The leaders of the world's leading industrialized nations concluded their meeting in Japan on Wednesday vowing to fight the world's food crisis and promising to cut greenhouse gases in half by the year 2050.

Specifics, however, were in short supply at the annual meeting of the Group of Eight, or G-8, nations. President George W. Bush, in his G-8 swan song, tried to put the best possible face on things, saying that there had been "significant successes" in five key areas: climate change, trade, fighting disease in Africa, follow-through on previous commitments and addressing high food and energy prices.

But Bush put his finger on a major problem when he said, "Pledges are important (but) oftentimes in the political process, people talk big, but they never follow up."

Thus the success of the G-8 meeting will depend on whether the rich nations make good on their commitment to make good on their commitments. And time is fleeting.

The pressure for cutting carbon emissions is great enough, but the food crisis already is at the point of life and death. In the words of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the crisis could "endanger democracy, destabilize nations and lead to international security problems."

Rice prices have more than tripled between January and May, while the cost of wheat now is more than twice what it was in January 2006. The soaring costs caused food riots this spring in Bangladesh, Egypt and Haiti.

Prices probably will remain high at least through 2009, according to a World Bank briefing of the G-8 leaders. Meanwhile, an additional 105 million people worldwide have fallen into poverty as they have had to spend more of their meager incomes on food.

What was needed from this G-8 conference was an immediate, concerted effort to maintain civil stability and avert starvation — such as among the 12 million AIDS orphans in east and southern Africa, and the 2.6 million people facing a nutrition crisis in civil war- and drought-stricken Somalia. Instead, G-8 leaders offered a vague pledge of such a response and a reaffirmation of previous pledges of $10 billion more in food assistance.

"Never was more urgent action needed by the G-8 than this week," said Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of the aid organization Oxfam. "The G-8 failed to rise to the challenge of a world in crisis."

While the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia the United Kingdom and the United States dithered on hunger, they dined in splendor. The opening session included a five-course lunch followed by an eight-course banquet that included such delicacies as corn-stuffed caviar, smoked salmon and sea urchin and diced fatty flesh of tuna fish, avocado and jellied soy sauce.

This was a fine repast over which to discuss what World Bank President Robert Zoellick called a "man-made catastrophe." The World Bank blames food tariffs, which restrict trade in food commodities; agricultural incentives, which compensate farmers for suppressing yields; and alternative energy initiatives, which divert grains for biofuels. Such policies could be prevented through sensible international cooperation, but each of the G-8 leaders has domestic political concerns that impede such cooperation.

In the same way, domestic political concerns also hamper real progress on cutting greenhouse gases. Developing nations want more sacrifice from industrialized nations, which in turn demand slow-growth policies from developing nations. In the end, they contributed only more hot air, pledging to cut emissions in half in 40 years without getting into the sticky question of how.

International summit meetings invariably begin with high expectations and end with disappointing results masked in opaque communiqu?s. Bush should make this one different by leading by example. In his words, don't just talk big.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST DISPATCH.