It was the sort of moment every environmentalist dreams of. A captive government minister in front of a hostile crowd, and two greens - myself and Jeremy Leggett, chief executive of Solar Century - out to draw blood. It was just a shame that the government minister in question was David Miliband - a man who gives you the feeling that he's on your side, but who seems to himself be fighting a losing battle - rather than the real climate change Dr Evil, Gordon Brown.
Brown felt to me like the spectre haunting the whole proceedings. Who could even say whether or not the gentle Mr Miliband will even be environment secretary in another month's time, once Brown brings down his iron fist in No 10? And when I raised the question of government parsimony on the domestic renewables programme - only £18m has been allocated for getting solar panels and wind turbines on our roofs (that's 15p per household over three years) and compared it to the £5.1bn lavished on widening the M1 motorway - I felt like I was attacking the wrong person. For the last 10 years, the man making decisions on spending government money has not been David Miliband, but Gordon Brown.
Brown has already been here at the Hay Festival, but I don't think anyone bothered asking him about climate change - an issue which Miliband acknowledges to be the most important to face humanity, but which Brown appears to find tedious and uninteresting. No one, not even Miliband, batted an eyelid when I reminded the audience that according to the latest IPCC report we have just 8 years left to stabilise and then reduce global emissions if we are to stay below the threshold for "catastrophic" global warming: two degrees. So why is the government still building motorways and strangling the renewables industry at birth? I could see only two options: denial or incompetence.
Mr Miliband looked hurt. It would have been a satisfying moment to put the boot in - if only he'd been Gordon Brown.
All our blogs from Hay will be collected here. Guardian Books will feature the latest news from Hay, literary blogs and a daily podcast.
