Japanese prime minister Taro Aso announced the target as UN climate talks continued in Bonn. Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

Japan‘s target to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 15% by 2020 was immediately condemned by environmentalists as “appalling” and unambitious after it was announced today. The Japanese government defended the target as comparable to European efforts because it does not permit offset schemes such as carbon trading, which allow cuts to be bought from other countries.

China’s ambitious wind and solar plans represent a direct challenge to Europe’s claims of world leadership on cutting carbon emissions. Photograph: Keren Su/Getty

Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China’s national development and reform commission, told the Guardian that Beijing would easily surpass current 2020 targets for the use of wind and solar power and was now contemplating targets that were more than three times higher.

In the current development plan, the goal for wind energy is 30 gigawatts. Zhang said the new goal could be 100GW by 2020.

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, writing in the Guardian in March, offered us these words of hope: “No country has a larger stake in reversing the impact of global warming than Brazil. That is why it is at the forefront of efforts to come up with solutions that preserve our common future.” Lula’s words are fine. But we are still waiting for real action.

For the last 10 years, Greenpeace has been working in the Amazon alongside communities to protect the rainforest. Last week, Greenpeace released a report which was the result of a three-year investigation into the role of the cattle industry in driving illegal deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The report, Slaughtering the Amazon, reveals the devastating impacts cattle ranching is having on the climate, biodiversity and local communities.