Cameron opened round 1 with a feeble jab about tackling the impending environmental catastrophe by pricing working families out of air travel.
"Boo!" hissed the crowd.
Gordon brushed the attack off with his right hand, and characteristically smashed his left fist into Cameron's punitive treatment of family holidays. "Bang!", his clunking fist hammered into the lightweight with a call for international leadership and a new world order to tackle climate chaos.
"Finish him!" the clearly excited fans yelled.
The Chancellor, in his red and green trunks, skipped around the ring.
For extended highlights of Gordon's painful blows to Cameron's environmental policy, see below for the speech to the Green Alliance.
"I could jolly well have been a contender" spluttered Cameron, clearly on his way to a serious defeat on the environment after just a single round.
"Now I shall have to fly all the way to the Arctic Circle to speak to those Monkeys and ask them what to do" [surely "Polar Bears"? - Ed]
Tune in soon for Round 2 of "Gordon Thumps Cameron on the Environment"
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Speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, to the Green Alliance, London
[You can get the whole thing here- http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom_and_speeches/press/2007/press_28_07.cfm]
GB: Let me say how pleased I am to be here
with business leaders who are breaking new ground in environmental technology;
with long standing environmental champions who have changed the way we think about our planet; and
with committed members of the Green Alliance and other environmental organisations who lit the flame of modern environmentalism over thirty years ago, and whose inexhaustible campaigning and practical action is a major reason why that flame now lights up not just the national but the global stage.
Starting from modest beginnings and just a few far-sighted pioneers, building new scientific understanding on long-standing conviction, the environmental movement stands today as a mighty and determined force of people and ideas. Ideas which I recognise are not just about the use of resources but about justice; not just about economics but about quality of life; not just about the kind of world we live but the kind of people we are.
When Make Poverty History started, I said to them we would not always agree but would always champion your right to disagree.
So let me say that I appreciate the role this movement now plays: at all times challenging us to do more, but ready too to play your part in helping Britain shape a progressive global consensus - showing that as with action on debt, poverty eradication and peacekeeping, it is when the mobilisation of moral concern in civil society is allied to the power of the people to act through government that change happens.
And we know that change must occur. When, nearly two years ago I commissioned Nick Stern to conduct a review of the economics of climate change, I wanted to build a new consensus: that we had to go beyond the traditional alliance of economic growth and social justice as the central concerns of policy, and put growth, justice and environmental care together as our trinity of objectives.
But perhaps I did not realise, and - possibly outside some people in this room, I don't think many people did - quite the scale of the challenge that would be revealed by Nick Stern's work, now reinforced by the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We are facing a world at risk of an increase in temperature equivalent to that between the last Ice Age and now. But, as Stern shows, this is also a world of great new opportunity - for business, commerce and science, to ensure that a green economy will also be a growing economy.
And the last few months have seen change.
From the strong decisions of the European Commission on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme last autumn to a new American emphasis on reducing oil dependence;
from the announcement last month that thirteen US states on both west and east coasts were now committed to joining cap and trade schemes to the focus on environmental protection in the Chinese Prime Minister's address to the Chinese parliament only last week;
from the setting up of a commission on emissions trading in Australia to the announcement almost every week of a major global company's new environmental commitments; and
most of all, from last week's historic EU decisions to cut its emissions and to adopt new commitments on energy efficiency, renewable energy, carbon capture and storage and biofuels it is becoming clear that we have entered a new era.
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And this goes beyond climate change. At about the same time I commissioned the Stern report, I asked the Treasury to conduct a review of the long-term challenges facing the UK economy which would need to inform our forthcoming Spending Review. This showed the importance too of issues of water scarcity, waste generation, marine protection and biodiversity protection, in the UK and globally. We face an unprecedented series of global challenges which I recognise will profoundly affect our economic wellbeing, our quality of life and our cultural values, and will require societies, governments and the international community to make some far-reaching decisions.
So this era requires a new approach, both internationally and at home in Britain.
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