Has somebody put something in the water around Westminister? On Tuesday I found myself waxing lyrical about a new Tory announcement. Today it's Labour's turn. Frankly, I'm a little freaked out.
Ed Miliband - he who thousands of you congratulated when he got his new job as climate change secretary - has announced a new emissions reduction target for the UK. We will, he said, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, compared to 1990 figures.
The target is legally binding, making it the most ambitious legally binding commitment that any country has adopted - not bad for a first announcement in the post.
The big disappointment is that emissions from shipping and aviation haven't been explicitly included in the target, so emissions from aviation could keep growing unchecked, undermining all other efforts to beat climate change.
But in terms of energy policy, it's huge. As I explained last week, under this target, Britain would be allowed to emit no more than 118 million tonnes of CO2 per year after 2050. As a new generation of coal-fired power stations without carbon capture and storage would emit around 56 million tonnes of CO2 per year, this pretty much obliges the government to scupper plans for the new coal rush; coal would account for 48 per cent of our emissions quota in 2050.
And, in his interview with the Guardian yesterday, Miliband hinted that he agreed with us:
On the imminent and fraught decision over whether to sanction the construction of a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, Kent, Miliband says he is not going to announce a decision after 10 days in the job.
"I have to look at this in a balanced way," he said, but he added that the "only long-term prospect for sustainable energy is around clean fuels. If we are going to meet our targets for 2050, we will have to do it with clean energy."
and
He seemed opposed to the idea of allowing the polluting plant to go ahead, as some have suggested, on the condition that it would be closed prematurely if it did not meet maximum carbon emissions criteria by a fixed date, such as 2020.
The language Miliband's been using over the past couple of days has been extremely interesting; after John Hutton's love affair with big energy, Miliband seems to be going out of his way to distance himself from energy companies and seems open to the sensible position of authorities like Professor Stern, the Environment Agency, the former chief scientific advisor and the Sustainable Development Commission, who say Kingsnorth should not go ahead as it's currently planned.
During his first meeting with the big energy companies, he apparently warned them that they face a crackdown on "unfair" pricing policies; and told them "that the government expects rapid action or explanation to remedy any abuses. I will meet them again in a month to hear what they have done."
"If the companies don't act in a satisfactory way, and speedily, then we will consult on legislation to prevent unfair pricing differentials."
This is fighting talk - and is a refreshing change from Hutton, who basically allowed a coal giant to dictate energy policy.
Miliband also urged the green movement to build a relationship with him: "If there is an assumption of bad faith we are not going to get anywhere, so we have to show, through the totality of our actions, that we are broadly committed to this agenda. The NGOs are not going to agree with us about everything, nor are the energy companies, but there should be an assumption of good faith."
Our reply to Miliband: we will support you wholeheartedly if the decisions you take in the coming weeks and months genuinely reflect your ambition to make the UK a world leader in climate change.
So, are UK politicians finally starting to act like the world leaders on climate change they've always claimed to be?
Well, as Miliband himself acknowledges, setting the target is the easy bit. Meeting the target is the hard bit - and requires determined action from Gordon Brown now, and from every one of his successors for the next four decades.
This is a great start, but the Greenpeace UK climate team isn't out of a job just yet.
