BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — European nations on Friday dared the United States, Russia and China to follow their lead on global warming after agreeing on a plan to meet the so-called "20-20-20" targets: reducing greenhouse emissions by 20 percent and ensuring that 20 percent of energy comes from wind, sun and other renewable sources by 2020.
But activists said the plan was fatally weakened by a raft of concessions to eastern Europe and heavy industry at a time of worldwide economic crisis.

Stavros Dimas, the European environment commissioner, said the package put the 27-nation European Union on a path to a low-carbon economy.
"We are the only region in the world that is reducing emissions," Dimas said on the sidelines of a U.N. climate conference in Poznan, Poland, calling the bloc an example that others should follow.

Environmentalists said the concessions made the plan ineffective.
"The deal is a disaster, it's disgraceful," said Stephen Singer, a climate specialist for WWF International. "If the world follows the example of the EU, it is on a trajectory to disastrous climate change."

The plan increased the amount of emissions Europeans could offset by sponsoring green projects in developing countries. Armed with that opt-out, Singer said Europe's actual emissions reductions would be a mere 4 percent, not the 20 percent the EU claims.
The Brussels summit coincided with the end of a two-week, 190-nation U.N. conference in Poznan that worked on a global climate treaty to be adopted next year in Copenhagen, Denmark. The treaty would replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol, which required the EU and other industrial countries to cut carbon emissions by an average 5 percent by 2012.