While he aims to keep his message apolitical - he stresses that each country must decide its own path in cutting emissions - he says he has been struck by what he sees as Australians' poor understanding of what is being done elsewhere. "I am surprised how few of the most vociferous here understand that the rest of the world is doing very, very significant things," he tells The Age. On China, he says: ''To listen to talk in Australia you'd think nothing was happening there at all.'' Gummer's visit highlights the sharp difference between the climate debate in Britain and Australia. In London, there is bipartisan support for a suite of climate change policies, including emissions trading, taxes and incentives to develop renewable energy and boost household energy efficiency.

It was a point made by British Conservative Foreign Secretary William Hague in January when, in a largely ignored speech, he argued that the most successful economies in the future would be built on low-carbon growth, and that Britain was showing it was possible. Between 1990 and 2005 it cut emissions by 12 per cent while expanding its economy by nearly a third. But in Australia (and the US), the major parties are split, sometimes over the science, and consistently over whether it is justified to charge industries for the environmental cost of burning fossil fuels to encourage a shift to cleaner energy. The argument for not taking action on climate change usually turns on the cost to consumers, and the assumption nothing is lost by waiting. But analysts say there is evidence that while steps to reduce emissions around the globe remain fitful and diffuse, there is a clear trend towards reducing reliance on fossil fuels. China - so often cast as the climate villain - is doing far more than expected of a developing country. It has accelerated its commitments over the past 18 months and, based on calculations of its relative responsibility, is said to be at the head of the pack. An economic map for the next five years, announced last week by China's National People's Congress, for the first time placed tackling environmental problems front and centre.

As had been widely expected, it set the country's first carbon intensity target. It means it has promised to reduce by 17 per cent the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of gross domestic product generated by 2015. This will be partly achieved by lifting its proportion of energy from clean sources to 11.4 per cent, up from the current 8 per cent. To place this into context, Australia gets about 5 per cent of power from renewable energy. Over the next five years, China plans to triple its amount of wind power, boost nuclear power by a factor of five and introduce enough new hydro electricity to power three countries Australia's size. Significantly, and highly relevant to the Australian debate, Beijing has also pledged to gradually introduce a carbon market, starting with pilot emissions trading schemes in Jiangxi and Guangdong provinces, and flagged the introduction of environmental taxes, including a possible carbon tax. Ian Davies, a Canberra-based economic consultant with links to China stretching back 30 years, says Beijing is doing an enormous amount - ''more than any other country''.

"When you consider it has made a 19.6 per cent reduction in energy intensity between 2006 and 2010, you already have a gigantic cut in emissions [below business as usual growth projections] in that process,'' he says. Charles Goddard, the Hong Kong-based Asia-Pacific editorial director of the Economist Intelligence Unit, told a recent Melbourne forum that while China faced tremendous hurdles in cutting emissions, its government had put in place a stringent carbon program. ''China is becoming an international player, a global power. It wants to become more responsible, but I think most importantly there is an economic driver underneath all of this … China wants to transition its growth path from a high-carbon intensity economy to a low-carbon economy.'' The counter argument to claims China is leading the world in combating climate change is that it continues to burn as much coal as ever, albeit at a lower proportion of its total energy mix. It has shut hundreds of its worst polluting, small-scale coal power plants, but replaced them with more efficient, lower emitting modern coal technology. Climate economist Ross Garnaut says China's 2020 target of reducing carbon intensity by 40-45 per cent is substantial - equivalent to Australia adopting a target of a 25 per cent cut in emissions below 2000 levels by 2020, rather than the current 5 per cent.

But he has also warned it may need to embrace an outright cut in emissions sooner than previously thought, perhaps before 2020, to play its part in avoiding 2 degrees of global warming above pre-industrial levels. In the US, Congress has repeatedly blocked climate bills. A plan for a national cap and trade emissions scheme, backed by President Barack Obama, was dropped last year when rejected by all Republicans and some Democrats. The slack has been partly picked up at a state level, most notably in California, roughly the world's 10th biggest economy. A referendum last year backed plans to introduce the world's second largest emissions trading scheme. Its development hit a snag last week when a judge ordered the state to stop work on the scheme until alternatives had been fully studied. The proposed alternative, though, is a carbon tax; a carbon price remains likely next year. California hopes to eventually link its scheme with seven other US states and Canadian provinces under the Western Climate Initiative banner, though the final membership remains uncertain as several states are yet to pass climate legislation.

