Also by John Sauven

With parliament coming back, a general election looming and the Copenhagen climate summit just weeks away, this is the time for rhetoric to stop and action to start. That’s why we’ve written this manifesto. The policies show that we can protect the environment while also protecting our economy. We want all politicans to steal our policies.

By using the big economic levers we can have sustainable recovery, create green jobs and cut emissions. But for this to happen politicans need to set aside short term party politics and work together to tackle the really important issues. And frankly, if any political party doesn’t adopt these policies, we should be asking them why not?

Our executive director John Sauven is writing today about green investment and starting the office off on a spring blog relay. Over the next couple months we'll be asking different Greenpeace staff and volunteers to write for our blog each day so that you can find out a bit more about the many different people, ideas and roles behind our campaigns.

Since the 'big crunch', world leaders have been forced to think the unthinkable.

Even Peter Mandelson, who once said he was "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich", now questions New Labour's unbridled, unregulated capitalism.

He recently explained: "Partly through our need to reassure that we were no longer the 1980s Labour party, partly because there was a new economic orthodoxy prevailing in the economy, we emphasised or played up our belief in markets, profits, even privatisation as a model."

This blog by Greenpeace UK exective director John Sauven first appeared on the Guardian's Comment Is Free.

As the science of climate change gets increasingly urgent, the will of Europe's political leaders to act on the climate crisis seems to be weakening by the day.

The EU climate package was meant to herald a new and unprecedented level of ambition in tackling climate change. Compared to what the science dictates, we're still way, way off the mark. The deal suffered from destructive forces within the EU representing their own country's self interests at the expense of an EU-wide deal.

Friday's announcement that French state owned utility Electricite de France (EDF) had pulled out of a takeover bid for British Energy has left Gordon Brown's nuclear aspirations in disarray.

It was widely expected that, following months of negotiation, a deal would have been struck and a statement read to the sound of popping corks, but instead a rather sombre delivery was given to a stunned room.

So where does it leave us? Well, firstly, if the deal had gone ahead, it could have dealt a hammer blow to the renewable energy sector in the UK and any chance of us meeting our legally binding targets under the EU Renewables Obligation. Why? Well, even EDF admit that renewable energy and nuclear power cannot work together. They've even said that if there is significant growth in the renewables sector, the economic case for nuclear falls apart.