Chameleon Cameron dumps Green and flips back to true Blue...

Remember the Tory election slogan Vote Blue, Go Green adopted by David Cameron...? Well, today's Sunday Times exposes the sham of Cameron's spin and his biggest flip-flop to date.

First there was the former PR manager Cameron dressed as a polar explorer and posing with huskies in front of a shrinking Norwegian glacier...?

Forget (for a moment) that he’d travelled thousands of miles in a private jet – along with the television crews - to get to his photo-stunt to show how much he cared about climate change...

The Arctic stunt was hailed by the Tories as the launch pad of their new approach to climate change.

Cameron kept up the front for months and less than a year ago he was on the BBC Radio Four Today programme advocating VAT on domestic flights.

By last autumn he was distancing himself from that idea, and was instead advocating other green tax rises - though without exactly saying what they would be.

He told Andrew Marr in September:

We made a very tough choice on being green which is saying that air travel is an important contributor to climate change and the tax burden on that has to go up.

And the following month, he was back on Marr saying:

...green taxes as a share of taxes do need to go up. That's not necessarily popular, but I think it's right.

But today's Sunday Times reveals that Cameron is now backing away from those pledges too.

Under the headline TORIES DITCH GREEN TAXES, the ST says David Cameron is to abandon plans for 'green' taxes, fearing a backlash from voters unwilling to pay for climate change.

Cameron's 'vote blue go green' have always appeared rather less than convincing...

First, his cycle-to-work stunt spectacularly backfired when the Daily Mirror revealed that he his chauffeur-driven gas guzzler followed behind carrying his shoes and briefcase!

The Independent said his image as a green leader had 'gone up in smoke'.

And the BBC talked of hypocrisy.

Then there was Cameron's flip-flop on supermarket car parking tax.

Let's not forget the windmill erected outside the Cameron house in a blaze of publicity – only to be taken down a few days later.

And when he thought no-one would notice, he took a private plane from his constituency in Oxfordshire to meet a rich businessman in Herefordshire – despite a perfectly good train which would have taken just a couple of hours.

Now, despite all Cameron hype, it's Tories ditch green taxes.

The truth of Chameleon Cameron's attempt at being all colours to all people is that he only comes in one colour.

So forget: Vote Blue, Go Green. If you Vote Blue, you get True Blue.

More hot air from the US on climate change...

Sadly, but oh so predictably, as the world grapples to tackle climate change, George 'Dubya' Bush seems intent on derailing any positive plan for global action.

BBC Newsnight reported from the crucial climate change talks in Bali tonight (Friday) with news that the Americans have forced the European Union nations to give up on hard targets for nations to reduce CO2 emissions in coming decades.

As Environment Ministers - including our own very capable Hillary Benn - work through the night to try to prevent total collapse of the talks, the most optimistic outcome likely to emerge from the summit is a watered-down communique with nations agreeing to do 'not a lot' and certainly not enough.

Here's one view of what's going on (or not...)

It seems the Americans, who refused to sign Kyoto, are insistent that the porrer developing nations must cut emissions before the richest nation in the world takes action themselves.

As someone said on Newsnight, it's like Bush happily enjoying the comforts of the first class cabin on an airliner convinced that a catasrophe in tourist class won't affect him...

With the clock ticking, failure at Bali means another two years before there's another chance to replace the Kyoto Agreement.

And the longer the Americans refuse to show real leadership, the more urgent and more drastic the eventual action will have to be.

Let's hope that Al Gore is right and the next US President is more positive than the current one who's now entering his final year in office.

Al's truth will be more convenient under next US President...

The man who used to be the next President of the United States collected his Nobel Peace Prize today - and said humanity was now waging war on the earth itself...

And what a different place the world would be today if only the occupant of the White House had been decided at the ballot box rather than in the Florida courts.

Of course, the US would have signed up to Kyoto if the real winner became President rather than Dubya - and I've no doubt that Al Gore would have handled the war on terror rather differently.

Accepting his well deserved Nobel Peace Prize for work on climate change today, Al Gore predicted that whoever becomes next President, the US is likely to adopt a 'more constructive' approach to climate change...

Let's hope so.