Darling deferred a rise in fuel duty. Photo: Matt Cardy/Getty Images
No one could accuse Alistair Darling of not paying sufficient verbal attention to green issues when he laid out his first budget yesterday.
There were 15 references to either the environment or climate change and he spoke meaningfully if not passionately about the threat.
"There will be catastrophic economic and social consequences if we fail to act," he insisted before outlining a number of initiatives against gas-guzzling cars while outlining steps to improve the self-sufficiency of buildings.
There were some other moves to raise taxes on flying and help homeowners get around the current planning restrictions on erecting their own wind turbines.
The was a lot of talk about improving the European Union's emissions trading scheme and looking again at how to speed up delays to renewables projects.
But all in all these were trifling moves which got nowhere towards tackling the enormous threat that Darling had spelled out at the beginning of his speech to the House of Commons.
And they were undermined by a decision to defer a rise in fuel duty - in obvious deference to the road lobby - while giving specific verbal support for the expansion of Heathrow and Stansted airports.
It is hard to have any faith in a government that seems terrified of upsetting any vested interest group by taking the kind of bold decisions it clearly sees are required. Why, for instance, do we need another review on how to speed up wind projects when Darling and his ministers know what the difficulties are already?
The worst thing about all this is the government's inability to come up with an overarching policy on climate change that puts the reduction of carbon at the heart of all Britain's political and economic decision-making.
Global warming is becoming for Gordon Brown what Iraq was to Tony Blair: a disaster. But the consequences of failure are more far-reaching.
