By definition, "the end" is pretty final.

In a movie, there's nothing more to see. In a book, you run out of words to read. In climate change, "The End" is a little more serious: “We are facing at this moment the end of history for some of us,” a representative of the 43-member Alliance of Small Island States said at the Cancun climate conference being held in Mexico.

Antonio Lima, representative of Cape Verde and alliance vice chairman, said Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands, Marshall Islands and Maldives are the most threatened. “All these countries are struggling to survive. They are going to drown. I have mountains in my country. I can climb. They cannot climb," Bloomberg Businessweek quoted him as saying.

Obviously, small island nations have much to lose if global warming is not restricted. Members of the alliance want temperature increases limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but representatives of the United States and European Union said they don't expect a treaty from the talks - settling instead for verifying actions to cut emissions, creating a $100 billion green fund to help finance clean energy projects and protecting forests.

The U.S. delegation, according to this account in The Guardian, is taking a firm stance on some of those issues, and has threatened to leave the talks early if developing nations don't agree.

About 190 nations are represented at the 12-day conference. Among the representatives from the United States are 40 students from Yale. They are from The School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, the Yale Climate and Energy Institute and the Yale Law School - and are attending as observers and delegates, The Yale News reported.