Bali has a big billing. The Indonesian resort will this week and next play host to planeloads of ministers and officials from around the world. Apart from leaving a big carbon footprint, they will attempt to thrash out the terms of a possible United Nations deal to save the planet from global warming. With climate change high on national political agendas, expectations of what the talks could achieve have increased. They should be lowered. Agreement may be elusive.

Few now dispute that emissions of greenhouse gases must be cut for the world to avoid potentially disastrous changes to its climate. Tougher, more ambitious policies need to be in place for when the existing UN-sponsored Kyoto accord expires in 2012.