Gordon Brown

A couple of days ago, I wrote that leading climate scientist and director of Nasa's Goddard Institute James Hansen was planning to write to Gordon Brown, urging him to stop the new coal rush in the UK.

Here's the full text of that letter. It's powerful stuff, and piles the pressure onto Gordon Brown ahead of next month's decision by Medway Council, on whether to allow the first new coal plant in 30 years to be built at Kingsnorth.

There's a video megamix of Gordon Brown's speech from last week doing the rounds on YouTube, cut to highlight just how wishy-washy his words were:

The speech Gordon Brown made to the Foreign Press Association earlier today was billed as his first major proclamation on climate change and the environment since ascending to Number 10, but did it deliver? There was much reaffirming of previous statements and existing policies, but aside from a couple of big points there was nothing really new.

Update: our executive director John Sauven has written on why Gordon Brown's reluctance to embrace the economic and environmental potential of renewable energy technology is costing us time, money and could eventually cost us the climate here.

British prime ministers have a longstanding tradition of taking on the less savoury characteristics of their US counterparts pretty soon after coming to office. For Blair, it was a propensity towards using weapons of mass destruction. For Brown, it's trying to scupper vital climate change deals.

On the same day that scientists have shown that carbon emissions are accumulating far more quickly than predicted, leaked documents reveal that Labour wants to work with the nuclear-obsessed French and the climate-sceptic Polish presidents to undermine a vital European deal on renewable energy. The deal - to generate 20 per cent of energy from renewables by 2020 - was only finalised by European leaders including Tony Blair earlier this year.