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It’s not overstating the argument to claim that the fate of millions of species depends on whether the UK, and other industrialised nations, continue to burn coal without capturing and storing the carbon emissions this produces.

James Hansen, a climate specialist with NASA, has estimated that a single coal fired power station without carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) – just like the one proposed for Kingsnorth, in Kent – would be responsible for the extinction of around 400 species of plants, birds and animals.

And this is why today's Government announcements about coal policy are of such critical importance; and why the RSPB is campaigning with others to see an end to dirty coal.

“Ed Milliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, deserves warm congratulations for the principle and determination he has shown in getting to this point.”

But – and, unfortunately, there is a but – the real test of the Government's policies is still to come. Under the current proposals, it would be possible for the equivalent of two ‘Kingsnorths’ to be built without carbon capture and storage facilities kicking in until 2025, even though each individual plant will be required to capture a portion of its emissions.

What’s worse, this amount of dirty coal power could continue for decades, if it can't be proven that CCS technology is practical and economic. And, as yet, there are no plans to ensure that all coal fired power stations will be required to have CCS in the future.

“Locking the UK into unabated coal for decades would be a disaster for wildlife and people,” says Ruth. “To prevent this, the Government must show how CCS policies will tighten over time, to get dirty coal out of our electricity system as quickly as we can, and forever.

"They must also introduce an absolute requirement for new coal plants to have CCS by a fixed date, or – quite simply – to close. An Emissions Performance Standard for power plants – something that the RSPB supports – could do both these jobs.”

This summer in the run up to the UN climate change convention in December, decisions made will be made on the climate which could determine the fate of life on earth. One of the most important of these will be whether countries like the UK are prepared to turn their back on dirty coal once and for all.

Measures to tackle climate change announced in today's Budget fall far short of the radical action required.

The Chancellor's announcement included the Carbon Budget alongside the Fiscal Budget, committing the UK to cut carbon emissions 34 per cent by 2020. While this and other measures show signs of progress, the budget has shown once again the Government has failed to grasp the scale of the environmental challenge.

Quite simply, climate change threatens millions of species with extinction and jeopardises our own survival.

Today's target falls far short of the cuts needed to help avoid dangerous climate change, while the measures designed to meet that target are themselves inadequate.

The £1.4 billion of public funding for low carbon growth has to be compared to the £11 billion Lord Stern estimated was needed and leaves us way behind our competitors.

The Chancellor has also blown a unique opportunity to kick-start a longer-term transformation to a low carbon economy by failing to shift the tax burden to polluting activities.

Instead the amount of green tax receipts as a percentage of GDP will actually fall.

There were genuinely progressive moves, in particular moves to boost investment in the UK's offshore wind sector and the announcement of a new fund to pay for a demonstration of Carbon Capture and Storage technology.

If this is used to help finance full-scale CCS demonstrations, and is accompanied by tough regulations to rule out new coal plants without CCS, it could be the most significant step our country has made yet towards a low carbon economy.

The environment has to be at the heart of all our economic decision making if we are to move towards a truly sustainable future.

These are tough times for the economy and tough times too, for the environment.

However bad things are now, there will be even tougher times ahead if we do not tackle the problems caused by climate change and our destruction of the environment in the name of growth.

Our exploitation of the environment threatens our long-term well-being and competitiveness. Ultimately, our prosperity relies on the natural world.

Tomorrow's Budget needs to offer more than just a short-term fix for our present difficulties. It needs to kick start a fundamental and long term shift towards a low carbon and truly sustainable economy.

How?

The Chancellor should announce an overhaul of the tax system to shift the burden away from income and consumption towards green taxes. These would replenish the coffers while encouraging people to reduce environmental damage.

He should ensure any stimulus for the economy is focussed on support for green technology, promoting green jobs and the growth of a low carbon, resource efficient economy.

The RSPB has other concerns too.

We will be watching the small print for any increase in the pitifully small amount of money available to protect the unique wildlife of our overseas territories. We will look for an increase in money available to help wildlife and habitats here at home, in particular through the Landfill Communities Fund.

Whatever happens tomorrow, we cannot afford a return to business as usual. We want government to invest in things that our children will thank us for.

That means saying no to unabated coal power stations, no to continued destruction of the rainforest and yes to investing in things that people care about: saving species from extinction, protecting special places, energy conservation and renewable energy.

