At the 2019 Climate Change Conference in Madrid, Spain, crunch issues  – an unambiguous call for much higher climate ambition to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, finance for the loss and damage caused by climate impacts, a fail-safe market mechanism that does not compromise environmental integrity, and credible financial contributions to enable action in developing countries – proved too difficult to resolve within the high-pressure, time-deficient confines of a COP, despite a two-day extension and the resilience and staying power of seasoned diplomats.