(Photo from Mike Efford's Environmental Catastrophe posting here. For interesting comment, see Wednesday's Times leader here.)

Dr Williams said: "We're not in a situation where an endless upwards spiral of fuel consumption and environmental damage can be sustainable for everybody. That's simply basic and it's a messagbe that simply has to get across to every citizen in the developed countries." Dr Williams practises what he preaches and has already changed his predecessor's car for the environmentally-friendly Honda Civic hybrid, a car similar to the Toyota Prius, the hybrid petrol-electric car used by a number of Government ministers. In the offices at Lambeth Palace, staff use low energy lightbulbs, recycle paper and take energy-saving measures such as ensuring all equipment is switched off when staff go home each day.

Pv1tn This practices are becoming common throughout the churches. Already, a number of churches, such as St James, Picadilly, pictured here, have installed solar panels. The Christian Ecology Link website has details of these and other Christian environmental projects.

Dr Williams' warnings came as Defra launched its new policy on climate change. My Times colleague Lewis Smith was at the launch in London and told me: 'Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, was keen to emphasise how much the government had done to reduce carbon emissions. The government had vowed to reduce carbon emissions, one of the gases widely believed to be behind global warming, by 20 per cent by 2010 compared to 1990 levels. But they had failed. The most optimistic prediction now is 18 per cent. Environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth were quick to condemn the government's record by pointing out that the 20 per cent target had been promised in three consecutive Labour manifestoes. Ministers were accused of lacking the political will to introduce the measures necessary to bring emissions down enough to stop, or at least significantly slow, rises in world temperartures which will affect how we all live.'

_41490778_beckettpa203 Lewis described how Mrs Beckett brushed off the jibes by saying that while the UK may not have met its self-imposed target, it still leads the world in attempts find ways of reducing emissions nationally and through international agreement. Moreover, she pointed out that climate change is not an issue that should be left just to governments to solve. It is an issue that affects every individual, every business and every government and can only be solved by a joint effort. "If there were ever a subject in which a government alone cannot deliver, this is it," she said. "It's governments across the world, it's the whole of the community, it's the business sector, it's families and households. We are in this together."

Ministers at the Climate Change programme announcement were also asked if they would answer to God. Margaret Beckett responded: 'I don't do God. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the person who does and he has spoken.'

Alastair Darling answered in a similar vein but went on to say those in power have an 'obligation' to reduce carbon emissions.He said: 'I don't do theology. All of us who are fortunate enough to be in government whether here or across the world do have an obligation to our fellow men and women that includes doing everything we can to mitigate environmental damage.'

059_patagonia_plankton_satellite_truecol I must confess a personal interest in this story. My sister, Dr Martha Gledhill and her husband Dr Eric Achterberg are both academics at the National Oceanography Centre at Southampton University. Eric specialises in global climate change and eco-system functioning and Martha in the changing mineral contents in oceans. Eric has contributed to the new Science Museum exhibition on climate change and spends large parts of his life sailing the oceans of the world, gathering scientific information on the realities of climate change. In response to Dr Williams' interview, they told me: 'Climate change is real. We are already observing accelerated sea level rise and changes to the life and chemistry of our oceans. Not taking drastic actions now will greatly affect our environment within a generation.'

Their lifestyles are exemplary in bearing personal witness to the value of individual effort to save energy and protect the environenment. I, on the other hand, have always pursued what might be described as a "consumer" lifestyle, living on the Thames in London, protected from the reality of rising sea levels by the Thames Barrier and commuting to work alone in a car, watching Sky television, using disposable nappies, enjoying the enhanced choice of fast food from the new late-night Tesco Metro store in Kew and having the gas-fired heating on full, nearly all the time this winter, at home. I am not proud of this, but this is how it is for me and hundreds of thousands if not 'billions' of others. People such as my sister, on the other hand, are in a tiny minority.

There are many who devote their entire lives, or at least entire websites, to exposing reports of climate change as myth. I would love to belong to that tribe and hide my head in our shrinking sands. I have spent many Christmas lunches and other family occasions challenging my sister and her husband on whether global warming, climate change and all the attendant consequences are reality or myth. (She and Eric, on the other hand, have politely refrained ever from challenging me on the Virgin Birth, Resurrection or Trinity.) I have reluctantly had to concede that the scientists might be right. I don't want to get to the tipping point before I will believe we're going to tip. We now have low-energy light bulbs in the house and will make what other changes we can.

The Church of England itself is also auditing and trying to improve its own carbon footprint. In response to last February's synod debate into the report Sharing God's Planet, the Church's own environmental auditors are reviewing bishops' palaces, churches and have already looked at Lambeth Palace. 'We are trying to walk the walk as well as talk the talk,' says environmental officer Claire Foster. All diocesan offices and parish churches are being asked to keep fuel bills and compare units used in 2005 with 2007. 'By 2008 we need to show a measurable reduction in consumption by church buildings themselves,' says Claire.

It is easy to mock those who go green, especially when they go apocalyptic at the same time. Maybe the Archbishop should have said millions rather than billions. Or maybe, just maybe, he is right, and the world is on the brink of catastrophe. (Read the latest Time magazine cover story on this issue if you still don't believe me.) In this case, it's less a case of changing the light bulbs, as switching them on in our heads in the first place, and off out there in the world, before it is too late.

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