Now is the time to take a wider view of what 'prosperity' means.

When many of us were growing up the sight of a magpie was a cue to either salute or launch into a superstitious nursery rhyme – but if some had their way we should instead be reaching for a trap and a gun.

The issue of whether magpies are simply the mischievous rascals of the bird world or something altogether more sinister has been raging in the press in recent days.

On the one side are the Countryside Alliance, never ones to shy away from controversy, and an organisation called Songbird Survival which was set up to protect linnets, bullfinches, yellow hammers and other garden visitors. Both claim that magpies are responsible for the decline of songbirds because they steal chicks and eggs from other birds’ nest, and are urging the public to take matters into their own hands by trapping and killing the birds.

But this is a bit like blaming the current global recession on a few petty thieves and pickpockets.

All the research shows that, while magpies do take young birds and eggs, there is no strong evidence that this is responsible for the catastrophic declines we have seen in songbird populations.

The real issue is much more complicated and cannot be solved simply by blasting away at a few magpies. The intensification of modern farming and the loss of habitats in urban areas are the real culprit here and dealing with these complex issues requires a much longer term view and a lot more sensitivity.

 Aside from the fact that a large scale cull of magpies would simply not make any real difference to songbird population, it would also be illegal and would draw attention away from the serious wider issue.

So let’s stick to saluting these cheeky birds instead of lining them up for a pointless mass slaughter.

It is a tricky question but if you drew a line in the sand, we think more than 700,000 flights a year from Heathrow alone would be quite a long way over it.

That is how many flights we are looking at if the proposed third runway at Heathrow gets the go-ahead.

It would make the airport the UK’s biggest source of carbon dioxide just as we are trying to slash our carbon emissions in the face of climate change.

This makes no sense at all, which is why the RSPB has today given its support to a legal challenge against the Government’s decision to allow a third runway.

We all like to fly. The explosion of cheap flights has opened up the world to many people. But flying comes at an environmental cost by adding to the build up of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

Left unchecked, climate change could destroy the very places we long to visit, together with thousands of species our children and grandchildren will never have the chance to see and enjoy as we have.

It isn't easy to reconcile the rich experience of air travel with its impact on the world we love. One way is to treat it as a precious gift, which we must use wisely and sparingly.

Expanding air travel at the speed and scale proposed by the Government is not wisdom. It is folly.

This is why the RSPB is opposed to the building of a third runway at Heathrow, and will continue to be so, until the Government can show airport expansion plans are genuinely compatible with its policies for protecting the climate.

OK, so at first glance the subject of set aside replacement and agri-environment schemes on UK farmland may sound about as interesting as watching crops grow, but not everyone thinks so.

The subject is one that has been exercising us a great deal here at the RSPB in recent months and it’s one that has caused a major stir in the farming press.

“The whole thing is another nonsense dreamed up by a cabal of UK farming’s implacable enemies!,” thundered a correspondent on the letters page of the Farmers Weekly magazine recently. And no doubt there are many more opinions out there which aren’t quite as measured and polite.

So what exactly are they so excited about?

Well it all started in 1988 when the chaps in Brussels decided to bring in the policy of set aside – paying farmers to leave parts of their land lie fallow. This was intended to deal with the costly food surpluses being produced by European farmers which were resulting in the much talked about grain and butter mountains, but it had a unexpected benefit for our wildlife. The land which was left unploughed became a haven for farmland bird species such as the yellowhammer, the skylark and the grey partridge.

Fast forward 19 years to 2007 and the food mountains had gone, farmers were no longer delivering surplus produce and the policy of set aside was kicked into the uncropped long grass.

But farmland birds are suffering badly and it’s become clear to the RSPB, the government and the farming industry that a replacement plan needs to be put in place.

The Government recently launched a group with representatives from all interested groups to tackle the thorny issue and proposed a plan to introduce a compulsory scheme which would see farmers putting in place environmental features on their own farms. The RSPB has come out in support of this plan.

However the National Farmers Union claims the threat of compulsory regulation is heavy handed, and has proposed an alternative voluntary plan which they say will achieve the same results.

Hence the angry-from-Tunbridge Wells letters to the farming press.

The Government is set to make its plans known in the next few weeks, but until then the debate is set to rage on over farmland fence posts up and down the land.

