Caroline Lucas: The greens need a clear voice – and a leader

At Heathrow and around the country, last weekend, the climate camp deservedly hit the headlines, with its urgent message on the action needed to prevent catastrophic climate change. Now, it's time for the follow-up. The green movement needs to gain some of the levers of power, in order to transform protest into policy implementation.

The Green Party needs to rise to that challenge. Despite the steady osmosis of its policies and ideas into the political mainstream and an increase in support at the ballot box, the urgency of climate change suggests that we should be far bigger players than we currently are.

A look at the way political commentators describe the state of the parties' popularity tells us what the problem is, straight away: Brown "bounces" while Cameron "wobbles".

But not a single column inch has told the story of the Greens' near-doubling in support over a number of polls taken during the past two years – and why? Partly at least because the party doesn't have a figurehead that can represent our ideas.

The truth is that the media – and most voters – don't relate to abstract concepts: rather they relate to the people who espouse and embody them.

After 30-odd years of trying to ignore that reality, we are running out of time. The need for Green political influence has never been so urgent, and never has there been so much at stake.

Scientists tell us that the next eight to 10 years will be critical in terms of whether we have any chance of avoiding the worst of climate change.

It is still the case that only the Green Party has both the radical policies and the political commitment that are so desperately needed to make sure we do.

For example, the cosy Westminster consensus has brought us a Climate Change Bill with hopelessly inadequate targets. According to scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, rather than constraining warming to less than two degrees which is essential to our chances of being able to stabilise the climate, the Bill's targets are more likely to contribute to a world that's four or five degrees warmer than in pre-industrial times.

This isn't just a terrifying prospect – it's a political scandal, and the Greens have to be in Parliament, challenging it and exposing it.

The trouble is Government advisers only give advice that they deem to be "politically realistic" – in other words, advice that won't require any major transformation of the economy or business as usual.

Greens have to be heard saying what others refuse to say: that the definition of what is "politically realistic" has to be, first and foremost, that which guarantees a habitable planet, not that which guarantees the greatest possible financial returns to companies and to their shareholders.

The real irony, of course, is that a radical transformation of the way we live our lives and do business will actually create a whole series of social win-wins: warmer homes, stronger communities, tastier food, less time spent stuck in traffic jams – even an end to the "status anxiety" which makes so many of us unhappy or even depressed.

But as the public debate over cutting emissions moves on, politicians, businesses and the media remain focussed on the costs and hardships of moving to a low-carbon economy. Rare are the voices talking about the benefits. We're not talking about huddling around a candle in a cave; rather, about chatting over a sumptuous meal of locally produced food, in a warm, well-insulated house, with friends and neighbours, having arrived by bike (easy, along uncongested streets), on foot or by public transport.

So our message is urgent, our skills and approach are needed now more than ever, and our electoral support is rising. Yet without an identifiable leadership team, we're just not getting the media attention and political success we deserve.

That's why the Green Party is looking at its internal structures: holding a referendum of all of its party members on whether to build on the set-up of having two "principal speakers" to the vital next stage: having a leader and a deputy leader (or two co-leaders) to act as recognisable, inspiring, leading voices for the thousands of dedicated party activists who collectively make the party what it is. Such a leadership wouldn't have the authority, so beloved of Brown and Cameron, to ignore party members' wishes and draw power to the centre.

They would be a very "green" leadership, elected by members every two years and remaining entirely accountable to the Greens' supreme policy-making body, our biannual conferences, and subject to recall.

Leadership doesn't have to be top down and authoritarian. Green leadership is about empowering and enabling voters to act, a leadership that inspires and motivates rather than one which dictates.

We think that the time is right to take radical Green policies and radical Green politics into the mainstream – and that by voting for identifiable and accountable leadership party members will be taking a vitally important step towards being able to do just that.

The author is the Green Party's MEP for South-east England. The article was written with the

assistance of Darren Johnson, Leader of the Green Group on Lewisham Council