Depressed. That's how I feel at this precise moment. It's not just because I've listened to David Cameron talking for nearly an hour and a half. It's not just because he entered to the strains of one of my favourite songs by the Killers - chorus: 'I got soul but I'm not a soldier'. Oh Davey boy, you're so down with da yoof.
It's because despite having put Britain Greener and Safer at the top of his agenda, he has just slithered neatly away from any real commitment on action on climate change, and we are left, at the end of what feels like an eternity of politicians and hot air, with the sense that still none of them are really taking this seriously.
Cameron was my favourite to actually produce the tiny shred of substance for which any environmentalist is desperate. (I apologise but I'm not really counting the LibDems, and although I live in Brighton so can choose a Green MP if I so wish, they are also not serious candidates for government. I was going to worry later about the idea of actually voting for the Tories.)
However, although the Blueprint for a Green Economy document produced by John Gummer and Zac Goldsmith was not loved by all greenies, to my mind it still had more intellectual heft and coherence than anything produced by Labour - the section dealing with the decentralisation of power alone makes it worth a quick read. It also proposes 80% as the necessary target for reduction of carbon emissions, the figure which most greenies agree on, in place of the 60% proposed by the Climate Change bill.
Moreoever Peter Ainsworth, the shadow environment secretary, has delivered some great speeches recently, including one at the Triton conference (a tourism industry get together) where he told the delegates that they were in danger of becoming a "pariah industry" if they didn't get their house in order, and gave Michael O'Leary, head of Ryanair, a good kicking into the bargain. Cameron even had Arnie Schwarzenegger on board, who devoted almost half of his video linkto climate change and his own agenda setting California climate change bill.
Ainsworth's conference speech at least raised the bar slightly above Labour's dreadful headline promise on lightbulbs. He paid tribute to the radical thinking of the policy document, and promised a power station waste heat levy, which is the sort of serious, properly thought out action that we urgently need to see from politicians. He also promised a system of feed-in tariffs, which basically help promote micro-production of renewable energy. But that was it really. I began to think that perhaps they were saving the really big stuff for Dave.
But no. Dave's speech begins and we have to sit through hours and hours about education, and then onto the subject of health. Finally, we turn to climate change with the promising beginning: "Some people say it's not popular to talk about green issues. I don't care: it's right." After that it was downhill for the rest of the two minutes he devoted to the subject: no concrete promises, no ideas, even. No reference to the work of Gummer and Goldsmith to produce a proper intellectual framework towards action on climate change. Just dramatic images of the drying Gobi desert and finally the forlorn, Spitting Image-esque promise to be the "party of sensible green leadership".
So I am depressed. And worried. If Gordy does call this election next week who the hell am I going to vote for?
