Hold the front page: As the world warms to unprecedented levels and climate change begins to wreck havoc from the Arctic to the Alps, the US and the EU have agreed to radical plans… They have decided to work more closely to address the “serious and long-term challenge” of climate change.

At the annual EU-US summit meeting in Vienna last week, US President George Bush and EU President Manuel Barroso, promised to “act with resolve and urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.

So what is this urgency? It is something called the “US-EU High Level Dialogue on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development”. It will meet for the first time  …wait for it, not next week, not next month, but in the Autumn. Glad these guys are taking it all so seriously.. especially as the other news is that the EU remains embarrassingly off track for meeting its Kyoto Protocol targets.

“Despite the various policy initiatives… the trend is still going in the wrong direction,” declares European Environment Agency Executive Director, Jacqueline McGlade.