Still the deal was important because, before an intern in a black beret sidetracked the presidency, Bill Clinton had showed all the signs of being deadly serious in tackling America's grotesquely bloated output of global-warming gases. Only 20 years ago environment correspondents were writing about the threat of a new ice age. The emergence of a scientific consensus that the real danger lay in the other direction has been sudden, and the political response surprisingly rapid. Sure, he burned up a lot of environmentally- unfriendly aviation fuel in the effort, but in the long run our children may well be grateful for it The Kyoto agreement was historic.

When he boasted to the Today programme soon after the election that he was going to be greener than John Gummer, this newspaper - which had secretly rather admired the outgoing Conservative minister - had its doubts. But Mr Prescott, along with Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, has turned out to be one of the stars of the New Labour administration And a green star at that. It is not going too far to say that he single-handedly rescued the Kyoto summit on global warming in December. He criss-crossed the globe, identifying the awkward parties and being nice to them beforehand. But who would have thought he would add Saviour of the Planet? To be honest, we suspected last May that the pomposity of his titles was in inverse proportion to his likely influence. The Prime Minister is not allowed to intervene in such cases, conceded an official statement from No 10.

"However, as a member of the public, he is entitled to a view and he believes that it is clear to anyone with eyes in their head she is innocent and she should be freed."Mr Blair's decision to champion the cause of a character in a television series must have come as a surprise to the families of servicemen shot for cowardice during the First World War, who are still waiting to find out if their relatives are going to get the pardon they deserve. It must also have impressed Reg Kray, who has completed the 30-year tariff recommended by the judge at his trial but heard last week that his parole application has been turned down. Like Myra Hindley, he can now be classed as a political prisoner, in the sense that no government wants to risk the opprobrium of letting him out. But there aren't many votes in human rights and Mr Blair, as we've seen, prefers to concern himself with the fake controversies of soap opera.. "Here is a prime minister, a moderniser if ever I met one, who is pushing through a programme of reform that will have huge economic implications."The Chinese government's "modernisation" programme has little to say on human rights, a subject on which its record is shameful. But Mr Blair is a busy man and can only be expected to deal with one injustice at a time.