Germany's decision to put climate change at the top of its agenda for this week's European summit came somewhat late in the day, having graduated from a mere afterthought as re-cently as last summer. Yet Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is no recent -convert to the cause.

Leader of a country that has long taken the environment seriously - and sitting in a chancellery powered solely by renewable energy - Ms Merkel, as Helmut Kohl's environment minister in the 1990s, was -Germany's lead negotiator for the Kyoto agreement.