I've just returned from a two week trip to Greenpeace's Amazon office where we were discussing future plans to protect the rainforest. The office is based in a city called Manaus which, despite its position in the heart of the jungle, is far from a provincial backwater - with over two million people the city keeps up a frenetic pace, despite the baking equatorial sun and exhausting levels of humidity.

The job that our campaigners, logistics experts and policy thinkers are doing to protect the Amazon biome is simply inspirational. Many of them have made real sacrifices to work there, moving away from family and friends and the giant cities of Brazil in order to work at the front line of climate and forest protection.

"You have to act quickly, because very soon these fields will be dry." This prediction, drawled by hardened oilman Daniel Plainview in this year's best film, There Will Be Blood, has become a reality. Eight years into the 21st century and we are seeing the beginnings of a new energy horizon. Oil is receding into the distance. Nature's "free gift" to humanity is running out, fast.

2008 will come to be seen as the year the world's leaders were forced to confront their demons. The global response to stratospheric oil prices will determine if we are able to escape the worst consequences of climate change, feed the world and prevent pollution from ruining living conditions in our ever expanding cities. Trillions of dollars will be spent in the next few decades on technologies to generate energy, as old infrastructure rusts and economies expand in parts of the world that have endured poverty for centuries.

Wind turbines - not enough are being built

As the Financial Times pointed out yesterday, the UK has one of the most inefficient systems for subsidising renewable energy in the whole of Europe. Here we use a mechanism called - snappily – the renewables obligation. Like a compulsory visit to the mother-in-law on her birthday, the renewables obligation requires every power company in the land to produce a certain proportion of their energy from renewable sources like wind, wave and tidal power. Those that produce more than their allocated amount can sell credits to those that have come up short. So far, so good.

A small team of our staff members has been working hard at Earl's Court, London, putting the finishing touches to a brand new Greenpeace project. We've commissioned the top designer Jason Bruges to create an interactive garden of light, which will respond to people's movement through "touch pads" dotted around the installation.