By FRANK JOR­DANS, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

GLAS­GOW, Scot­land (AP) — Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res says the goal of lim­it­ing glob­al warm­ing to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius (2.7 F) is “on life sup­port” with cli­mate talks in Glas­gow so far not reach­ing any of the U.N.’s three goals, but he added that “un­til the last mo­ment, hope should be main­tained.”

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view Thurs­day with The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, Guter­res said the U.N. cli­mate talks in Glas­gow, Scot­land “are in a cru­cial mo­ment” and need to ac­com­plish more than se­cur­ing a weak deal that par­tic­i­pat­ing na­tions agree to sup­port.

“The worst thing would be to reach an agree­ment at all costs by a min­i­mum com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor that would not re­spond to the huge chal­lenges we face,” Guter­res said.

That’s be­cause the over­ar­ch­ing goal of lim­it­ing warm­ing since pre-in­dus­tri­al times to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius (2.7 F) by the end of the cen­tu­ry “is still on reach but on life sup­port,” Guter­res said. The world has al­ready warmed 1.1 de­grees Cel­sius (2 de­grees Fahren­heit), leav­ing less than a de­gree be­fore the thresh­old is hit.

“It is the mo­ment to reach agree­ment by in­creas­ing am­bi­tion in all ar­eas: mit­i­ga­tion, adap­ta­tion and fi­nance in a bal­anced way,” Guter­res said in the 25-minute AP in­ter­view.

A U.S.-Chi­na agree­ment an­nounced Wednes­day pro­vid­ed some hope of the ne­go­ti­a­tions yield­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions con­tin­ue apace

Of­fi­cials from al­most 200 na­tions worked through the night at the U.N. cli­mate talks in Glas­gow, try­ing to ham­mer out agree­ments on a range of tricky top­ics in time for a Fri­day dead­line.

Among the out­stand­ing is­sues was in­ter­na­tion­al car­bon trad­ing, a sub­ject that has nagged at ne­go­tia­tors since the land­mark Paris cli­mate ac­cord was sealed in 2015.

“We’re still at the stage of op­tions,” a Eu­ro­pean ne­go­tia­tor told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on Thurs­day. “But it’s mov­ing for­ward. We still need that push though.”

The of­fi­cial spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause he wasn’t au­tho­rized to be quot­ed.

Fresh drafts of the doc­u­ments on reg­u­lat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion to re­duce green­house gas emis­sions, in­clud­ing the car­bon mar­kets sec­tion, were re­leased overnight, as were new pro­pos­als con­tain­ing var­i­ous op­tions for as­sess­ing and track­ing fi­nan­cial aid for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

Poor na­tions have in­sist­ed they will not back any deal that fails to ad­dress their need for funds to help cut emis­sions and adapt to the con­se­quences of glob­al warm­ing, a prob­lem they have con­tributed least to.

Ne­go­tia­tors were hop­ing that a bi­lat­er­al agree­ment Wednes­day be­tween the Unit­ed States and Chi­na to co­op­er­ate in tack­ling cli­mate change would pro­vide a boost dur­ing the fi­nal hours of the talks.

British Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son on Wednes­day urged fel­low world lead­ers to call their ne­go­ti­at­ing teams in Glas­gow and give them the po­lit­i­cal back­ing to clinch an am­bi­tious deal.

Of­fi­cials and ob­servers have said the bar for suc­cess must be a strong af­fir­ma­tion of the Paris goal of keep­ing glob­al warm­ing well be­low 2 de­grees Cel­sius (3.6 de­grees Fahren­heit) — ide­al­ly no more than 1.5 C (2.7 F) — backed by cred­i­ble poli­cies from all na­tions to get there. So far, sci­en­tists say, the world is not on track for that.