"The definition of a politician is someone who has never done enough." With these words UK environment minister Hilary Benn defended himself from a combined Conservative-LibDem-Green attack, at the Guardian's Climate Change Summit in London today.
For Green party MEP Caroline Lucas, the mainstream parties had only partly caught up on the earth-friendly policies her group had espoused for 30 years. For Steve Webb, Liberal Democrat environment spokesman, the problem was that the environment department, Defra, was a "minnow swimming among sharks" with no control over energy or transport policy, for example. He also took a sideswipe at the Tories, saying their new-found green zeal was "a fad to decontaminate a brand".
Peter Ainsworth, the shadow environment secretary, said the government was failing to provide positive incentives for people to take actions, and touted his party's proposals on feed-in tariffs, green savings schemes and payments for reducing waste.
But could there be a rather deeper political problem for those who want to see effective, rapid, political action on climate change? We report a poll today that suggests a fifth of MPs are unconvinced that human activities are causing climate change. Of those responding to the poll, a third of Tory MPs were sceptical. Friends of the Earth's Tony Juniper says the results are "disturbing". What do you think?