My colleague Ruth Davis, who's in Bonn for the crucial climate talks, sent this update earlier today. 

Hi there from Bonn,

You probably all saw the news about the Wilkins Ice Sheet break-up.

The report released almost at the same time by the US Geological Survey and British Antarctic Survey records the unprecedented rate of ice melt across the region. It pins this firmly on climate change, suggesting that map-makers are now struggling to keep up with changing face of the Antarctic continent. 

Meanwhile here in Bonn, small island nations, mountainous countries, countries subject to flooding and drought - in fact most of the developing world - have all taken to the floor calling for emission reductions which match the science and the scale of the risk.  These are (of course) even further away from the cuts to which developed countries and large emerging economies are prepared to commit themselves.

This could seem like a recipe for misery and disempowerment -  sometimes it feels like that. But oddly enough, right now this grim news is fuelling a focussed sense of anger, and a determination by affected countries and their NGO colleagues to fight harder and more effectively. 

There was something of a rebellion on Saturday in the formal working groups, when it seemed like discussions on tropical forest emissions would be squeezed out of the talks - concerned countries insisted that they were firmly put back in. 

There are now lots of national negotiators wandering around the conference centre wearing tee-shirts printed by the Youth Delegation, asking 'How old will you be in 2050? A kind of personal protest against the 'hand-cuffs' they are forced to wear by their governments. 

And there is an odd sense that sooner, rather than later, the reality of droughts, ice-melt, floods, famine, ocean acidification, forest die-back and desertification, will collide with the politics - and that we have to keep pushing so that we can act when that moment comes.

It's an open secret that the steps made in any Copenhagen deal are likely to be tiny and tentative in comparison to the effort needed.  But also, an open secret that the people pushing for change will never, ever go away; that every day the evidence will accumulate to back us up; that more and more people will become affected and demand action; and that therefore, eventually, we will win. 

If you can't change the science, you have to change the politics, is the catch-phrase for now.  Naive?  Maybe - but then that's like saying it's naive to try and plug the holes when your ship is sinking, or grab the controls when your plane is crashing.  Especially when you only have the one ship.

Ruth

New research from Natural England suggests that less than 10 per cent of children play in 'wild spaces'.   Just a generation ago some 40 per cent of kids roamed around in woodlands, heaths and other open areas.

It's a sad fact that parents' understandable concerns about safety mean that most children are growing up with scant experience of the natural world.  And if they don't have the opportunity to get out and enjoy nature firsthand, we can't expect them to value it.  To put it bluntly, if they don't value nature our efforts to protect it may well prove worthless.

The natural environment won't be the only casualty.

According to Ofsted, 'When planned and implemented well, learning outside the classroom contributed significantly to raising standards and improving pupils' personal, social and emotional development.'    

So, what's to be done? 

The RSPB already helps hundreds of thousands of children to discover and enjoy the natural world, through school visits to reserves, Big  Schools' Birdwatch, family days out and membership of Wildlife Explorers. 

Just over five years ago, we helped to form the Real World Learning Campaign - working with the Field Studies Council, National Trust, Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, The Wildlife Trusts and PGL. This has made some progress.

Earlier this year, the Secretary of State for Education, Ed Balls MP, launched a new Quality Badge for Learning Outside the Classroom.  Schools can use this to identify outdoor learning venues that meet independently assessed safety and quality standards.  The RSPB's Top Lodge nature reserve was one of the first to be awarded this recognition. More are following close behind.

Badging schemes can only go so far. If schools have no money to take advantage of them and teachers don't know about them, their impact is going to be seriously limited.  A view shared by Ofsted.

So, as well as supporting the new Council for Learning Outside the Classroom, the RSPB is calling for:

• Ofsted to integrate the mandatory inspection of outdoors learning, for every school in England
• Government to provide £27 million to fund every child in England getting at least one experience of outdoors learning per year
• The Training and Development Agency for Schools to ensure that teachers are confident, competent and committed to giving  every child this opportunity.
  

What do you want for your kids?

Running around in the fresh air, surrounded by green spaces and wildlife? Or stuck in front of a PC or television screen?  

As the parent of a two year old, I know what matters most to me . And I can see what works best for Dan.

Nature's amazing - and it's there to be enjoyed by everyone.

For more information about the RSPB's education work, see here.