In his latest bid to be a global leader on climate change, Gordon Brown has pledged to attend the UN talks in Copenhagen this December. Along with Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, who has also said he may attend, it means the global campaign to get presidents, prime ministers and chancellors along to the summit are starting to pay off.
In the article he's written for Newsweek, Brown also dares his peers to make the trip, saying "failure would be unforgivable". He's not wrong there, and if Obama, Sarkozy, Hu, da Silva and others of their ilk do show up, it should give the talks a much needed sense of urgency, something which has been lacking in the ongoing negotiations over the past few months.
It's vital that, come December, the other big boys and girls are in the same room to unlock the current stalemate, in which none of the key nations are willing to break rank and commit to the decisions we really need. Namely, deep emissions cuts, global funding to help developing countries adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change, and further funding to protect forests.
And yet, excellent though his commitment to visit Denmark is, Brown's words on the international stage once again differ from policies back here in the UK - bigger airports, more coal power stations, slow progress on clean energy, you know the sort of thing I mean. He's not alone though, as domestic policies around the world trail way behind the grandiose speeches on treating climate change with the seriousness it deserves.
Those self-same leaders are this week meeting in the US, both at a pre-Copenhagen UN summit in New York and later at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, and there may be more announcements of good intentions to come. The week-long series of events for Climate Week in New York will provide an imperative - Lisa from our international office is blogging from the scene, and you can still ask other key leaders to clear their calendars in early December.
