Europe is a laggard when it comes to responding to the threat of climate change. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

The environment council meeting in Brussels yesterday agreed the targets that Europe will put forward in international negotiations in Copenhagen. In an effort to convey some kind of leadership they agreed to increase the long-term reduction target in 2050 – my, how brave – but failed to make any new offer in relation to the more important 2020 target.

China’s chief climate change official, Xie Zhenhua, right, shakes hands with Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh after signing an agreement during a joint workshop on national action plan on climate change. Photograph: Dar Yasin/AP

China and India have signed a pact to coordinate their approach to climate negotiations and some domestic policies.

The world’s two most populous nations signed a memorandum of understanding yesterday ahead of back-to-back summits between their leaders and US president Barack Obama next month.

The world’s major economies – and also the world’s largest polluters – met in London this week. Some of these countries of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) are long-term, hardcore fossil fuel addicts – rich countries including the US, UK and the rest of Europe – while developing countries are only just getting a taste for high-carbon development. Gordon Brown is right that world leaders must engage seriously in securing a strong and fair agreement and that action must be taken now. The question, of course, is how.

It is clear what needs to happen to get things moving again. The main sticking point is cash. The rich countries of the MEF have already accepted they must provide money to enable developing countries to grow cleanly and adapt to the effects of climate change already putting millions of lives at risk. It’s time for them to stop shirking their responsibility to do so and put real money on the table – at least $200bn annually – to show we’re serious about enabling the massive transformation to the clean future we’ll be in deep trouble without.

If you are a minister in a government that spent its first 10 years in office talking on and on about the merits of energy efficiency and renewable power, but actually doing very little about it, then conjuring up a programme of nuclear power as a “get out when all else fails” sort of makes sense.

If you are chief executive of a large energy company in a country where the regulatory system does not permit you to make much money on your renewable investments, and no money at all from selling fewer electrons (to increase efficiency) rather than more, then taking a punt on a couple of nuclear reactors definitely makes sense. All the more so since you can pretty much guarantee that the government will pick up the tab for anything that goes wrong.

A kangaroo lies dead during one of the worst droughts ever recorded in New South Wales, Australia. Photograph: HO/Reuters

The world must start a “complete” shift to a low carbon economy by 2014 — or risk making dangerous climate change almost inevitable, a report warned today.

The study for conservation charity WWF showed that waiting until after 2014 to fully develop the clean industries needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as renewable energy, would leave it too late to halt temperature rises of more than 2C.

Old world order … should CO2 cuts incorporate the principle of historical responsibility? Photograph: HO/Reuters

Scanning through the amount of carbon dioxide that countries put into the atmosphere over the past century might seem even irrelevant to modern climate change debates.