It's so easy to shift the blame onto someone else but politicians do it better than most. Witness Margaret Beckett earlier today, speaking to foreign policy experts at the British Embassy in Berlin. Quite rightly, she stressed the dangers of climate change but her role as foreign secretary lead her to framing it as "a serious threat to international security". Which it is, but it's a lot more besides.
All well and good, but what rankles is the bit where she claimed that, as far as the EU is concerned, it's up to Germany to sort it all out. This isn't the result of some diplomatic tit-for-tat stretching back to the Battle of Britain but a forward glance to Germany's presidency of both the EU and G8 next year. "We will support you," she said, but hang on a minute. Wasn't the UK in exactly the same position last year, and wasn't climate change a priority at the Gleneagles summit, hosted by our very own prime minister?
Since then, precious little has altered in either the UK or the EU on the subject of climate change but now our government is out of the firing line, it's easy enough to shift the responsibility elsewhere. Even Beckett's intention to rope aviation into the emissions trading scheme smacks of being too little, too late. "Like putting a sticking plaster on a broken leg," according to one of our climate campaigners, Emily Armitage. But then if we're not to fall into a childish round of 'I will if you will', then someone needs to take the bull by the horns (or the plane by the tail) and do something.
