THE ROTATING VAGARIES of diplomatic timetables decreed that the United States unveil its climate change trump card on the banks of the Mekong River. The new answer to the danger of rising sea levels went public in the tiny capital of landlocked Laos. The voluntary solution to global warming first saw daylight in a communist state still run by the military.

The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate issued its manifesto into the cavernous space of the overgrown hangar that serves as the Laotian Convention Centre. The centre sits amid farmland on the edge of Vientiane. So, a hundred metres away, a lone farmer worked his field with a hoe as Alexander Downer chaired the press conference that launched the partnership.