David Cameron: The planet first, politics second

For many years, it has been a widely held belief that the environment is an issue for the left. So I understand why, in environmental circles, the high profile that my party has recently given to the challenge of climate change was greeted initially with a degree of scepticism. The green movement was similarly suspicious of Governor Schwarzenegger in California when he began to focus on the same issue. But suspicion has now turned to surprise, with the realisation that politicians of the centre right are engaged, in earnest, with this most pressing and crucial challenge for our society.

To me, the most surprising thing is that - both here at home and internationally - we on the centre right ever allowed the environment to appear to be something that was not for us. This mistake is all the more surprising given the Conservative Party's proud green heritage.

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It was Disraeli's Conservative government which, in 1875, introduced the great Public Health Act, a measure heralding the first determined attempt to clean up the terrible environmental impacts of the Industrial Revolution. It was a Conservative government in the 1950s that passed the Clean Air Act, putting an end to the choking, killer smogs in London and other cities. It was Edward Heath who established the Department of the Environment; Chris Patten who was responsible for Britain's first White Paper on Sustainable Development, and Michael Howard who persuaded the US government, under George Bush Snr, to sign the Climate Change Convention - the forerunner of the Kyoto agreement.

Conservative governments introduced the modern framework for countryside and wildlife protection; the ban on CFCs, tax incentives for unleaded petrol, the great clean-up of our rivers and lakes, the landfill tax, and the Home Energy and Conservation Act.

And of course it was Margaret Thatcher who, in 1989, became the first world leader to raise the need to tackle global warming. She did so in stark terms, referring to "a new, insidious danger ... the prospect of irretrievable damage to the atmosphere, to the oceans, to earth itself". In a speech which astonished the United Nations, she continued: "The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. Change to the sea around us, change to the atmosphere above, leading in turn to change in the world's climate, which could alter the way we live in the most fundamental way of all."

That speech was delivered 17 years ago. It is a matter of huge concern that, while today's rhetoric is eerily familiar, so little has recently been done to address a problem which has only loomed larger and become more threatening. Leaving the environment to the left has meant that we are now in a race against time.

On Friday, I shared a platform with Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, and committed my party to supporting a climate change Bill in the Queen's speech this autumn. Such a Bill would establish year-on-year targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 per cent by 2050, set in place a legal framework to ensure the targets are met, and establish an independent monitor to report to Parliament on Britain's progress in meeting them.

I am pleased that the Liberal Democrats, and other parties, appear to be supportive of this approach. This weekend, Peter Ainsworth, the shadow Environment Secretary, has written to David Miliband, his government counterpart, to emphasise the need for a cross-party dialogue on climate change, and to invite him to take part in discussions about how we can work together.

Politicians must work together, nationally and internationally, if we are to develop an effective response to the global challenge of climate change. Our children will judge the current generation of political leaders on our ability to put aside party differences in order to face up to this unprecedented global threat.

I recently met former US Vice-President Al Gore, whose powerful film about climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, is about to be distributed in UK cinemas, and I am delighted that Republican Senator John McCain, who has done so much to promote a cross-party consensus on climate change in the US, will be coming to our party conference in Bournemouth this October. Rising to the threat of climate change will require more than conventional party politics has to offer.

And it will require us to go beyond that other historic stand-off between left and right: the battle between the green movement and capitalism. It is time to move on, and fast. There are encouraging signs that this is happening. Responsible business leaders recognise that they have a duty towards the environment, and that they can play a major role in making the changes needed to ensure a more sustainable world. And responsible environmentalists understand that capitalism will not go away. We must change the way we treat the earth's finite natural resources; we must change the way we do business; we must change the way we behave - and capitalism is the most powerful driver of change on the planet.

So let's put to bed the notion that the environment and economic growth are somehow necessarily at odds. It is a view that belongs to the last century. What we need now is green growth. That means harnessing existing and developing technologies in energy and transport; it means putting a price on carbon emissions and ensuring that the polluter pays; it means conserving essential natural resources such as water, and it means enabling the market to do what it has always done: find the most efficient and cost-effective way of doing business.

But vital though the role of business and technology will be in finding solutions to climate change, it is naive to think that the market can do it alone. The world's politicians have a key role to play, and I believe that there is now a real public desire for active leadership, amounting to much more than words.

The business community has made it clear that it needs a stable long-term political framework if it is to justify the capital investment involved in delivering the change needed for a low-carbon economy. It is essential, for all our futures, that my generation of politicians rises to the challenge.