LORD Puttnam of Queensgate, delivering his sermon from the pulpit in Durham Cathedral on Sunday, could not have been plainer. The threat to mankind posed by climate change was the greatest the human race had ever faced, he said.

His message was delivered with a passion seldom heard in the rarified atmosphere of the cathedral. It was highly political in an environmental sense.

His targets were the politicians who will get together in Copenhagen next month in an effort to reach international agreement on measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

It is widely expected they will fail to agree.

While criticising politicians who put the fragile state of the world economy before what he sees as the looming environmental catastrophe, he was also keen to stress the important role played by individuals. Pointedly, he said, the media had a role to play in making people sit up and take notice.

Most controversially, Lord Puttnam said there was no time for debate about climate change, thus dismissing at a stroke the body of scientific evidence which, although not denying that the planet is warming, suggests that the warming is part of the planet’s normal cyclical temperature variation. It may not necessarily be mainstream thinking on this issue, but it does at least deserve acknowledgment.

It was the only aspect of the noble lord’s argument with which some of the congregation would have begged to differ.

The passion was heartfelt and left its mark. It was somewhat ironic that as his words echoed down the nave, the city’s Christmas lights display was being switched on – almost five weeks before Christmas Day.