I tend to watch TV much more when on an exercise machine or else while relaxing in a hotel abroad than at home where I tend to opt for using my time more productively. Even if it means catching up with my reading or writing. I was nevertheless amazed to notice recently that watching CNN has almost become synonymous with tuning in to a Green channel.

No doubt, most of these programmes and adverts are fuelled by multinational corporations trying to take their expertise in renewables to new destinations, the same way other mega companies do so to "clean up their act", image and perception wise.

But although there are both leaders and laggards in these sectors too, it is comforting to note that various world leaders have chosen to make the environment their calling card while others have initiated concrete climate change measures and others are still struggling hard to begin implementing their Green agendas.

When I recently took over my new portfolio as main opposition spokesman for the environment, sustainable development and climate change I received a congratulatory e-mail from a friend who told me that this is a portfolio with the biggest challenges and the least obvious solutions. He went on to add that becoming an energy-efficient society as we must set out to do, needs creative thinking and innovative solutions. I am not that convinced that the glorification of consumption over the years has helped that much. Some tend to argue that it has even made things worse.

What is most important is that we need to distinguish between buzzwords and mantras and real hard talk and concrete positive action. The risk increases when everyone seems to be jumping on the environmental bandwagon.

To-day the goalposts have already moved. It is no longer a question of what one needs to do but rather of how we can be sure that what is promised is delivered.

Some G8 countries are quick to point an accusing finger at emerging dynamic economies as China and India for having poor environmental standards. But this is sometimes done out of convenience. Particularly when recalling that in spite of a G8 summit meeting conclusion in Germany last year to cut global carbon dioxide emissions by half by 2050, a recent study has concluded that industrialised countries, which are responsible for around 62 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions, had failed to take sufficient measures so far.

I am not pointing an accusing finger at anyone but simply endorsing the conclusions of this study that the G8 countries have a responsibility to be high achievers in the race against climate change. Even more so because they need to be role models trail-blazing the way to steer the world towards a low-carbon, clean-energy economy.

Leaders worth their salt, like Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd - who, incidentally, won a decisive election victory last November on a Green agenda - have just been told in a commissioned report on climate change that Australia could not afford to avoid taking hard decisions. Some aspects of the climate change agenda might be country specific but there is one important lesson for us all - us politicians included - that we will delude ourselves should we choose to take small actions that create an appearance of action but which do not seriously attempt to solve the problem.

The dilemma the world is facing right now is that the prospect of putting emission limits on transport and electricity could unnerve, as it is already doing in Australia, a public struggling with the rising cost of living.

The bottom line of it all is not that of simply determining the financial cost of implementing alternative energy measures but rather the practical question of what are the economic costs of not acting as opposed to the economic costs of acting.

We must be brave enough to forge together rapid transformative policies. It is only this way that we can build a post-carbon economy. Ad hoc incremental change is no solution at all!

Mr Brincat is a Labour member of Parliament.

leo.brincat@gov.mt