In an overnight letter, the group told the rich countries to provide “clarity on the level of financial support that will be provided by developed country parties to developing country parties.” Mxakato-Diseko removed any ambiguity from that statement. “Finance will make or break” the deal, she said. “It has to be clearly understood that finance is critical.”

This could be a problem. In a wonky, political sort of way, you can say that the people representing the wealthy countries are precariously balancing their political capital and standing at home against what they need for an agreement on cutting emissions. Asked yesterday whether he can assure the other parties in Paris that Congress will come through with the money, U.S. Special Envoy Todd Stern shrugged: “I hope we get as close to it as we can, but we don’t know yet.”

In an even more cynical and realistic wonky sort of way, you can also argue that the rich countries are demonstrating their true values with the money they throw in the total opposite direction of solving the problem: 40 times more of their peoples’ tax money every year goes toward subsidies to fossil fuel producers, to the tune of $80 billion a year, according to a just-released analysis by the Climate Action Network and Oil Change International.

With more than 800 pieces of bracketed text in the now 50-page draft agreement—more than 800 arguments to be hashed out by now and the end of the conference—it indeed could lead one to despair.

So I stopped for a moment down here by the café, and I put this all aside, and I thought about entropy. Or rather, I watched this very good YouTube video about entropy. And I realized that perhaps I had it a little wrong. In the video, the professor explains that entropy is indeed the rule of the universe, but that we’re wrong to think it simply means disorder everywhere. He says you have to take the whole system into consideration. It is possible, in parts of our universe, for things to come together, to form into patterns and systems, so long as this decrease in entropy is offset by more entropy somewhere else.

And that’s intuitively true. After all, we’re still here.

So maybe if things seem a little dim right now at Le Bourget, that just means some other part of the system is getting better. Maybe the two-thirds of Americans who told a New York Times/CBS News poll they want the U.S. to join a binding international agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions will hold sway in some meaningful, beneficial way. Maybe the fights about money and blame will boil down, and an agreement that meaningfully cuts emissions to a degree that will make the planet livable will emerge.

Maybe things will get a little crappier around Alpha Centauri, and back here we’ll find a solution to the violence and the hate, and we’ll come together and find a way to leave a better world for those who come after us.

Maybe I’ll get another croissant.