Green wood is not meant to burn well. But it appears that the Government is stoking its ‘bonfire of the quangos’ with over 15 environmental bodies, and considering the abolition of many more, blowing another hole in its claim to be ‘the greenest government ever’. At the same time, the confirmed abolition of the Regional Development Agencies will lead to £40m being cut from low-carbon investment programmes.

In Cabinet …

The bonfire of the quangos is in full swing, and the Government has started to throw green wood onto the rising flames. Last Thursday, to barely a whisper in the press, not one but two environmental bodies were axed: the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), and the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP). No mere kindling, these pair: the SDC has existed for 10 years, whilst the RCEP was established by Ted Heath back in 1970. These branches of government have now been sacrificed in the name of cost-savings.

Those few who spotted the announcement reacted with shock and exclamation. Green MP Caroline Lucas branded the move an “absolute disaster”. George Monbiot called it “irrational and counter-productive”.  Jonathan Porritt, former chair of the SDC, bitterly lamented its axing as being “dogma-driven and brazenly cynical”.

But the demise of the SDC is in many ways no surprise. One need only consult the auguries – that is to say, the small-statist think tanks whose position papers have prefigured much of the Coalition’s programme of spending cuts.

A majority of the world’s nations yesterday signed up to the Copenhagen Accord and filed plans for emissions reductions, scraping over the UN deadline of 31st January for doing so. But the pledged actions fall far short of action needed to prevent global temperatures rising by 2 degrees C – the target adopted in the text of the Accord itself.

Instead, existing actions set the world on course for a 3.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise, according to earlier analysis of pledges carried out by consultancy Ecofys. PriceWaterhouseCoopers calculate that on current projections the world will burn up its allocated carbon budget for the first half of the century by 2034 – 16 years ahead of schedule.

Following the announcement of the Copenhagen Accord, John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, declared Copenhagen “a crime scene”, with the world leaders who brokered the deal “guilty men and women.” Every crime scene demands a post-mortem, and in this entry, I’ll attempt to file a first report. I’ll warn you now: some scenes may disturb.

Cuts! Cuts! Cuts! The knives are out at Westminster as all three major parties vie to outdo each other in their commitment to reining in the public debt and slashing government spending. With the Lib Dems retreating from their promise to abolish tuition fees, and the Tories looking to cut defence budgets by a quarter, it seems that few policy areas are off-limits. How, then, might spending on the environment fare in a time of retrenchment?

Brighton is renowned for its tolerant atmosphere, which extends to suffering the arrival of the country’s political classes for conference season each autumn. Yet this year, as an embattled Labour Party met for what is almost certainly its last conference whilst in power, it seemed that even Brighton had grown tired of its guests. ‘Labour is old news in Brighton’ declared a twenty-foot high hoarding for the Greens, cheekily installed on the main route party delegates were taking to the convention hall. An exhausted-looking Brown, fashioned out of newspaper cuttings, scowled down at the hordes of indifferent daytrippers enjoying the seaside sunshine.