It’s clear that the Copenhagen summit on climate change this year is in trouble. David and Ed Miliband, Foreign and Energy and Climate Change secretaries respectively, at least captured that sense of urgency in their pitch, before David takes the message on tour around Europe.

“We’re not on a seamless road to a deal,” said David. “We’re worried. There’s a danger that these negotiations won’t succeed.”

He’s right, and although he’s repeating Gordon Brown’s message of earlier this summer, he did so much more clearly. But Britain is in a weak position to start exhorting others to change. A reporter from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation raised a laugh yesterday when he drily asked the Milibands what Britain had to teach Scandinavia about being green.

The Foreign Secretary’s answer, that “in respect of domestic legislation we are pioneers”, was respectful but evasive. So was his boast that Britain was meeting its targets under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. It is, but only because of nuclear power. Yet the stations are all near the end of their lives and replacements have not been commissioned. Ed did utter the N-word, once, but it remains the biggest hole in British planning.

Nor does Britain have the money to back its message. Rich countries must be ready to pay $100 billion a year by 2030 to help poorer nations to tackle climate change, an official paper drawn up for the G20 group of influential countries concluded this week. Britain’s contribution will be tiny. Our plans are based on public-private initiatives and both sources of funds are in doubt.

The Miliband brothers acknowledged that a recession was not the easiest time to drum up support. Britain’s slowness in coming out of the slump compared with Germany or France doesn’t make it easier. Their musings on their savings at home — a real-time counter of energy use for Ed, repairs to leaky windows for David — are a necessary personal gesture, but somehow toe-curling given Britain’s difficulty in making a big international contribution.

David opened with an argument about why climate change lies at the heart of foreign policy — that “foreign policy is about the management and reduction of risk, and climate change massively increases risk”. He’s been enthused about that theme since taking the job although many would challenge the first assertion. Should Labour lose the election, he can always follow in Al Gore’s footsteps and turn a private passion into a career.

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