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As I write this the outcome of the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change hangs in the balance. I believe that it is essential that action is taken to deal with one of the greatest dangers facing our planet. I am not a scientist but I accept the balance of scientific evidence that the actions of man are contributing very substantially to global warming and that therefore mankind must alter its behaviour to mitigate the potentially disastrous consequences that this will cause.

The present meeting reminds me of the first Earth Summit in Rio which I attended as Environment Secretary in 1992. Then controversy surrounded the Climate Change Convention – the first international agreement to deal with these matters. And then, as now, there was doubt about the position of the United States. In the run-up to that meeting, as to this one, there was doubt about whether the President of the United States, then President George Bush Snr, would attend.

I was asked by John Major to go to Washington to persuade the Americans to sign the Convention. Only if they did so would the President go to Rio. In probably the most fascinating single day of my time in government I visited several Departments of State, saw the head of department and soon discovered that the Administration was deeply divided. The only thing on which they all agreed was that the decision as to whether the US would sign the Convention would depend on my meeting at the State Department at the end of the day.

At the State Department I met Robert Zoellick, now President of the World Bank, and we went through the Convention line by line making the relatively minor amendments that would make it possible for the US to sign. After we reached an agreement I went to the White House where Brent Scowcroft, the President’s Chief of Staff, told me the US would sign and the President would go to Rio.

I hope this week’s conference has a similar happy ending.

Closer to home things have been busy. Last Friday I attended the Chamber of Commerce Christmas lunch and surrendered the Presidential chain of office which I have held since 1983. That was followed by one of my regular meetings with the Primary Care Trust at Chelsfield, the unveiling of a plaque to Walter Tull at the Bandstand on the Leas and the presentation of a cheque to the Kent Air Ambulance at Hawkinge Cricket Club.

And on Sunday it was a presentation by holocaust survivor, Hermann Hirschberger at the Academy followed by the Salvation Army Carol Service at Hythe. Happy Christmas to one and all!