Fashionable though it is to rail against plastic bags - our own Prime Minister recently penned a Daily Mail assault on this incarnate evil - the climate change battle will not be won by the phoney war on bags, light bulbs and bottled water.

It is energy supply that will determine how quickly Britain goes green. Rather than trying to herd millions of individual consumers into taking tiny steps, the Government could change energy supply with one stroke of the pen. But the pen seems to be doodling wildly at the margins of the page.

There are only two things that will determine whether the world can step back from climate change havoc. One is forests, which are disappearing at an alarming rate and which act as “sinks” for carbon dioxide. The other is coal. If we burn all the coal that is in the ground, and let its filthy emissions out into the atmosphere, we won't be feeling genteel guilt in 20 years' time, but raw fear.

So it is extraordinary that the Government is trying to rush through a new generation of coal-fired power stations. Coal produces almost three times as much carbon dioxide per unit of electricity as gas. The shift from coal to gas in the 1980s accounts for almost all the progress Britain has made on reducing emissions. But John Hutton, the Energy Minister, has been bending over backwards to help the energy company E.ON to build a new plant at Kingsnorth, Kent, which now has planning permission.

Memos leaked to Greenpeace show that Mr Hutton's servile officials have pretty much let E.ON write the contract for what will be the first coal plant for 24 years. The contract does not require that E.ON should make Kingsnorth Britain's first demonstration project for carbon capture and storage technology (CCS). Yet that would be the only possible justification for building it.

CCS offers the hope of dramatically reducing emissions from power stations, by extracting carbon dioxide from coal and pumping it underground. Given that the world is set to burn a great deal of coal in the next 20 years, half of it in India and China, it is vital to prove the technology as fast as possible.

The Government is running a competition to build a small CCS demonstration project to be in operation by 2014. If that worked, it could then be scaled up to Kingsnorth size. But Kingsnorth is due to open in 2012. All eight of the coal-fired power stations now in the pipeline would have to be retro-fitted with the technology, at vast expense to the taxpayer, after they had already started polluting. The rush should be to test CCS, not to build plants that could become white elephants.

That is the view of other countries: California will not allow new coal plants without CCS. Canada has ruled that all coal plants must have CCS by 2018, built at their own expense.

Britain's antediluvian coal rush is provoking furious rows in Whitehall. Hilary Benn's department is livid that it has responsibility for environment but not energy and that while it begs energy companies to insulate grannies' homes, Mr Hutton gladhands them through the planning system. Downing Street is increasingly irritated by the muddle.

Gordon Brown ignored an aggressive memo from Mr Hutton earlier this year, which urged him not to sign the EU target on renewables. When Mr Brown stood firm, Mr Hutton's junior minister Baroness Vadera unbelievably lobbied EU ministers to treat coal (with CCS) as a “renewable” energy. Even E.ON is so fed up with ministerial dither that it has now called for a delay while it discusses “capture readiness” - a meaningless fudge but one that suits both sides.

It seems odd that a Government that talks tough on climate change is trying to turn the clock back on coal. But then this is a Government that only two years ago created the UK Coal Forum, a government- sponsored lobby whose sole purpose is to campaign for coal. The issue has opened up a seam of sympathy for old mining constituencies.

But that is not the ostensible reason for Kingsnorth. Ministers talk, first, about keeping the lights on - an argument that would be more credible if there were not already 32 gigawatts of gas and wind power planned to fill an “energy gap” of between 14 and 22GW. Secondly, they worry that Britain is too reliant on Norway and Russia for gas. But most of our coal is also imported - from Russia. And if you were going to rely on anyone, Norway is a good bet.

Renewables offer self-sufficiency. But with Britain producing only 4.7 per cent of electricity from renewable power, compared with 13 per cent in Germany, 20 per cent in Denmark, 50 per cent in Sweden and 100 per cent in Norway (from hydro power), a bigger vision is urgently needed - along with a new national grid to back up intermittent renewable sources with conventional power.

What is at stake in the Kingsnorth decision is not just the immediate pollution that it would generate. It is Britain's credibility in the international debate. India and

China are impressed by action, not words. Mr Brown has to make it clear that conventional coal has no future.

A few weeks ago I met Professor C.S. Kiang, founder of the Beijing College of Environmental Sciences. “You've shifted the blame to us,” said this mild-mannered academic, “by shifting your manufacturing to us. We have to solve this together.” We can't blame the Chinese for building coal-fired power stations if we do the same. And no amount of bleating about plastic bags is going to make up for it.

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