I was in Cambridge last night, with the Cambridge Young Greens, to support Rupert Read, the Green Party’s candidate in Cambridge.

Given the coverage in the Independent yesterday, I ended up defending the Green Party against the full-on attack by eminent climate scientist (based in Cambridge) Peter Wadhams. He had accused the Green Party of betraying the climate change community by failing to give it a high enough priority through the Election campaign.

I think this is nonsense, and although I admire the steadfast advocacy of Peter Wadhams on behalf of good climate science (and he really has made a good case about that), I think he’s completely out of line here. For the following reasons:

1. I think the Green Party has done more than any other Party in this Election to highlight the importance of climate change. True, that’s not as much as would have been ideal, but I think that’s more down to the lack of interest on the part of the mainstream media than to some wilful neglect on the part of the Green Party. Or because the Green Party wants to talk about everything else apart from climate change – which Peter Wadhams seems to imply!

2. The Green Party has made its contribution on climate change in the best possible way, not by bleating on and on about how awful the situation is (we all know that; even David Cameron knows that), but by coming up with imaginative and serious policy proposals: retrofit nine million homes in the UK to address the scandal of fuel poverty; ban fracking; invest £35m in renewable energy and grid upgrades; reject nuclear power etc etc. It’s the policy that matters, not rhetorical and often tokenistic references to how serious climate change is.

3. I think any attempt to address the challenge of accelerating climate change without reference to social justice issues is both stupid and insensitive. We won’t get to the kind of low-carbon world we need without addressing the structural inequity that lies at the heart of the UK’s uncaring ‘austerity economy’. Social justice and climate justice are one and the same thing. I’m not sure that Peter Wadhams has any idea about the significance of that integrated approach.

And that’s because it’s only the Green Party that gets this right – eloquently confirmed yesterday by publication of the UK Poverty Audit – and independent analysis of the degree to which the party political manifestos have succeeded in addressing poverty issues during this Election campaign. It notes that “The Green Party consistently scored the highest across a number of policy areas.” And it criticises both the Conservatives and the Labour Party for being “cautious” and lacking creativity in addressing poverty in addressing poverty in the UK, scoring no more than average across the board.

The Green Party can rightly be proud of that, as should all its supporters. This is absolutely the right way to address climate issues today.