC Executive-Secretary, speak at the end of a plenary session at COP26. Photo / AP
Alok Sharma, President of the COP26 summit, bottom right, and Patricia Espinosa, UNFCCC Executive-Secretary, speak at the end of a plenary session at COP26. Photo / AP
China's chief negotiator Xie Zhenhua, right, walks with John Kerry, United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate at the COP26. Photo / AP
Tong said at this stage of the summit, talks could get very strange.
"Things get bizarre. In the Durban [COP meeting in 2011] the lead negotiator for Venezuela stood on her chair and banged a high-heeled stiletto shoe on her table saying 'Venezuela ... will ... not ... be ... bribed, Venezuela ... will ... not .... be threatened, Venezuela ... will ... not ... support ... this'.
"So you had these incredibly tired negotiators and diplomats walking out through full military security to be surrounded by Madrid Spanish comic fans dressed as superheroes.
"It gets incredibly strange."
Post-deadline decisions almost certainly worse for the environment
Back in the negotiation rooms, key diplomats form huddles, while the Presidency (the country hosting the meeting) pulls countries who are at loggerheads behind closed doors to hash it out.
Tong said New Zealand's Climate Minister James Shaw - who is co-leading talks on transparency, essentially how to verify countries are making the emissions cuts or financial contributions they claim - will be scrambling to help the Presidency to get consensus.
He said several negotiators would fall asleep in their chairs.
And there would be lots of empty chairs because negotiators, particularly from poorer countries with smaller teams and fewer resources, had to catch flights home.
"An adviser from one of the Pacific countries told me ... whatever is agreed on the Friday you should stick with on the Saturday.
"Because it only ever gets worse on Saturday because the voices of small countries are no longer represented."
He said while post-deadline sees the compromises struck which allows the final agreement to happen, it almost always leads to worse environmental outcomes than where things stood before the deadline.