Also by benet

We were promised the "greenest budget yet". We've been given a budget that's dirty brown. Instead of grasping the opportunity to restructure our economy to deal with the threat of catastrophic climate change, the Chancellor has actively damaged his environmental credentials and hurt efforts to reduce UK CO2 emissions.

It is not just that the green taxes announced will be ineffectual; it's that there is no recognition of the scale of the problem or fundamental changes needed if we are to decarbonise our economy.

It's not often that Americans are leading on the environment. But in Kansas, USA some of the state's politicians are blazing a trail: they've refused to build any more coal-fired power stations.

Critically, the decision was made on climate change grounds.

It's easy to talk about the government as if it were a single, all-powerful, bureaucratic machine, with tentacles stretching out from Downing Street into every aspect of our daily lives. Of course, it simply isn't like that.

Governments are a collection of individuals: from the 22 who sit round the Cabinet table, through the hundred or so ministers in various government departments, their political special advisers and civil servants. Throw in the external pressures of the media, business, and organisations like Greenpeace, and you see that far from being a single machine, it is a complicated alliance of individuals who come together to form the body politic. And as the Environment Minister Hilary Benn said today, it's important that they all "get it" on climate change.

It is easy to call for dramatic change; it's harder to deliver it. Even those of us at Greenpeace who are eternal optimists recognise that change can be tough to achieve. Just because it's difficult doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. If we are to prevent the effects of catastrophic climate change we are going to need big measures and bold leadership from our politicians.

The problem is that in this country we are simply not doing anything like enough! I have been looking into what the rest of Europe is doing to wean itself off fossil fuels and comparing it to what is happening here. All very depressing - but enough to say that the UK is languishing at the bottom of the pile for renewable energy (just 1.75 per cent if you are interested) compared to an EU average of 7 per cent. In Germany they are predicting they will get 8 per cent of their final energy from renewables next year.