The European Union was built on carbon. This month it celebrates 50 years of "ever closer union", a project born out of the pooling of coal and steel production, the raw materials of war. Tonight over dinner in Brussels, Europe's leaders will bury the continent's carbon past and map out an ambitious and uncertain route into a "low-carbon" future.

Nothing like it has been tried before. "This week, the eyes of the world will be on us - from Washington to Moscow to Beijing," says José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president. He sees this summit as heralding a "new industrial revolution" that the world will follow.