Cop26 will be derailed unless the rich world meets its obligation to the poor | Larry Elliott

It's no use telling developing nations to decarbonise. The west must accept it bears the bulk of the blame for the climate crisis

A couple of hundred years ago Britain was not a lot different from many poor countries today. Life expectancy was low, infant mortality was high, living standards barely rose from year to year, water-borne diseases were rife. People worked long hours and life for the struggling was, as Thomas Hobbes put it, nasty, brutish and short".

Then the Industrial Revolution came along and Britain, followed by other countries in the world's temperate zones, discovered the elixir of economic growth. After pretty much flatlining for more than a thousand years, incomes per head started to rise much more quickly.

Larry Elliott is the Guardian's economics editor