Blog: Climate

New Greenpeace USA Director Phil Radford has only been in post for three days, but already he's been arrested for taking action against climate polluters - he's one of the climbers in this banner hang outside the US State Department in Washington on Monday. 

It's certainly far from everything we've been asking for, but when Ed Miliband announced his new consultation on coal policy in the House of Commons this lunchtime it was clear that something had changed. For starters, E.ON isn’t going to get its way over Kingsnorth, at least not with its current plan.

Showing admirable signs of climate leadership in the face of resistance from Whitehall officials and his cabinet colleagues, the Energy and Climate Change secretary told MPs that no new coal-fired power stations would be built in Britain unless  equipped with at least some carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. In a key departure from previous policy, he said that from now on power companies planning to build new coal plants will be required to fit full CCS by 2025 at the latest, provided that the Environment Agency is convinced that the technology works. 

All eyes were glued to the TV in the office this lunchtime to see whether Alistair Darling's budget would deliver the kind of changes we need to see if we want to give ourselves the chance to keep the lid on climate change.