The US—not President Barack Obama, let’s not make that mistake—has struck two key agreements with two key emerging nations that will benefit the US, those emerging nations, their teeming populations and, to boot, just about everybody else. One is a climate change deal with China and the other is a global trade agreement with India.

Under the first, the US will reduce its emissions by 26-28% below its 2005 level by 2025—at a much faster trot than previously anticipated—and China will reach the limit of its harmful CO2 emissions around 2030. The second deal saw Washington agree to Indian demands over indefinite subsidized state protection of poor farmers, in return for New Delhi signalling its approval of the trade facilitation agreement of the Bali package that was negotiated by countries under the World Trade Organization (WTO) last year.

The ramifications of the two deals are immense. In the financially globalized world we live in, terms such as bilateral, multilateral and plurilateral sound a tiny bit old fashioned. All of us—the rich, the middling and the poor alike—will have to be staring at a very dark abyss indeed if there’s anything to UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s warning sounded at the G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, that the world is seeing the first signs of yet another bruising financial crisis; it’s looming over us all.

Therefore, the two agreements, although ostensibly between the US and another nation, look like offering just the medicines the world needs right now in order to: revive economic growth, move towards a green economy, create jobs, and address the problem of persistent, absolute poverty and hunger in developing nations.

But if you watched television news in India, you would think the Brisbane summit of the world’s economic powerhouses was primarily about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There’s been blanket coverage—one news channel promised “relentless” coverage—of Modi’s visit, speeches, meetings and the dance shows put up by Indians settled in Australia in his honour.

Days before the Brisbane summit, Modi’s chief negotiator at the forum, recently appointed cabinet minister Suresh Prabhu, gave a brief outline of the Indian position on climate change, essentially telling the world that China may do what it likes, India won’t budge from its goal of rapid economic growth. And this meant emitting CO2 particles for decades to come—even beyond 2050, one official said.

Prabhu told The Indian Express newspaper, “The international community is expecting the same kind of climate actions from India as it has been demanding from China… India’s situation is very different and everyone is aware of that. India must fight to break this hyphenation with China.”

“The concept of common but differentiated responsibility, which is one of the basic pillars of climate negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, needs to be applied not just between Annex-I (those that signed the Kyoto Protocol of 1997) and non-Annex-I countries but within the group of non-Annex-I countries as well.”

Common but differentiated responsibility is diplomatic jargon for the principle that recognizes historical differences in the contributions of developed and developing states to global environmental problems, and differences in their respective economic and technical capacity to tackle these problems.

Alongside Prabhu’s defensive comments, Modi dangled the juicy carrot of business opportunities for foreign companies interested in exploring renewable energy opportunities in India. The biggest opportunity, of course, is in solar energy. And the two states that are said to be setting the solar example for the rest of India are Gujarat, where Modi used to be chief minister, and Rajasthan, headed by Vasundhara Raje, also belonging to his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Modi also asked leaders of developed countries to set up a global virtual centre for clean energy research and development. “In countries like India, there are vast opportunities for those wishing to invest in clean coal technology, since our dependence will not reduce very soon,” he said.

As it happens, Baroness Sandip Verma, the Indian-born British minister dealing with climate change and renewable energy, was in India with the heads of British renewable energy firms for meetings with Raje and senior leaders in Punjab and Haryana. She is impressed by what she has seen.

In her talks, she is connecting up climate change (India is the world’s third biggest polluter, although trailing the first two—the US and China—by a distance), renewable energy, the need to train Indians in renewable energy, and jobs for Indians. The connecting thread is green economy and Modi’s “Make in India” campaign.

“Since the general election, there’s been a real drive for foreign investments. Modi wants to strengthen power, ensure things are made in India so that investments benefit locals; also skills for technologies and new knowledge communities of the future,” she told me on a stopover in New Delhi. “It is quite uplifting that there is a positive feel, a clearer understanding that something’s got to be done, that energy generation is consistent and reaches out to everyone, that there is a mixture of different energy sources.”

Obama called Modi a “man of action” in Brisbane. But the Indian leader’s going to need help if he is to take India to anywhere near its target of 100,000 megawatts of solar generation by 2022.

On the one hand, India’s dependence on low-quality coal to meet its energy needs is contributing to human distress across India, in some of the world’s most polluted cities. On the other, it is home to Asia’s largest solar power plant (Welspun, in Madhya Pradesh).

G20 leaders will be hoping Modi will succeed in nudging India from the former to the latter. History—howsoever unfair—cannot be an excuse for doing nothing.