Never mind things, did the planet's prospects improve under Tony Blair? Measured against indices of global warming and environmental degradation, Labour barely twitched the dial. But assessed against other countries' efforts and taking into account the public's lust for burning fuel and turning on lights, Labour might win a prize in the every-little-helps stakes.
Gordon Brown grasped the nettle of taxing industry to cut energy consumption though he also fulfilled the manifesto promise to cut VAT on domestic fuel to 5%, hardly likely to encourage homeowners to use less. Motorists were pillaged through the fuel price escalator - until they rebelled last year.
All the talk about sustainability - John Prescott did produce a "sustainable development strategy" in 1999 but little has been heard of it since - cannot mask a fundamental point. When it came to the rural and urban white papers, jobs and prosperity were Labour's foremost concerns. If they could be accommodated on brown rather than green fields, well and good. But in the language of priorities, growth trumped environment every time.
As Labour strove to reconcile business interests with the welfare of the planet, a series of uncomfortable compromises were made. The bid to cut carbon emissions (20% by 2010 was the promise) was never going to involve a serious effort to substitute non-fossil fuels in producing energy. Tiny support was offered wind farms and solar cells - Tony Blair's promise to finance research on renewables turned out to be based on £50m not even from the government but the national lottery's new opportunities fund. Still, the chart shows what will happen if Labour's package of measures to cut greenhouses gases are put into effect, cutting total output of such gases by 23% by 2010, carbon dioxide by 19%.
Those reductions depend on Labour's greatest environmental achievement, the climate change levy starting in April, despite the Confederation of British Industry's protests. The trouble was, the green message was never consistently delivered. If domestic fuel was made cheaper, VAT was cut on insulation and poorer households were helped to lag roofs and seal windows. In contradiction, restrictions were lifted on gas-fired power stations and Labour tried to help what is left of the UK's deep-mined coal industry, old sentiment tugging against new green imperatives. On the sustainability side of the ledger a new tax on aggregates - gravel for building - is payable from next year and landfill taxes were raised.
Fuel duty escalator was invented by the Tories to fill the Treasury's coffers and Labour used it to pump up revenues it could not get because it had promised not to raise income tax. Between May 1997 and the end of last year the pump price of unleaded rose by 42% of which 22 percentage points were due to tax. Had it been linked from the start with improved public transport motorists might just have been persuaded (the aggregate real costs of motoring having fallen over the long term). But the 10-year plan for transport launched last year, even before the September protests, showed Labour's reluctance to attack the car culture. After all, Longbridge is the epicentre of Midlands electoral marginalism. No congestion charges, so far. Bike lanes have largely been left to a charity, Sustrans, to build.
Some greenery had sprouted round the edges of transport policy, excise duty cut to encourage cleaner engines and less powerful cars, car tax allowances linked to carbon output. But road building also expanded.
When countryside dwellers invade London on March 18, it will be worth asking whether things really did get worse for them. Labour, true to its postwar traditions, proved as much the farmers' sugar daddy as the Tories. Agricultural interests were excused the harsh competitiveness prescribed by the prime minister and chancellor for other industries. No effort equivalent to what is now happening in Germany was made to rebase agricultural production on sustainable, animal-friendly principles. No heads rolled as a result of the BSE inquiries.
Frightened by the marches in 1997, the government rushed to throw in ad hoc hush money for rural transport and housing and safeguards for village shops. Having prevaricated on hunting until recently, Labour made more progress on a statutory right to roam. The Countryside Act will open up 4m acres, though "local forums" in which landowners are unlikely to be reticent will be set up to discuss access. Labour did establish new national parks with strong planning regimes covering the New Forest and parts of the South Downs and "countryside" was itself extended as 30,000 hectares were newly classified as green belt.
But this has been a growth government and growth means extra pressure on green fields and extra emissions of greenhouse gases, especially from transport. The government did little to prepare people for a future of more expensive, less plentiful energy. The sight, last November, of fuel-protesting hauliers trying to drive their lorries through flooded York was a potent sign of how little the public connected energy consumption with environmental catastrophe.