On the other side of the continent, 10 US states are members of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a small carbon trading scheme covering power plants. A recent report found it had cut energy costs and created nearly 2700 energy efficiency jobs, with an average wage of about $50,000. The regional initiative has been affected by the rise of the Tea Party, with New Hampshire's House of Representatives voting to opt out after Republicans took control. On a national level, the Obama administration remains committed to meeting its target of about a 17 per cent cut in emissions below 2005 levels by 2020 through regulation - considered a more expensive means than a carbon price. This goal has been made easier due to investment in new coal-fired power across the US drying up as the approval process tightens and banks resist lending for technologies with an uncertain future. The Washington Post recently reported that power companies had dropped plans for 38 new coal plants and announced they would retire 48 existing generators. The US has dramatically expanded its use of lower emissions natural gas and some jurisdictions offer generous tax credits for investment in renewable energy. According to analysts at Deutsche Bank, it means the percentage of US power coming from coal will fall from 47 per cent in 2009 to 34 per cent in 2020 and 22 per cent in 2030. Garnaut lumps the US alongside Australia as a climate laggard, but returned from a recent trip to Washington bullish about its ability to meet its 2020 target through an inefficient but achievable mix of EPA regulation, tax breaks and state-based measures. While the US attempts to piece together different policies, Europe is six years into its emissions trading experiment, now covering 40 per cent of emissions across 30 countries.

It made a bad start due to a flawed design that handed out too many free permits to polluting industries, who passed on the increased costs to consumers and collected undeserved profits. Gummer says the problems have been addressed. ''It was not working effectively, but after 2012 it will bite much more,'' he says. The European scheme has faced legal challenges following carbon permit fraud allegations centred on Austria. Despite these failings, analyses have found the scheme is triggering a shift to cleaner energy generation. Point Carbon found more than half of the 10,000 companies covered reported they had cut emissions because of the scheme. Europe's emissions have fallen since 2005, though the extent to which this is due to the scheme is unclear - other climate programs were already in place to meet Kyoto Protocol targets, including several national carbon taxes, and the financial crisis caused a significant dip in greenhouse output. Its presence is more likely to be felt in terms of European emissions after 2012, when it will become the central driver in meeting a likely 2020 target of a 25 per cent cut in emissions below 1990 levels. Elsewhere, India - which is often bracketed with China, but lags behind in both development and emissions - has introduced a carbon tax of about $1.13 a tonne, levied on imported and locally produced coal. Most of the revenue raised is to be spent on clean energy technology. Japan delayed plans for a national scheme in late 2010, though it has several voluntary schemes for industries aiming to cut emissions. Japan already has relatively low per person emissions, and well developed industries in solar power and low-emissions vehicles. South Korea has passed a framework bill expected to pave the way for emissions trading, with a presidential committee suggesting it may start in 2013. New Zealand introduced emissions trading in 2008 and expanded it last year. South Africa's Treasury recently released a paper exploring ways to tax carbon emissions.

The slow growth in tackling emissions has coincided with a loss of faith in the United Nations climate negotiations that created the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. While the talks continue, and rich and poor countries have for the first time formally submitted 2020 targets to the UN, there is a recognition that in the short-term emissions cuts will be ''bottom up'' - coming from steps taken by individual countries rather than a global pact with local targets adding up to a shared goal. It means development of a global carbon permit market, which economists say is vital to make significant emissions cuts at the lowest possible cost, has been halting at best. DESPITE all this uncertainty, investment in renewable energy continues to surge. Analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance found global clean energy spending reached a record $243 billion last year - double the figure recorded in 2006. China led the world by laying out $51.1 billion. Investment in renewable energy has now outstripped that in fossils fuels three years in a row. It was this sort of evidence that last year prompted the head of the world's biggest mining company, BHP Billiton, to call for a carbon price and warn that Australia's economy would fall behind if it didn't have one. In the meantime, according to a 2010 development report by the World Bank, Australia continues to have the highest per person emissions in the developed world.

Kellie Caught, head of climate change at green group WWF, says carbon price opponents often point out Australia is responsible for only 1.4 per cent of global emissions, but few mention that it ranks 15th on a table of major emitters. ''There are 170 countries that emit less than us, and they are responsible for 35 per cent of global emissions,'' she says. ''If all those countries took that attitude, that is a significant proportion of global emissions not being cut and the problem wouldn't be solved.'' Adam Morton is environment reporter.