On 29 November the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change – to give him his full job title – introduced the long-awaited Energy Bill into the Commons. Among the proposals to encourage energy saving (unless you're in an industry that uses lots of energy – doh!) and allow energy companies to recoup their investment from consumers, there was a strange intimation that the Government sees nuclear energy as in some way 'clean' and cheap. Oh dear.

Not that any of it will matter if The Guardian's Damian Carrington is right. In his blog on 4 December he describes one of the scenarios George Osborne is to put forward in his gas strategy as "a plan so reckless it is derided as 'plan Z' by the government's own official adviser".

Plan Z, according to Carrington, is based on the idea that gas will become so cheap because of widespread fracking of shale gas that consumers' bills will fall and everyone will forget about the damage being done by carbon emissions.

It was dubbed plan Z by David Kennedy, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change.

This week the Twittersphere has been overheating with comment on a Greenpeace film claiming to have uncovered a plot among senior ministers to derail the UK's (and, incidentally, Dave's) commitment to carbon reduction. The film, posted by Greenpeace on its website, is being called Energygate and comprises interviews with a number of senior Tories.

They are accused of plotting to dismantle the Climate Change Act, brainchild of 'Dave' Cameron, by making it 'advisory', rather than statutory. The statutory nature of the Act was the main thrust of the argument against the Government's policy on gas-fired power stations by the Climate Change Committee, as reported by this column on 17 September. The real question the report doesn't address is why anyone is surprised.

The latest environmental news from the US is that...giant pandas are under threat! Researchers at Yale University – that paragon of academic excellence – and Michigan State University came up with the shocking news when they discovered that the bamboo the pandas feed on cold be wiped out be the process of global warming. Apparently, some of the species of bamboo fond in areas of China where the pandas live only flower every 30-35 years, so any event that affects that cycle would be catastrophic for the plants, and hence the pandas.

The researchers particularly studied an area around the Quinling Mountains in Shaanxi province, where giant pandas have become isolated by human habitation over the centuries. The provincial capital, Xian, is also the site of the famous terracotta army and the area is known as the beginning of the Silk Road. In the celebrated words of John Bishop: "Someone, somewhere is gerrin a grant."

I was flabbergasted to read the news of the threat to panda survival, but even more filled with admiration for WWF, which picked the creature for its emblem all those years ago: must have been a lucky guess.

"Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not the shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you did not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak, or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally." (Ezekiel 34:2-4)

No, you haven't clicked onto Bible Gateway by mistake. That quote from the Old Testament is a damning indictment of the way people can treat what is put into their care. The consequences, according to the prophet Ezekiel, were devastating for the tribes of Israel. Those same verses were also quoted in a book on environmentalism in the church by long-established ecclesiastical heating specialist Christopher Dunphy. I picked up a copy at the Christian Resources Exhibition (CRE) North in Manchester last week.